Happy Birthday,Mary Shelley
"Frank and Stein quickly realizedthey needed the big three thingsthat
every programming language has:a father;a name;and something cool."
Sounds to me more like a religion.
Premodern Religi…
The Shining of Park Place
Today is the birthday of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., writer, dean of
Harvard Medical School, father of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes, Jr., and author of at least seven hymns.
It …
Feastof Saint Augustine
"Frère Jacques, Cuernavaca, ach du lieber August." — John
O'Hara, Hope of Heaven
"anticipate the happiness of heaven"
=
"himmlisches Glück vorweg empfinden"
— Englis…
Elegance Sigrid Estrada
Louise Glück, theU.S. poet laureate. Pulitzer winner
Glücknamed poet laureate By CARL HARTMAN The Associated Press
8/28/2003, 6:26 PM ET WASHINGTON (AP) — Louise Glück, win…
Spirit
In memory of Walter J. Ong, S. J.,professor emeritusat St. Louis
University,St. Louis, Missouri
"The Garden of Eden is behind usand there is no road back to
innocence;we can only go forward."
— Anne Morrow Lind…
Crystal and Dragon
David Wade published a book called Crystal and Dragon in 1993 about the
apparent opposites of structure and fluidity, order and chaos, law and
freedom, and so on.
Here is a page on these concepts as …
Words Are Events
August 12 was the date of death of Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr., and the
date I entered some theological remarks in a new Harvard weblog. It
turns out that August 12 was also the feast day of a new sain…
Gates to the City
Today's birthday:
On August 25, 1918, composer Leonard Bernstein was born.
From Winter's Tale, Harcourt Brace (1983):
Four Gates to the City
By MARK HELPRIN
Every city has its gates, which…
Passing the Crown
Today's New York Times Book Review vilifies author John O'Hara as a
"jerk." Earlier this week, the Times called him a "lout." These attacks
amount to a virtual crown of thorns. For commentary on thes…
Pictures of Nothing
'"The artist delights to go back to the first chaos of the world... All
is without forms and void. Some one said of his landscapes that they
were pictures of nothing, and very like." -- William Haz…
Mr. Holland's Week
On Monday, August 18, 2003,a New York Times editor wrotethe following
headlinefor a book review:
Bending Over Backwardfor a Well-Known Lout.
The word "lout" here refers toauthor John O'Hara, who oft…
Birthday Tablet
"Of the world's countless customs and traditions, perhaps none is as
elegant, nor as beautiful, as the tradition of sangaku, Japanese temple
geometry."
— Tony Rothman
Sangaku means "mathematical tablet…
O'Hara's Fingerpost
In The New York Times Book Review of next Sunday (August 24, 2003),
Book Review editor Charles McGrath writes that author John O'Hara
"... discovered a kind of story... in which a line of dialogue o…
Intelligence Test
From my August 31, 2002, entry quoting Dr. Maria Montessori on
conciseness, simplicity, and objectivity: Above: Dr. Harrison Pope,
Harvard professor of psychiatry, demonstrates the use of …
Entries since Xanga'sAugust 10 Failure:
Sunday, August 17, 2003 2:00 PM
A Thorny Crown of...
From the first episode ofthe television series"The West Wing":
Original airdate: Sept. 22, 1999Written by …
Death of a Holy Man
Part I: An American Religion
Hiroshima Mayor SaysUS Worships Nukes
"HIROSHIMA -- Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba warned that the world is
moving toward war and accused Washington of 'worshipping' …
Bibles
Today is the feast day of St. Hermann Hesse. A quotation from a work by
Hesse that is to some a sort of Bible:
"You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which
nothing but laws and formula…
Jews in the News
LOS ANGELES (AP) Aug. 9 --Howard Stern has settled a lawsuit against
the producers of the television series "Are You Hot? The Search for
America's Sexiest People,'' which he claimed was based on an id…
Beware of...Jews Peddling Stories:
An episode in the ongoing saga of the conflict between the "story
theory of truth" and the "diamond theory of truth."
The following set of pictures summarizes some reflections on trut…
Sewage
From The New Yorker magazine, issue dated August 11, 2003:
Talk of the Town
As in the rest of the country, political talk radio here is dominated
by the hard right. On the AM band, whose low-fidelity si…
Allureat the New York Times
and Bad News and Good Newsfor Tish b'Av
Today is, until sundown, Tish b'Av, a Jewish holy day.
Bad News:
"Tish b'Av is traditionally held by Jews around the world as a day of
mourning for …
Morning Flight
"I'm working on a morning flight to anywhere but here....
It's not the way you say you hear my heartwhen the music endsI am just
learning how to fly away again"
-- Nanci Griffith on KHYI.com, 6:45 AM
…
PostmodernPostmortem
"I had a lot of fun with this audacious and exasperating book. ...
[which] looks more than a little like Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces, a
'secret history' tracing punk rock through May 1968...."
-…
More excellent poetry from KHYI.com:
Candyland, by James McMurtry.
Another Texas-related link, this one for poet Conrad Aiken's birthday:
Politics of Hell and Honorary Waco Wacko.
Venn's Trinity
Today is the birthday of logician John Venn.
From the St. Andrews History of Mathematics site:
"Venn considered three discs R, S, and T as typical subsets of a set U.
The intersections of these discs an…
Resurrection
The previous entry, on Christian theology, does not imply that all
religion is bad. Consider, for instance, the following from a memorial
web page: "Al Grierson's song Resurrection was sung by Ray Wylie …
A Queer Religion
August 4 headline:
Gay bishop on way to win
This suggests the following theological meditation by a gay Christian:
"I can't resist but end by pointing out the irony of the doctrine of
the Tri…
Dancing at Lughnasa
"The place outside the cosmos where I and my pals do our nursing job I
simply call the Place. A lot of my nursing consists of amusing and
humanizing Soldiers fresh back from raids into time. In fact,…
Late Night Grande Hotel
"I feel like Garbo in this late night Grande Hotel 'Cause living alone
is all I've ever done well"
-- Nanci Griffith, Song lyric
"...the thought of those dark threeIs dark, thought of the forms…
Dark Desire
Film star dies after fightwith rock boyfriend "...they seemed destined
to become France's golden couple: the fragile and gifted film actress
from one of the country's great theatrical families, and the r…
Jack of Diamonds
KHYI plays the Jack of Diamonds again (see yesterday's entry, Killer
Radio):
"I knew a man with money in his hand.He'd look that Jack of Diamonds in
the eye...."
For another version of the Jack, see T…
For All Time
"... and the Wichita lineman is still on the line..."
(Reflection on a member of the Radcliffe Class of 1964 who lived near
Wichita and now has her own home page... While listening to a song on
my "home on…
Fearful Meditation Ray Price — Time
"The Max D. Barnes-penned title track, with its stark-reality lyrics,
is nothing short of haunting: 'Time is a weapon, it’s cold and it’s
cruel; It knows no religion a…