Street of the Fathers

From Bruce Wagner's Wild Palms --

Robert Morse sings in Kyoto
as negotiators discuss
the Go chip:

"In My Room"

Coordinates for a 4x4 space:

A Small Go Board Study:

From
Université René Descartes,
45 rue des Saints Pères,
Paris

Today's birthdays:

Kirk Douglas
Buck Henry
John Malkovich

Dream of Youth

Today is the feast day of

Saint Hermann Weyl.

In his honor, here are two links:

The Jugendtraum and

Langlands on the Jugendtraum.

Dead Poets Society

On Friday, December 5, 2003, I picked up a copy of An Introduction to Poetry, by X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, 8th ed., at a used book sale for 50 cents.

The previous entry concerns a poem by Buson I found in that book, and contains a link on Kennedy's name to a work suitable for this holiday season.

As additional thanks for the poem, here are links to a two-part interview with Gioia:

Paradigms Lost: Part One, and

Paradigms Lost: Part Two.

"A poem need not shout to be heard."
-- Dana Gioia

Happy Rohatsu

"The Buddha was enlightened on the eighth of December when he looked up at the morning star, the planet we call Venus."

-- Shodo Harada Roshi, Dharma Talk

A poem for Rohatsu:

On the one-ton temple bell
a moon-moth, folded into sleep,
sits still.

~by Taniguchi Buson
(translated by X.J. Kennedy)

Commentary on poetry of Buson:

Poetry as an open space
 for lightening of Being

"... a cleft of existence from where the time is to extend to eternity. It is a place where 'nothing' crosses with 'being' or the 'clearing' in Heidegger's term, the only light place in the dark forest."

-- Hiroo Saga

In other words,
From Here to Eternity.

For more on Zen, see the
entry of May 2, 2003.

For more on a Temple Bell, see the
entry of May 1, 2003.

For more on Venus, see the
entry of March 28, 2003.

For more on the morning star, see the
entry of December 8, 2002.

The Last Samurai
Grandmother

"The 'Samurai Grandmother'
Margaret Singer
   has passed away…"

Singer was the author of
Cults in Our Midst.

For some background on
Singer and Scientology,
see The Anti-Cult Movement.

" 'I might look like a little old grandma, but I'm no pushover,' she told a reporter last year, just before tossing back another shot of Bushmills Irish whiskey, her libation of choice."

"Occasionally threatened, Singer refused to back down. In a 2002 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, she told how, at 80, she had frightened off someone who'd been leaving menacing notes in her mailbox."

"I've got a 12-gauge shotgun up here with a spray pattern that'll put a three-foot hole in you, sonny, and you'd better get off my porch, or you'll be sorry!" she shouted out the window.