Log24

Also in today’s online Times:

“Mstislav Rostropovich, a cellist and conductor who was renowned not only as one of the great instrumentalists of the 20th century, but also as an outspoken champion of artistic freedom in Russia during the final decades of the Cold War, died in Moscow today. He was 80 and lived in Paris, with homes in Moscow, St. Petersburg, London and Lausanne, Switzerland….

Mr. Rostropovich… was widely known by his diminutive, Slava (which means glory in Russian)….”

Related material:

I. “Established on 8 November 1943, the Order of Glory (Orden Slavy – Орден Славы) was an Order (decoration) of the Soviet Union…. The Order of Glory… was modelled closely upon the Tsarist Cross of St. George….” —Wikipedia

II. Also on the 8th of November, in 2006 and 2002: Grave Matters and Religious Symbolism at Princeton.

III. “Mr. Rostropovich will be buried in Moscow at the Novodevichy Cemetery, where on Wednesday his friend, Boris Yeltsin, post-Soviet Russia’s first president, was laid to rest.” —New York Times

IV. “A graveyard smash.” –Bobby (Boris) Pickett, who died Wednesday.

Shine On, Hermann Weyl —

“Be on the lookout for
Annie Dillard’s sequel to
Teaching a Stone to Talk, titled
Teaching a Brick to Sing.”

William Butler Yeats —

“Poets and Wits about him drew;
‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost.
   ‘What then?’

‘The work is done,’
   grown old he thought,
‘According to my boyish plan;
Let the fools rage,
   I swerved in naught,
Something to perfection brought’;
But louder sang that ghost,
   ‘What then?’“

Cafe Society Part I –
Jack Torrance at
the Overlook Hotel:

Cafe Society Part II –
Don Imus at The FanHouse,
Friday the 13th:

Cafe Society Part III –
The Bank Dick at
the Black Pussy Cafe:



“Which way to the egress?”

“I sit now in a little room off the bar at four-thirty in the morning drinking ochas and then mescal and writing this on some Bella Vista notepaper I filched the other night…. But this is worst of all, to feel your soul dying. I wonder if it is because to-night my soul has really died that I feel at the moment something like peace. Or is it because right through hell there is a path, as Blake well knew, and though I may not take it, sometimes lately in dreams I have been able to see it? …And this is how I sometimes think of myself, as a great explorer who has discovered some extraordinary land from which he can never return to give his knowledge to the world: but the name of this land is hell. It is not Mexico of course but in the heart.”

— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano 

It’s Not Easy
Being Green



Don Imus, 1974 album

Rutgers women’s basketball
coach C. Vivian Stringer:

“It’s about us as people– black, white, purple or green. And as much as I speak about that, it’s not even black and white– the color is green.”

Imus flap about
black, white, and green

David Lieberman, Laura Petrecca and Gary Strauss in USA Today:

“So amid all the uproar over Imus’ remarks and the national discussion over race relations that they ignited, why wasn’t he fired?

Stringer and others think that has less to do with relations between blacks and whites than it does with another color.

‘The color is green– if we can tolerate as a society what’s just taken place,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how anyone could have heard this and not been offended.’

As one of the country’s most popular radio talk show hosts, Imus is the centerpiece of a multimillion-dollar business that would collapse without him.

To get a sense of its size: Advertisers spent $11.3 million last year on his show at just one station, New York’s WFAN, according to Nielsen. That accounted for nearly 24% of all the station’s ad sales.

Sponsors paid MSNBC an additional $8.4 million last year for spots on Imus’ show, according to TNS Media Intelligence.”

Mike Lupica in the
New York Daily News,
April 11, 2007:

“Essence Carson talked about what Imus had said about her and her teammates, and about everything that has happened since.

‘It has stolen a moment of pure grace from us,’ she said.

The moment of pure grace was Essence Carson….”

From ESSENCE.com:

“Essence Communications Inc. (ECI) was founded in 1968. In October 2000, ECI signed an agreement with Time Inc., a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc., to form a joint venture known as Essence Communications Partners. ESSENCE was the majority owner of the venture. In March 2005, Time Inc. acquired the portion it did not already own. The company’s name changed back to Essence Communications Inc. The ECI corporate headquarters are in New York City, with offices in Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Detroit.

During the past 36 years, the company has grown into a vital business of diverse media properties and communications systems that include ESSENCE, its flagship magazine launched in 1970. Its success is linked to its unique relationship with the readers of ESSENCE magazine and the strong alliances it has forged with America’s leading corporations and financial institutions.”

x

Poets.org –

The Annual
Maundy Thursday
Dante’s Inferno Reading

“The reading occurs during the Maundy Thursday vigil, the very hours Dante intended the events in the epic poem to take place.”
 
Featured poets:

Rachel Hadas, Wyatt Prunty, Rachel Wetzsteon, Rika Lesser, David Yezzi, Annie Finch, Honor Moore, Lynn Emanuel, Paul Watsky, Kate Light, Phillis Levin, Michael Palma, Charles Martin

Thursday, April 5, 2007, 9 p.m. to midnight, The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue at 112th St., NYC, NY

The “Weblog” link is to a Log24 page containing the last five entries dated Sept. 22, 2002, or earlier.

The first impression one has on clicking “Weblog” is that the visitor was interested in George Steiner, C. S. Lewis, and a game of chess with God– appropriate topics for today, Palm Sunday.

This, however, is just the top entry of the five on the page.  A check of the referring link shows the visitor to have been interested in neither chess nor God, but rather in sombreros– an appropriate topic for today, April Fools’ Day.

“Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.”
— Ernest Hemingway,
   Death in the Afternoon

Today is both Palm Sunday and April Fools’ Day.

“There is never any ending to Paris….”
— Ernest Hemingway,
   A Moveable Feast