Blessed are the
Peacemakers
Q: "What have I lived for?"
-- Last words of Larry Hart, according to St. Mark's Episcopal Church,
Washington, DC.
A: The Quest for the 36.
From the final New Y…
The Dark DoorFrom Log24.net, Dec. 22, 2003:
"One,
two, three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant
in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody
we knew. We stood clos…
8:00:00For related iconology, see Star Wars
and
Show Business according to Fritz Leiber.
Geometry UpdateAdded a new section,
"How the MOG works," to
Geometry of the 4x4 Square.
The Longest NightThis year's longest night
(either Dec. 20-21 or Dec.
21-22, I don't know which) is over. (See Frost's famous poem describing
that night.) No notable news to report, although it seems a good sign
that m…
Sunday Sermon
on Saturday's Numbers
Today's New York Times on a rabbi who died in Jerusalem on Sunday, Dec.
5:
"In the 1950's, he was a vocal advocate for the relaxation of New
York City's blue laws, which …
Christmas Dance at Taos
One grows used to the weather,
The landscape and that;
And the sublime comes down
To the spirit itself,
The spirit and space,
The empty spirit
In vacant space.
-- Wallace…
Song in Red and Gray From today's New York
Times:
Agnes Martin, Abstract Painter, Dies at 92
Background: entry of 7 PM Wednesday.
Nothing Nothings(Again)Background: recent
Log24 entries (beginning with
Chorus from the Rock on Dec. 5, 2004) and Is Nothing Sacred?
(quotations compiled on March 9, 2000).
From an obituary of Paul Edwards, a writer o…
Judeo-Christian Heritage: The Wiener Kreis
The meditation below was suggested by this passage: "...
the belief that any sensible discourse had to be formulated within the
rules of the scientific language, avoiding th…
Three in One"The theory of poetry, that is
to say, the total of the
theories of poetry, often seems to become in time a mystical theology
or, more simply, a mystique. The reason for this must by now be clear.
The reas…
Ideas, Stories, Values: Literati in Deep
Confusion Joan Didion, The
White Album: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live.... We
interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We
live entirel…
So Set 'Em Up, Joe
For Sinatra's birthday:
One For His Baby,
One More for the Road, and
The Twelve Steps of Christmas.
Review
"Philosophers ponder the idea of identity:
what it is to give something a name
on Monday and have it respond
to that name on
Friday...." -- Bernard Holland
in the New York Times
of Monday, May 20, 1996
…
Gray Particular
in Hartford
From Wallace Stevens,
"The Rock, Part III:
Forms of the Rock in a Night-Hymn" --
The rock is the gray particular of man's life,
The stone from which he rises, up--and--ho,
T…
Rock On
"Flowers and a bottle of Rogue 'Dead Guy Ale' sit on a rock outside of
the Alrosa Villa nightclub in Columbus, Ohio, December 9, 2004. A man
charged on stage and opened fire at a heavy metal band and fan…
String Theory: The Devil Came Up
to Cambridge
From a Log24 entry of Friday, December 3, 2004:
"Anything
but the void. And so we keep hoping to luck into a winning combination,
to tap into a subtle harmony, tryi…
24 Years Later: In memory of John Lennon
and Diamond Darrell Abbott
This time slot was reserved at noon on Wednesday, Dec. 8, but
this entry was made at about 4:35 PM on Thursday, Dec. 9."A dead
shepherd brou…
White Christmas
Starring W. V. Quine as
the Ghost of Christmas Past
"Birthday, death-day -- what day is not both?" -- John Updike
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live....
We interpret wh…
Zen and the Trinity(See entries of December
6, 2002.)Zen: The time is
now 3:00:00 PM.The Trinity: "Three illustrations will suffice."
Chorus from
The Rock
Author Joan Didion is 70 today.
On Didion's late husband, John Gregory Dunne:
"His 1989 memoir Harp includes Dunne's early years in Hartford and his
Irish-Catholic family's resentment of W…
X, continued...
From Midnight, Dec. 28, 2002: Kylie Our site music for today is Ravel's
classic, "Bolero." For bol…
XAt midnight: A letter for"a complete
unknown" --"Once upon a timeyou dressed so fine..."
Crimson
on St. Cecilia's Day"... from the Age that is past,
To the Age that is waiting before."
-- Samuel Gilman, "Fair Harvard"Published by The Harvard Crimson
on Monday, November 22, 2004:Dylan Performs
for Sold…
Triple Play (See entry of All Hallows' Eve,
2004.)On December 3... In
1947, the Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named Desire" opened on
Broadway. In 1953, the musical "Kismet" opened on Broadway.In 1960, the
musica…
Flores,
Flores Para los Muertos
(See entry
of Nov. 22 with this title.)
In San Juan Ixtayopan, Mexico,
Wednesday, a procession from a church
to the site where two federal policemen
were lynched on Tuesday, Nov…
The Poem of Pure Reality "We seek
The poem of pure reality, untouched
By trope or deviation, straight to the word,
Straight to the transfixing object, to the obje…