September 2, 2009

  • Soul of the Party, continued:

    Back to School

    Canto I:

    NY Times-- 'Soul' of a Party Is Memorialized

    Canto II:

    Friday, August 28, 2009,
    in this journal

    Annals of Religion:

    Rites of Passage

    "Things fall apart;
       the centre cannot hold...."

    Part I:

    "Inside the church,  
        the grief was real...."

    Canto III:

    Sunday, August 30, 2009,
    in The New York Times

    "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Facebook, the online social grid, could not command loyalty forever."

    -- Virginia Heffernan, "Facebook Exodus," NY Times Magazine, Sunday, August 30, 2009

    Canto IV:

    A Season in Purgatory, by Dominick Dunne

    Click for details.
     
    Canto V:
     
    Dorm Room Feng Shui: 'YOU ARE HERE'

September 1, 2009

August 31, 2009

  • Annals of Religion:

    Ask a Stupid Question

    continued from   
    last Wednesday...

     Log24 on August 26--

    "Did you see more glass?"

    http://www.log24.com/log/pix09A/090831-GlassMemorial.jpg

    Wednesday, August 26,
    was the date of death
    for Hyman Bloom.

    Bloom, described in
    today's New York Times
    as "a painter of the
     mystical," died at 96.

    Bloom often painted portraits of imaginary rabbis; an article titled "American Mystic" describes

     

    "... the mesmerizing paradox at the heart of the rabbi portraits-- they remember keepers of a tradition in a method that tradition expressly forbids. As Bloom explains, age and illness endowing his voice with a hoarse, prophetic quality, 'Jewish culture has nothing to do with painting. That’s a rule, "Thou shalt not make an image of anything in the air or on the earth."'"

    -- Stephen Vider, Tablet Magazine, February 28. 2007

    Related material:

    An entry in this journal linked to twice on the date of Bloom's death--

    Art and Man at Yale--

    and an illustrated entry from this journal on the date of the "Mystic" article--

    Elements of Geometry    .

    "So, there is one place
    where modernism triumphs.
    As in the cases of the pyramids
    and the Taj Mahal, the Siegfried line
     and the Atlantic wall, death always
     calls on the very best architects."

    -- J. G. Ballard,
    "A Handful of Dust"

  • Black Rock song...

    A Crown for Varnedoe

    Oh, and while the King
        was looking down
    The Jester stole
       his thorny crown....

    -- Don McLean

August 30, 2009

August 29, 2009