Log24

Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Death Working Backwards —
“A Man, a Plan, a Canal, Panama!”

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:07 am
 
"George R. Goethals was born at West Point, the son of Major General George W. Goethals, who was known as builder of the Panama Canal. In 1908, he graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and was assigned to develop fortifications for the Pacific side of the canal. In 1919, he retired from the United States Army and was employed by an engineering firm. He returned to active duty in 1940. During World War II he served as assistant chief of the Army Corps of Engineers in the District of Columbia. In 1946, he retired from the United States Army for a second time and became a professor of mathematics at the University of New Mexico. He retired from the university in 1958. He died at age 87 on Thursday, June 28, 1973 at the Veterans Administration Hospital in the Jamaica Plains section of Boston, Massachusetts. Interment was at the United States Academy with a military funeral. Survivors included one son, George W.L. Goethals of Watertown, Massachusetts."
— Source: Springfield Union, Springfield Massachusetts,
Saturday, June 30, 1973.
 

Obit from Harvard College –

Psychology Lecturer Goethals Dead at 74

Retired Senior Lecturer of Psychology Dr. George W. Goethals II '43 died in his home Monday after a brief illness. He was 74.

Goethals, a Watertown native, graduated from the College after serving in the army during World War II. He taught high school in Edgartown, Mass, and returned to Harvard to earn his masters and doctorate degrees in education, the Boston Globe reported yesterday.

Goethals taught at Sarah Lawrence College from 1952 to 1956 and joined the Harvard faculty, where he taught in the School of Education, the departments of Social Relations and Psychology and the Extension School from 1956 to 1992.

In the 1970s he became a lecturer on psychology and psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and principal psychologist at Cambridge Hospital. In 1992 he received the Petra Shattuck Teaching Award at the Extension School.

Goethals continued to teach at the Extension School until December, when he became sick and had to be admitted to the hospital.

An avid baseball player, he pitched for a semi-pro baseball team during his years as a graduate student, according to the Globe report.

Goethals was the author of "The Role of Schools in Mental Health" and "Experiencing Youth." His teaching and research focused on adolescents.

— The Harvard Crimson, February 3, 1995

Dr. Goethals led a Harvard Freshman Seminar at 8 Prescott St., Cambridge,
in the academic year 1960-1961.

Vide  "Prescott Street" in this journal.

Sunday, April 20, 2025

Death Working Backwards:
“The Seventh Seal” Meets “The Sixth Sense”

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:14 am

"All politics is local"

—  Legendary Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
Thomas “Tip” O'Neill (D-MA).

And theology?

At Russell, PA, an aerial view of Pine Grove Cemetery —

Note that the road running next to Pine Grove Cemetery —
Russell's Liberty St. — transforms just west of US Route 62
into Pennsylvania Route 957.

For fans of stories by Christian writer C. S. Lewis, who presented a theory
that over the first Easter weekend, Death started "working backwards,"
there is the fact that 957 backwards is 759.  That number has special
meaning in the theory of R. T. Curtis's "Miracle Octad Generator."

And then there is the Tolkien phrase "Into the West" . . . .

Monday, October 7, 2024

For Lucinella: “Working Backwards” . . .

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:51 pm

Continues.

Saturday, January 6, 2024

ResearchGate:  Working Backwards

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , , — m759 @ 8:48 pm

Glow with the Flow 

The above flashback was inspired by @marcelanow's  IG today —

Some context (click to enlarge) . . .

Saturday, July 29, 2023

Working Backwards

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 7:05 am

The title is from a story by C. S. Lewis.

Monday, January 16, 2023

“Working Backwards” … Continues

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 1:59 pm

See earlier instances of "working backwards" in this journal.

Alan Rickman as Metatron in "Dogma" —

Alan Rickman as Severus Snape at Hogwarts —

Defense Against the Dark Arts

Page three hundred and ninety-four —

See also today's previous post.

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Working Backwards: 13 in the 11th

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:37 am

IMAGE- The 13 symmetry axes of the cube

(Adapted from Encyclopaedia Britannica,
Eleventh Edition (1911), Crystallography .)

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Working Backwards

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:25 pm

"Warming to the question of what it means to read a poem backward…."

— Essayist in a New Yorker  weblog on July 11, 2013

“Death itself would start working backwards.”

— Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia , 1950

"I twisted my mind like a bright ribbon, folded it, 
and tied the crazy Christmas knots I love so well."
— Roger Zelazny, A Rose for Ecclesiastes , 1963

"All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."
— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets , 1942

See also some context for these quotations.

Friday, May 16, 2025

Wag the Dogma Continues:
Inception! On Yesterday’s Broadway Dies Natalis

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:42 am

The above image is from a Log24 post of August 22, 2024.

Related reading for Broadway theologians —

Death Working Backwards  (Hat Tip to C. S. Lewis)

The May 15 date above is from the previous post.

Sunday, January 7, 2024

“Who you gonna call?”

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , , — m759 @ 5:59 am

For the @marcelanow Instagram story itself, see
yesterday's Log24 post "Working Backwards."

Thursday, September 14, 2023

Body Saint

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:11 pm

The following image is in memory of a woman who reportedly
died at 70 on Friday, Sept. 8, 2023 —

Bruce Chatwin on Lisa Lyon, the woman who died —

“The photographer and his model have conspired
to tell a story of their overlapping obsessions.
Their glorification of the body is an act of will,
a defiance of nihilism and abstraction, a story of
the Modern Movement in reverse.”

See as well Working Backwards.

Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Harry Potter and the Crown of Fire

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 2:23 pm

Daniel Radcliffe in the recent film "The Lost City" —

301
00:15:51,476 –> 00:15:54,513
Um, some might call me
a collector.

302
00:15:54,617 –> 00:15:58,310
But there is one obsession
in particular

303
00:15:58,414 –> 00:16:00,519
that has held me captive.

304
00:16:01,693 –> 00:16:03,177
The Crown of Fire

From the Log24 post "Fish Babel" —

The final page, 759, of the Harry Potter saga —

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Working Backwards

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:25 PM Edit This

"Warming to the question of what it means to read a poem backward…."

— Essayist in a New Yorker  weblog on July 11, 2013

“Death itself would start working backwards.”

— Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia , 1950

"I twisted my mind like a bright ribbon, folded it, 
and tied the crazy Christmas knots I love so well."
— Roger Zelazny, A Rose for Ecclesiastes , 1963

"All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."
— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets , 1942

See also some context for these quotations.

Saturday, January 9, 2021

Lockscreen

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:01 am

Working backwards . . . Beach RocksDecember 1, 2020.

Thursday, January 7, 2021

The Primes of Miss Jean Valentine

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 5:24 pm

Valentine reportedly died on December 29, 2020.

Related dialogue from "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1996) —

– It's interesting how coupling appears in nature and mathematics.

– You were talking about pairs …

– Oh, the twin-prime conjecture. It explores pairs of prime numbers.
Those only divisible by themselves. Three-five. Five-seven.
Not seven-nine …

– Nine can be divided by three.

– That's right.  And … and so on.  It was discovered that pairs were
often separated by …

– One number in between.

– Exactly. Did you read my book?

– No, I'm sorry.

– That's okay. This is marvellous.

– A first date like a game show.

– I didn't mean to lecture.

– I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call it a date.

Twin-Prime Dates —

December 31  and December 29, 2020.

"Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still
which she did not know.  Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn
of time.  But if she could have looked a little further back, into the
stillness and the darkness before Time dawned…she would have known
that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed
in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start
working backwards."

– C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe , as quoted at
https://apologyanalogy.com/death-working-backwards/ .

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

St. Julia’s Day

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:23 pm

For mathematician Julia Robinson, who died on this date
in 1985, and her sister Constance Reid, who died on
October 14, 2010

A search suggested by the "cosmic dippiness" of
a 1998 science fiction novel and by the non-dippiness of
a much better novel with closely related themes from 1977—

(Click to enlarge.)

(The use of "recursive" here is of course rather poetic, not to be
construed as meaningful in the strictly mathematical sense.
See also the term's etymology, and Working Backwards.)

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Jaunt 701

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 9:57 pm

Pennsylvania Lottery today

Image-- PA lottery Oct. 9, 2010-- Midday 701, Evening 987

Context: See the past few days' posts and search for

"Death itself would start working backwards."

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