Cal References:
Posted 9/30/2002 at 11:47 PM |
Today's birthday: From Dr. Mac’s Cultural Calendar: "Film star Deborah Kerr was born on this day in 1921.
Posted 9/30/2002 at 7:00 PM |
Meditation for the Feast of From a Xanga journalist in the wee small hours:
For your consideration:
Posted 9/30/2002 at 6:21 PM |
Angel Night In honor of Ellis Larkins, jazz musician, who died on Sunday, September 29, 2002, the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, here is the best midi rendition I can find of the classic melody "Angel Eyes." (This entry was actually made on October 3, 2002, but I had saved a place for it on Michaelmas. The midi is from Wesley Dick's Juke Box page. For some classic New Orleans funeral music, go to Dick's home page.) Posted 9/29/2002 at 11:54 PM |
New from Miracle Pictures "Fear not, maiden, your prayer is heard. Contact, by Carl Sagan:Chapter 1 - Transcendental Numbers In the seventh grade they were studying "pi." It was a Greek letter that looked like the architecture at Stonehenge, in England: two vertical pillars with a crossbar at the top. If you measured the circumference of a circle and then divided it by the diameter of the circle, that was pi. At home, Ellie took the top of a mayonnaise jar, wrapped a string around it, straightened the string out, and with a ruler measured the circle's circumference. She did the same with the diameter, and by long division divided the one number by the other. She got 3.21. That seemed simple enough.
that the shape of every circle in the world was connected with this series of fractions. How could circles know about fractions? She was determined to learn The book said something else: pi was called a "transcendental" number. There was no equation with ordinary numbers in it that could give you pi unless it was infinitely long. She had already taught herself a little algebra and understood what this meant. And pi wasn't the only transcendental number. In fact there was an infinity of transcendental numbers. More than that, there were infinitely more transcendental numbers that ordinary numbers, even though pi was the only one of them she had ever heard of. In more ways than one, pi was tied to infinity. Chapter 24 - The Artist's Signature The anomaly showed up most starkly in Base 2 arithmetic, where it could be written out entirely as zeros and ones. Her program reassembled the digits into a square raster, an equal number across and down. Hiding in the alternating patterns of digits, deep inside the transcendental number, was a perfect circle, its form traced out by unities in a field of noughts. The universe was made on purpose, the circle said. In whatever galaxy you happen to find yourself, you take the circumference of a circle, divide it by its diameter, measure closely enough, and uncover -- another circle, drawn kilometers downstream of the decimal point. There would be richer messages farther in. It doesn't matter what you look like, or what you're made of, or where you come from. As long as you live in this universe, and have a modest talent for mathematics, sooner or later you'll find it. It's already here. It's inside everything. You don't have to leave your planet to find it. In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist's signature. Standing over humans, gods, and demons... there is an intelligence that antedates the universe. The circle had closed. She found what she had been searching for. Song lyric not in Sagan's book: Will the circle be unbroken "Contact," the film:
The above conclusion to Sagan's book is perhaps the stupidest thing by an alleged scientist that I have ever read. As a partial antidote, I offer the following.
Posted 9/29/2002 at 10:18 PM |
ART WARS Edgar Degas died in Paris on September 27, 1917. Posted 9/27/2002 at 11:56 PM |
ART WARS for the clueless Someone's weblog entry for 9/27/02: [27 Sep 2002|08:33pm] "After a while you learn to cope with things like seeing your dead grandmother crawling up your leg with a knife in her teeth." My comment: How to Handle a Thompson "What it all boiled down to really was everybody giving everybody else a hard time for no good reason whatever... You just couldn't march to your own music. Nowadays, you couldn't even hear it... It was lost, the music which each person had inside himself, and which put him in step with things as they should be." -- The Grifters, Ch. 10, 1963, by "The Old Man's still an artist Posted 9/27/2002 at 9:59 PM |
Modern Times
ART WARS September 27, 2002: From the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, October 2002, p. 563: "To produce decorations for their weaving, pottery, and other objects, early artists experimented with symmetries and repeating patterns. Later the study of symmetries of patterns led to tilings, group theory, crystallography, finite geometries, and in modern times to security codes and digital picture compactifications. Early artists also explored various methods of representing existing objects and living things. These explorations led to.... [among other things] computer-generated movies (for example, Toy Story)." -- David W. Henderson, Cornell University From an earlier log24.net note:
From Today in Science History: Locomotion No. 1
From Inventors World Magazine: Some inventions enjoyed no single moment of birth. For the steam engine or the motion-picture, the birth-process was, on close examination, a gradual series of steps. To quote Robert Stevenson: 'The Locomotive is not the invention of one man, but a nation of mechanical engineers.' George Stevenson (no relation) probably built the first decent, workable steam engines... Likewise the motion camera developed into cinema through a line of inventors including Prince, Edison and the Lumière brothers, with others fighting for patents. No consensus exists that one of these was its inventor. The first public display was achieved by the Lumière brothers in Paris. From my log24.net note of Friday, Sept. 13th: "Dante compares their dance and song to God’s bride on earth, the Church, when she answers the morning bells to rise from bed and 'woo with matins song her Bridegroom's love.' Some critics consider this passage the most 'spiritually erotic' of all the one hundred cantos of the Comedy." From my log24.net note of September 12:
Everybody's doin' |
The Dark Lady O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark.... From a list of people who died during 1991:
"Is that the name? Well! Well! Well! That's a fine old name in the west here." "It is so, indeed," said the landlady. "For they were kings and queens in Connaught before the Saxon came. And herself, sir, has the face of a queen, they tell me." "They're right".... -- John Collier, "The Lady on the Grey," Fancies and Goodnights, Bantam paperback, first printing, March 1953, page 131 See also my note of Friday, September 20, 2002. "Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you." "Love is strong as death." -- Song of Songs 8:6 "I'm not even sure he has a heart. (...) He's an American." "There is never any ending to Paris...." Posted 9/27/2002 at 12:01 AM |
Birthday of T. S. Eliot, Time past and time future In time the Rockies may crumble
Today is also the birthday of Martin Heidegger, author of Being and Time. In honor of Heidegger and his girlfriend Hannah Arendt, I looked for a rendition of "Our Love is Here to Stay" on the glockenspiel, but could not find one. The birthday song "Las Mañanitas" will therefore have to do for Tom, George, Olivia, and Martin, as well as Michael and Catherine (see Sept. 25 note below). Posted 9/26/2002 at 2:36 PM |
Birthday of Michael Douglas To honor Michael's adventures in "Romancing the Stone" (filmed near Veracruz, Mexico) and Catherine's impressive performance as the daughter of Zorro, this site's background music is now the Mexican birthday song, "Las Mañanitas," as performed at Classical Guitar Midi Archives. For the lyrics, courtesy of Dale Hoyt Palfrey, De las estrellas del cielo From the stars of the heavens Update of September 28: In honor of Degas, of the petite danseuse Leslie Caron, and of the opening this Sunday of the permanent sculpture exhibition at the National Gallery, this site's background music has been changed, at least for the weekend, to Gershwin. Posted 9/25/2002 at 3:02 AM |
The Shining of Lucero From my journal note, "Shining Forth":
The Eye of the Beholder:
From Broken Symmetries, by Paul Preuss, 1983:
From Secret Passages, by Paul Preuss, 1997:
From my journal note, "A Mass for Lucero":
From Secret Passages, by Paul Preuss, 1997:
From John Cramer, "The Quantum Handshake":
For more on Le Guin and Card, see my journal notes below. For more on the meaning of "lucero," see the Wallace Stevens poem "Martial Cadenza." Posted 9/24/2002 at 11:33 PM |
The Group "When shall we four meet again?" This phrase was suggested by a recent weblog entry recounting how the author hesitated to meet for lunch with three of her friends because, while acquainted in pairs, the four had never met before as a group. It was not clear how the previous relationships would play out in this larger context. The author suggested that her readers see the introduction to Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead for details. I did, and found the following:
This implies that when four people meet, there are 11 relationships going on: six from pairs, four from triplets, and one from the quartet. It gets worse...
Therefore when four people meet, there are actually 44 personas to account for. This makes the stateroom scene from "A Night at the Opera" look underpopulated.
See also my journal note "Metaphysics for Tina." Posted 9/24/2002 at 9:54 PM |
Force Field of Dreams Metaphysics and chess in today's New York Times Magazine:
Putting these quotations together, one is tempted to imagine God having a little game of chess with Whedon, along the lines suggested by C. S. Lewis:
For those who would like to imagine such a game (God vs. Whedon), the following may be helpful. George Steiner has observed that
This quotation is apparently from Fields of Force: George Steiner as quoted in a review of his book Grammars of Creation:
The phrase "language-animal" is telling. A Google search reveals that it is by no means a common phrase, and that Steiner may have taken it from Heidegger. From another review, by Roger Kimball:
Steiner has about as clear an idea of the difference between "classical" and "Judaic" ideals of man as did Michael Dukakis. (See my notes of September 9, 2002.) Clearly what music, mathematics, and chess have in common is that they are activities based on pure form, not on language. Steiner is correct to that extent. The Greeks had, of course, an extremely strong sense of form, and, indeed, the foremost philosopher of the West, Plato, based his teachings on the notion of Forms. Jews, on the other hand, have based their culture mainly on stories... that is, on language rather than on form. The phrase "language-animal" sounds much more Jewish than Greek. Steiner is himself rather adept at the manipulation of language (and of people by means of language), but, while admiring form-based disciplines, is not particularly adept at them. I would argue that developing a strong sense of form -- of the sort required to, as Lewis would have it, play chess with God -- does not require any "mutation," but merely learning two very powerful non-Jewish approaches to thought and life: the Forms of Plato and the "archetypes" of Jung as exemplified by the 64 hexagrams of the 3,000-year-old Chinese classic, the I Ching. For a picture of how these 64 Forms, or Hexagrams, might function as a chessboard, Other relevant links:
and Posted 9/22/2002 at 8:02 PM |
Music for Patricias On this date in 1892, actress/author Patricia Collinge was born in Dublin, Ireland. She is not to be confused with the Patricia Collinge of In honor of both Patricias, the backgound music of this site is no longer "Baby, Baby, Don't Get Hooked on Me." It is, instead, a tune that fans of James Joyce may recognize. Posted 9/20/2002 at 7:00 PM |
William Golding Author William Golding was born on this date in 1911.
See also the Stephen King novel (Forget the movie, which does not even mention William Golding.) For a somewhat more cheerful variation on the Lost Boys theme, see the new Kingdom Hearts game. Of course, mature audiences might react to this Disney production by recalling the classic question, "Why did Mickey Mouse divorce Minnie Mouse?" See also the Lord of the Flies game at the Nobel Prize Foundation site. Posted 9/19/2002 at 4:11 PM |
Fermat's Sombrero Mexican singer Vincente Fernandez holds up the Latin Grammy award (L) for Best Ranchero Album he won for "Mas Con El Numero Uno" and the Latin Grammy Legend award at the third annual Latin Grammy Awards September 18, 2002 in Hollywood. REUTERS/Adrees Latif From a (paper) journal note of January 5, 2002: Princeton Alumni Weekly The Sound of Math:
Wallace Stevens: Consider these lines from
Theological Method and Imagination by Julian N. Hartt Posted 9/19/2002 at 2:16 PM |
The winner of the self-promotion award
Posted 9/19/2002 at 1:11 AM |
Tierra y Cielo:
Heaven and Earth in HeideggerCuando imaginamos algo en la tierra, este algo también se encuentra bajo el cielo, ante los divinos y junto a los mortales. Esta unidad de ellos designamos la Cuaternidad.... ...Heiddeger nos presenta un ejemplo para aplicar la reflexión: un puente.... El puente coliga según su manera cabe sí tierra y cielo, los divinos y los mortales; es una cosa y lo es en tanto que la coligación de la Cuaternidad que hemos caracterizado antes. El puente coliga la Cuaternidad de tal modo que hace sitio a una plaza. Pero sólo aquello que en sí mismo es un lugar puede abrir espacio a una plaza. Antes del puente, hay muchos sitios que pueden ser ocupados por algo. De entre ellos uno se da como un lugar, y esto ocurre por la propia presencia del puente. Luego, el lugar se da por el puente. El puente es una cosa, coliga la Cuaternidad, pero coliga en el modo de otorgar (hacer sitio a) a la Cuaternidad una plaza. See also HEIDEGGER AND HÖLDERLIN and my note of September 5, Posted 9/18/2002 at 5:16 PM |
The Garden of Allah
There she stood in the doorway;
BACKGROUND FROM DON HENLEY "The song is loosely based on a recently published book (actually, I wrote the song before I read the book), The Death of Satan (How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil), written by Andrew Delbanco.... ...we land at last smack-dab in the 'culture of irony,' which is where we sit, like Job, in dust and ashes. THE STORY LINE OF THE SONG Satan is quite frustrated because things have gotten so bad that even he is confounded.... He waxes nostalgic about the good ol' days when he hung out in Hollywood with the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Aldous Huxley... [at] the historic Garden of Allah apartment hotel. THE L.A. GARDEN OF ALLAH A 3 1/2-acre hotel complex of Spanish-style bungalows that once stood on Sunset Boulevard.... During its three-decade heyday, the Garden of Allah was the site of robberies, orgies, drunken rages, tense honeymoons, bloody brawls, divorces, suicides, and murder." Posted 9/18/2002 at 3:43 AM |
A Time to Gather Stones Together Readings for Yom Kippur:
Posted 9/16/2002 at 3:26 PM |
Evariste Galois and An article in the current New York Review of Books (dated Sept. 26) on Ursula K. Le Guin prompted me to search the Web this evening for information on a short story of hers I remembered liking. I found the following in the journal of mathematician Peter Berman:
I agree that the story is elegant (from a mathematician, a high compliment), so searched Berman's pages further, finding this: between The French Mathematician (a novel about Galois) and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. My own version of the Philosopher's Stone (the phrase used instead of "Sorcerer's Stone" in the British editions of Harry Potter) appears in my profile picture at top left; see also the picture of Plato's diamond figure in my main math website. The mathematics of finite (or "Galois") fields plays a role in the underlying theory of this figure's hidden symmetries. Since the perception of color plays a large role in the Le Guin story and since my version of Plato's diamond is obtained by coloring Plato's version, this particular "rock that changes things" might, I hope, inspire Berman to extend his table to include Le Guin's tale as well. Even the mosaic theme is appropriate, this being the holiest of the Mosaic holy days. Dr. Berman, G'mar Chatimah Tova. Posted 9/15/2002 at 11:07 PM |
God Is Her Co-Pilot On the soundtrack album of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," Clint Eastwood advised us to "eliminate the negative." As a sequel to the extremely negative note below, written at midnight on the night of September 13-14, 2002, the following is my best attempt, on this very dark night of the soul, to eliminate the negative. Some of us are old enough to recall that the beloved Grace Kelly, Princess of Monaco, died on September 14, 1982 -- exactly 20 years ago -- from injuries she suffered in a car accident the day before. The following photo recalls happier days of driving the Riviera, in the 1955 film "To Catch a Thief." This note's title, combined with the photo, suggests that I have a mystical vision of Cary Grant as God. I can think of worse people to play God. The best I can do tonight to eliminate the negative is transcribe the remarks I made in a (paper) journal entry in 1997. (By the way, I realize that ordinary people are just as important as movie stars, but the latter are more suitable for public discussion.) In memoriam: Robert Mitchum and James Stewart Eternal Triangles (July 3, 1997) Every civilization tells its own story about the relations between heaven and earth. Some of the best stories -- those of Lao Tsu, the Greek poets, and Buddha -- are now almost 26 centuries old. Some even older stories -- those told by the Jews -- have enabled our current civilization, led by Charlton Heston as God, to outlast Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. However, recent claims of Absolute Truth for these stories (The Bible Code) are disturbing. Perhaps it is time -- at least for Robert Mitchum and James Stewart -- to meet a kinder, gentler God. I propose Cary Grant -- specifically, as seen in "The Grass is Greener" (1960) with Mitchum and Deborah Kerr, and in "The Philadelphia Story" (1940) with Stewart and Katharine Hepburn. If we imagine Grant as God, then these films reveal a very old, always entertaining, and sometimes enlightening version of the Trinity: God and Man as rivals for the Holy Spirit -- as played by Deborah, by Kate, and (in heaven) by Grace. Such a spirit, at work in the real world, may have influenced two of this century's better Bibles:
From (1), for Mitchum's memorial, Deborah might pick "The Basket of Roses" (pp. 1057-1060). From (2), for Stewart's memorial, Kate might select the page of LIFE's covers for 1941 -- and all that page implies.
Finally, Grace, in the Highest society (beyond Bibles) might recall the following telegraphic catechism:
Q. -- How old Cary Grant? A. -- Old Cary Grant fine. How you? Posted 9/14/2002 at 3:03 AM |
September 14: September 13 was the feast day of St. John Chrysostom. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:
Today, September 14, is the feast day of the Triumph of
Later writers might choose to omit the above sentence, published in 1908, but, as Pilate said, "Quod scripsi, scripsi." For modern times, this quotation is perhaps best translated into German, the language of modern Pilates: Was ich geschrieben habe, It might well be accompanied by another translation from the same website, which renders the "Ora et labora" of St. Benedict as Bete und arbeite! and, indeed, by a classic quotation from twentieth-century German Christian thought: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. Posted 9/14/2002 at 12:00 AM |
Meditation for Friday the 13th The 1946 British film below (released as "Stairway to Heaven" in the U.S.) is one of my favorites. I saw it as a child. Since costar Kim Hunter died this week (on 9/11), and since today is Friday the 13th, the following material seems relevant.
The doctor in "A Matter of Life and Death" addresses a heavenly court on behalf of his patient, R.A.F pilot David Niven:
In a similar situation, I would want Dr. Alan McGlashan, a real-life psychiatrist, on my side. For an excerpt from one of my favorite books, McGlashan's The Savage and Beautiful Country, As Walker Percy has observed (see my Sept. 7 note, "The Boys from Uruguay"), a characteristic activity of human beings is what Percy called "symbol-mongering." In honor of today's anniversary of the births of two R.A.F. fighter pilots, Sir Peter Guy Wykeham-Barnes (b. 1915) and author Roald Dahl (b. 1916), here is one of the better symbols of the past century: The circle is of course a universal symbol, and can be made to mean just about whatever one wants it to mean. In keeping with Clint Eastwood's advice, in the soundtrack album for "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," to "accentuate the positive," here are some positive observations on a circle from the poet (and perhaps saint) Dante, who died on the night of September 13-14:
The above material on Dante is from the Servants of the Paraclete website. For more on the Paraclete, see See also the illustration in the note below. Posted 9/13/2002 at 2:24 PM |
ART WARS September 12, 2002
John Frankenheimer's film "The Train" -- Und was fur ein Bild des Christentums Posted 9/12/2002 at 6:41 PM |
In memory of Kim Hunter, A transcription of a journal note from 1996...
National Dance WeekThursday, May 2, 1996National Day of Prayer will be observed at noon today, Thursday, May 2, at City Hall.
Posted 9/12/2002 at 2:56 PM |
Double Cross From the New York Times obituaries of 9/11, 2002:
Sunday was V-day in Malta. See my log24.net notes below: The Maltese Cross, For another sort of victory, see my log24.net note of August 24, Cruciatus in Crucem. The Cruciatus note describes what might be called the "Red" cross, or Croix de Guerre. The Maltese Cross note describes a cross more properly associated with intelligence than with courage. (Both qualities are, of course, needed... courage and a brain, as well as a heart.) More from the Rol-Tanguy obituary:
The following quotations are not without relevance. There is never any ending to Paris and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy. We'll always have Paris.
Here's looking at you, kid. Posted 9/11/2002 at 2:56 PM |
Doonesbury, morning of Posted 9/11/2002 at 3:16 AM |
The Sound of Hanging Rock On this date, director Robert Wise was born in Winchester, Indiana. Credits include "Born to Kill," "Director Robert Wise suggests that we all share a collective dark side." -- Robert Weston According to various Web sources,
With the exception of The Byrds, the above music seems to reflect the spirit of Pan, a god discussed in my September 9 notes below. For a perhaps more accurate rendition of the spirit of Pan, see the classic Australian film "From the opening shot of Hanging Rock, lovingly framed by cinematographer Russell Boyd, accompanied by the strains of the pan flute played by Gheorghe Zamfir, the film sets its elegant, restrained tone...." Posted 9/10/2002 at 12:01 PM |
Politics of Hell Born today: Michael Keaton, Regarding my claim in the note below that Michael Dukakis lied about an ancient Greek pledge, thereby incurring the wrath of the Gods... A Google search for "Athenian pledge" yields four sites, only two of which are relevant. One is a site in which U. S. Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY, Harvard '71) parrots Dukakis, and one is from the final home of William S. Burroughs -- Lawrence, Kansas:
The link above on Burroughs (Harvard '36) is to a site subtitled "Secret Agent in Hell." Perhaps he now haunts his old alma mater... The excellent 1933 Harvard novel Great Circle, by Conrad Aiken, has in its opening paragraph the following:
Postscript of 12:55 a.m. September 10: For a current (9/9/02) Harvard student's view of Hell, see the description of Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle at http://www.xanga.com/home.asp?user=rcudney. Posted 9/9/2002 at 11:57 PM |
On this, his birthday, actor Hugh Grant Honorary Waco Wacko. By the authority vested in me by the possession of
I hereby declare Hugh Grant an honorary Waco (home of the Dr. Pepper Museum, the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame, and the Armstrong Browning Library) Wacko. Posted 9/9/2002 at 3:33 PM |
ART WARS of September 8, 2002: Sunday in the Park with Forge From The New York Times obituary section of Saturday, September 7, 2002: Andrew Forge, 78, Painter By ROBERTA SMITH ndrew Forge, a painter, critic, teacher and former dean of painting at the Yale School of Art, died on Wednesday [Sept. 4] in New Milford, Conn. He was 78... [As a painter] he reduced his formal vocabulary to two small, basic units: tiny dots and short, thin dashes of paint that he called sticks. He applied those elements meticulously, by the thousands and with continual adjustments of shape, color, orientation and density until they coalesced into luminous, optically unstable fields. These fields occasionally gave hints of landscapes or figures, but were primarily concerned with their own internal mechanics, which unfolded to the patient viewer with a quiet, riveting lushness. In a New York Times review of Mr. Forge's retrospective at the Yale Center for British Art in 1996, John Russell wrote that "the whole surface of the canvas is mysteriously alive, composing and recomposing itself as we come to terms with it." Above: Untitled image from Andrew Forge: Recent Paintings, April 2001, Bannister Gallery, Rhode Island College, Providence, RI See also An Essay on the work of Andrew Forge From that essay:
See also my journal note of March 22, 2001, The Matthias Defense, which begins with the epigraph Bit by bit, putting it together. Posted 9/8/2002 at 4:24 PM |
The Maltese Cross In my journal note for Rosh Hashanah (The Boys from Uruguay, Sept. 7) below, I noted that the cross as a symbol of intelligence may be offensive to some readers. Such readers may contemplate the Maltese cross shown on page 150 of The New Yorker magazine of March 21, 1994, in an article by Nichoison Baker, "The Projector." On page 152 is an explanation of how the cross functions within a motion picture projector, and a statement that "Without this little thing, there'd be no film industry!" Development of the Web since 1994 allows us to view the Maltese cross in action at the excellent site The following diagram is from that site: © Cabaret Mechanical Theatre 1996-01 Posted 9/8/2002 at 6:21 AM |
The Maltese Today, September 8, is The Feast of Our Lady of Victories in Malta. "The 8th of September festivity is close to Maltese hearts."
From Malta's Importance in History:
Today's feast is known to Roman Catholics as The Feast of the Nativity of Our Lady. See also the novel by Thomas Pynchon, V. Posted 9/8/2002 at 4:44 AM |
In honor of the September 8 birthdays of
From a website on Donna Tartt's novel The Secret History... "It is like a storyteller looking up suddenly into the eyes of his audience across the embers of a once blazing fire...
This work of literature seems especially relevant at the start of a new school year, and in light of my remarks below about ancient Greek religion. One should, when praising Apollo, never forget that Dionysus is also a powerful god. For those who prefer film to the written word, I recommend "Barton Fink" as especially appropriate viewing for the High Holy Days. Judy Davis (my favorite actress) plays a Faulkner-figure's "secretary" who actually writes most of his scripts. Tartt is herself from Faulkner country. For her next book, see this page from Square Books, 160 Courthouse Square, Oxford, Misssissippi. Let us pray that Tartt fares better in real life than Davis did in the movie. As music for the High Holy Days, I recommend Don Henley's "The Garden of Allah." For some background on the actual Garden of Allah Hotel at 8080 Sunset Boulevard (where "Barton Fink" might have taken place), see NAZIMOVA AND THE GARDEN OF ALLA. Posted 9/8/2002 at 2:00 AM |
For Elia Kazan: A Birthday Song: (Song, lyrics, and animated story) Today is the anniversary of the opening of the New York Post Office Building in 1914. Today is National Postal Workers Day. From the website Elia Kazan: Postage Paid...
"Many years later Kazan said 'Viva Zapata!,' which he was filming during the time of his committee testimony, 'was structured to expose the ineffectiveness of idealistic revolutionaries, I believe that democracy progresses through internecine war, through constant tension - we grow only through conflict. And that’s what democracy is. In that sense, people have to be vigilant, and that vigilance is effective. I truly believe that all power corrupts. Such is probably the thinking behind every political film ever made in Hollywood.' This was a profound statement about his values and beliefs. Kazan never backed away from his statements." Note: In honor of Kazan and of Brando, who really is a contender, the background music of this website has been hushed, so that those who click "A Birthday Song" above can hear it clearly. Posted 9/7/2002 at 11:11 PM |
The Boys from Uruguay If one were to write a "secret history" of the twentieth century, one possible organizing theme might be the religious struggle between worshippers of the Semitic deity (variously known as Yahweh, God, and Allah) and worshippers of the Aryan deities... notably, the Aryan god of music, light, and reason, Apollo. (See my jounal notes of Monday, Sept. 2, 2002, below.) In perhaps the best academic website I have ever seen, Karey L. Perkins quotes Walker Percy: "The truth is that man's capacity for symbol-mongering in general and language in particular is…intimately part and parcel of his being human, of his perceiving and knowing, of his very consciousness..." The greatest symbol-monger of the twentieth century was, of course, Adolf Hitler. His use of the Aryan sun-wheel symbol rose to the level of genius. Of course, it ultimately failed to win the approval of the sun god himself, Apollo, who is also the god of reason. Since symbol-mongering cannot be avoided, let us hope that it can be done in a somewhat more reasonable way than that of the National Socialist movement. Two examples suggest themselves.
On this Rosh Hashanah, the cross as a symbol of intelligence may be offensive to some worshippers of Yahweh. Let them read The Archivist, a novel by Martha Cooley, and then my journal note The Matthias Defense. They might also contemplate the biblical quotation in the musical "Contact" broadcast from Lincoln Center on September 1, 2002: "Let there be light!" Three Jews named Paul have been associated with light...
In accordance with the "secret history" theme mentioned above, the struggle between Aryan and Semitic religions may also be viewed in the light of the struggle between Christianity and Communism. Hitler exploited this viewpoint very successfully, pretending to be the champion of the Christians against the godless Reds. Peggy Noonan also successfully uses this strategy. Both Hitler and Noonan manage to ignore the fact that Christianity is itself one of the Semitic religions, and that at least two of its three deities are Jewish. As for me, I rather identify with the young Hitler clone at the end of the film "The Boys from Brazil." Forced to decide between Gregory Peck and Sir Laurence Olivier, he sides with Olivier. His reason? Peck lied. In a similar situation, forced to decide between Peggy Noonan and the Jew Halmos, I would probably side with Halmos. Halmos, who should, if not a saint, be at least dubbed a knight, does not, unlike the great majority of the damned human race, lie. See Halmos's memoir, I Want to Be a Mathematician. In particular, see the single index entry "communist by allegation" and the 29 entries under "Uruguay." Happy birthday to Elia Kazan and Peggy Noonan, and a happy and prosperous New Year to should-be-Sir Paul R. Halmos. Posted 9/7/2002 at 4:44 PM |
Santa's Wit Edmund Gwenn, actor, died on September 6, 1959. When asked if he thought dying was tough, Gwenn reportedly said,
This may or may not be true; if it is, Gwenn may be the true source of a quotation variously attributed to Edmund Kean, Edwin Booth, David Garrick, Donald Wolfit, William Holden, and Groucho Marx, Marcel Marceau, Noel Coward, and Oscar Wilde:
A very dubious version of the Gwenn story attributes the "comedy is hard" part to Jack Lemmon:
David Bruce, an English instructor at Ohio University, supplies another version of the Gwenn story, from Movie Anecdotes, by Peter Hay. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990:
Santa might appreciate the above misprint, as would Vladimir Nabokov... "Life Everlasting--based on a misprint!" and John Donne... "And death shall be no more, Death, thou shalt die." Posted 9/6/2002 at 5:11 AM |
Arrow in the Blue A description by Arthur Koestler (born Sept. 5, 1905) of a close encounter with the divine:
Koestler also mentions the "blue Andalusian sky." Some thoughts suggested by the above and by the Sept. 5, 2002, New York Times story on the first anniversary of the murder of the Mexican lawyer María de los Angeles Tames.... 1. The blue of the Andalusian sky is essentially the same as the blue of the sky above Baja California. See photographs of the last Jesuit mission in Mexico, 2. A Google search for "blue Andalusian sky" yielded two results: the Koestler page quoted above, and a page on the Gypsy film "Vengo." For a reasonable likeness of St. Sara, patron saint of the Gypsies, also known as The Dark Lady, also known as Kali, see the poster of dancer Sara Baras at Flamenco-world.com.
For the music Sara dances to, composed and played by Jesús de Rosario, listen to audio clips at Juana la Loca: Vivir por Amor. 3. For an American version of The Dark Lady, see an homage from Catalonia to For a Harris song that seems appropriate to the blue-sky theme above, see Posted 9/5/2002 at 11:59 PM |
Trifecta Born today: Arthur Koestler, From To Ride Pegasus, by Anne McCaffrey, 1973:
Born today: Darryl F. Zanuck, Director Eliza Kazan consults with scriptwriter John Steinbeck about the production of "Viva Zapata!" in Cuernavaca, Mexico:
Elia Kazan on Darryl Zanuck's insistence that Zapata's white horse be emphasized:
Born today: comedian Bob Newhart
Posted 9/5/2002 at 3:06 PM |
Birthdate of film producer Darryl F. Zanuck Among Zanuck's films were "All about Eve" and "Viva Zapata!" Bright Star I do not have a photograph of Lucero Hernandez, the subject of my journal notes Shining Forth and Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star.
Center for Global Education, Semester-abroad Program in Mexico "The program is based in Cuernavaca, a city known for its perennial springtime (70-80 degrees). Cuernavaca, the capital of the state of Morelos, is about 50 miles south of Mexico City. Both the city and the state are important in Mexican history: the palace of the conqueror Hernan Cortez borders the central plaza in Cuernavaca and Morelos is known as “the cradle of the Mexican revolution” of 1910 led by Emiliano Zapata, who was born in a small town near Cuernavaca. A city of more than one million, Cuernavaca is also known for its innovative grass-roots education programs, economic cooperatives, and base Christian communities inspired by liberation theology." Posted 9/5/2002 at 12:36 AM |
Birthday of AI guru John McCarthy If you enter the question "Is there such a thing as artificial intelligence?" as a Google search phrase, you will be referred to ALICE, a chat robot. ALICE's possible answers include "Yes," "No," and "Maybe." Another search strategy leads to the following Google Directory page: Computers > Artificial Intelligence > This page, unlike ALICE, suggests that the appropriate answer to our question is the punch line to an old computer joke: "There is now." Posted 9/4/2002 at 3:21 AM |
Today's birthday: James Joseph Sylvester "Mathematics is the music of reason." -- J. J. Sylvester Sylvester, a nineteenth-century mathematician, coined the phrase "synthematic totals" to describe some structures based on 6-element sets that R. T. Curtis has called "rather unwieldy objects." See Curtis's abstract, Symmetric Generation of Finite Groups, John Baez's essay, Some Thoughts on the Number 6, and my website, Diamond Theory. See also the abstract of a December 7, 2000, talk, Mathematics and the Art of M. C. Escher, in which Curtis notes that graphic designs can "often convey a mathematical idea more eloquently than pages of symbolism." Posted 9/3/2002 at 6:00 PM |
Today's birthday: Laurindo Almeida Almeida was a Brazilian guitarist, composer, and arranger. He was one of the pioneers of the bossa nova style. Although he did not write the song " Manha de Carnaval" ("A day in the life of a fool"), I added this song as background music for this site today partly to honor Brazilian music... and partly because the song is from the classic Brazilian film "Black Orpheus." (See the two notes below, from today and yesterday, on Orpheus and on vibraphonist Lionel Hampton.) Posted 9/2/2002 at 6:56 PM |
Elevation of the Host Some religious fanatics may be offended by my account, in the note below, of a theatrical bartender-priest at Lincoln Center who last night held a CD aloft in what may seem a parody or satire of the elevation of the host in the Mass. They should consider the following account of how a medieval nun viewed the host:
For another appearance of a priest associated, if only by synchronicity, with Lincoln Center, see the photographs below, both from the New York Times obituaries section of Friday, August 30, 2002.
In this little drama of August 30, played out in the obituary section of the New York Times, it is not clear from the Lippold sculpture who is to play the role of Orpheus and who the role of Apollo. One might interpret the note below, written two days later, as implying that Orpheus is to be played by Lionel Hampton and Apollo by Christ himself. Such a drama is neither parody nor satire. It is, on the contrary, deadly serious. "A great brightness," as seen by the medieval nun described above, is traditionally associated with the Aryan sun god Apollo. For more on this theme in Roman Catholic art, see The Monstrance and the Wafer God, and For a less dogmatic approach to these matters, see my journal note of June 13, 2002, Posted 9/2/2002 at 5:25 AM |
Backbeat in Heaven The great musician Lionel Hampton died at about 6:15 a.m. EDT Saturday, August 31, 2002, in New York City's Mount Sinai Medical Center. Quincy Jones said, "Heaven will definitely be feeling some backbeat now." (AP story) Hampton himself said, "I learned all that in the sanctified church." (N.Y. Times story) Can we hear an AMEN? Yes, we heard an amen... Live from Lincoln Center on PBS from about 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. EDT tonight (Sunday, September 1, 2002), in a live broadcast of the final performance of the musical "Contact."
The evening ended with the redemption by Grace of a sinner (a maker of TV commercials) and with (as Quincy Jones noted) a strong new backbeat in heaven. Posted 9/1/2002 at 11:59 PM |