Log24

The "1961" Oscars ceremony shown above was for the films of 1961.
The ceremony itself was held on April 9, 1962.

For a different Tiffany, see Tuesday's Another Day.

The previous post, on a Joyce symposium in
Utrecht on June 15-20, 2014, suggests a review
of this  journal in June 2014.  From June 21
of that year —

“Without the possibility that
an origin can be lost, forgotten,
or alienated into what springs
forth from it, an origin could
not be an origin. The possibility
of inscription is thus a necessary
possibility, one that must always
be possible.”

— Page 157 of The Tain of the Mirror:
Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection ,
by Rodolphe Gasché, Harvard U. Press, 1986

Related art suggested by the above modal logic —

Illustrations from posts now tagged Ved Mehta in this  journal —

Epigraph to Fly and the Fly-Bottle: Encounters with British Intellectuals ,
by Ved Mehta , remarks first published in  The New Yorker  in 1961 and 1962 —

See as well the Wallace Stevens phrase “The Ruler of Reality.”

A Harvard student* attempts to summarize Nabokov’s aesthetics —

“Take ‘Pale Fire,’ his 1962 poem-as-novel
bursting with butterfly as theme:

‘I can do what only a true artist can do —
pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation …
see the web of the world,
and the warp and the weft of that web.’ “

“True artist” here refers to Kinbote, not Nabokov.

* Tessa K.J. Haining, Harvard Crimson  Contributing Opinion Writer.
Tessa K.J. Haining ’23 lives in Adams House. Her column appears on
alternate Fridays. December 11, 2020.

(to that of the previous post) —

Click the image for
      the source.

Related literature —

“There is  such a thing as  ▦  .”

— Saying adapted from a 1962 young-adult novel.

From a 1962 young-adult novel —

"There's something phoney in the whole setup, Meg thought.
There is definitely something rotten in the state of Camazotz."

Song adapted from a 1960 musical —

"In short, there's simply not
A more congenial spot
For happy-ever-aftering
Than here in Camazotz!"

"There is  such a thing as a desktop."

— Saying adapted from a 1962 young-adult novel.

"But, as the passage now presents no hindrance
     To the spirit unappeased and peregrine
     Between two worlds become much like each other…."

— T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Related obituary:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/obituaries/tom-cade-dead.html

Related date:

"as of Feb. 6, 2019" (from a post at 12 AM ET Feb. 7) —

"There is  such a thing as a four-dimensional finite affine space."
— Saying adapted from a 1962 young-adult novel by Madeleine L'Engle

See Harmonic Analysis in this journal.

See also Loop.

"Here we go loop de lie."

From the University of Notre Dame in an obituary dated June 17 —

Related material (update of 9:20 PM ET on June 19) —

For Greta Gerwig and Saoirse Ronan —

See also a Log24 post from the above Cube Theory date —
April 12, 2016 — Lyrics for a Cartoon Graveyard — as well as . . .

(A sequel to the previous post, Up to Date) 

"Dr. Sekler lectured around the world, but one trip proved life-changing.
In 1962, the year he married, Dr. Sekler made his first trip to Nepal.
'It was the way it had been for centuries — a beautiful valley filled with
happy, peaceful people. It seemed like Shangri-La,' he told the Harvard
Gazette  in 2004."

— Bryan Marquard in The Boston Globe  today

See also "Eight is a gate" in this  journal.

(A prequel to an Ursula K. Le Guin story
in Fantastic  magazine, September 1962)

Cover art by Lloyd Birmingham for "Plane Jane"

"From 1962 to 1969 Mr. Moore was Simon Templar . . . ."

— The New York Times  online today

A related post — "Intruders for Mira" (Sept. 28, 2015).

A search for recent activity by the Liesl Schillinger of
the previous post yields …

Talk amongst yourselves.

Midrash for elitists —

The novel 2666  by Roberto Bolaño (see Bolaño in this journal
and Adam Kirsch in the above) and …

Matt Helm in Donald Hamilton's 1962 novel The Silencers —

"I cleaned up a little, went downstairs, and, rather than
get the pickup out of hock, paid sixty cents to have a taxi
take me to the international bridge. Two cents let me walk
across the Rio Grande into Mexico. The river bed was
almost dry. The usual skinny dark kids were playing their
usual incomprehensible games around the pools below
the bridge. Stepping off the south end of the span, I was
in a foreign country. Mexicans will tell you defensively that
Juarez isn't Mexico-that no border town is-but it certainly
isn't the United States of America, even though Avenida
Juarez, the street just south of the bridge, does bear a
certain resemblance to Coney Island. I brushed off a
purveyor of dirty pictures and shills for a couple of dirty
movie houses." 

Midrash for populists —

The photo in the New York Times  obituary
above is from the 1966 film based, very
loosely, on Donald Hamilton's The Silencers.

"All on a Saturday night" — Johnny Thunder, 1962

From Log24 earlier —

More recently, an image from the above March 18 VUDU date —

"On a Saturday night" — Johnny Thunder, 1962

"Only a peculiar can enter a time loop." — Tim Burton film, 2016

Highly qualified —

From Models and Metaphors , by Max Black,
Cornell University Press, 1962 —

I do not recommend the work of Lewin, nor that of a later
science groupie, Keith Devlin. 

In September 2014, Devlin wrote an ignorant column about
a sort of bad mathematical joke based on a divergent infinite series.

He has now returned to the topic, this time writing more about
its proper mathematical background: analytic continuation .

Lewin is to Devlin as Lévi-Strauss is to Chomsky.
None of these four should be taken very seriously.

Max Black, however, should .

From "Night Moves," by Bob Seger —

And oh, the wonder
Felt the lightning
Yeah, and we waited on the thunder
Waited on the thunder

I woke last night to the sound of thunder
How far-off, I sat and wondered
Started humming a song from 1962
Ain't it funny* how the night moves?

See as well Johnny Thunder on Diamond Records in 1962 —

* Funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha.

"The record, released on the Diamond label,
became a big hit, rising to no. 4 on the
Billboard  Hot 100 in early 1963." — Wikipedia

For "the Trojan family" —

Related material on the late Solomon W. Golomb —

"While at JPL, Sol had also been teaching some classes
at the nearby universities: Caltech, USC and UCLA. In
the fall of 1962, following some changes at JPL—and
perhaps because he wanted to spend more time with
his young children— he decided to become a full-time
professor. He got offers from all three schools. He
wanted to go somewhere where he could 'make
a difference'. He was told that at Caltech 'no one has
any influence if they don’t at least have a Nobel Prize',
while at UCLA 'the UC bureaucracy is such that no one
ever has any ability to affect anything'. The result was
that—despite its much-inferior reputation at the time—
Sol chose USC. He went there in the spring of 1963 as
a Professor of Electrical Engineering—and ended up
staying for 53 years." — Stephen Wolfram, 5/25/16

See also Priority (Nov. 25) and "What's in a Name" (Dec. 1).

From last evening's online New York Times —

"Mr. Hamner moved to California in 1962
and got his first break when 'The Twilight Zone'
accepted two of his story ideas. His eight scripts
for the series included 'The Hunt,' about a man
who is dead but does not realize it until his hunting
dog prevents him from wandering into hell . . . ."

— William Grimes

Hamner reportedly died on Thursday, March 24.
See this journal on that date.

See a link referencing The Gutenberg Galaxy  (a Catholic's 1962 view of literacy)
in a Log24 post yesterday suggested by a New York Times  obituary.

A different obituary this evening in that newspaper describes a Jew's 1979 view
of literacy.  See "Elizabeth Eisenstein, Historian of Movable Type, Dies at 92."

Related material — McLuhan in Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent
of Change , Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Eisenstein reportedly died on January 31, 2016. Synchronologists may
consult some media-related material reposted here on that date —

Fittingly, the Times  concludes Eisenstein's obituary as follows —

"This article will be set in 8.7 point Imperial and printed on
one of several presses, including the Goss Colorliner."

For a perhaps more interesting printing press related to change,
see Despedida  in this journal.

CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES – OCTOBER 1962:
People watching President John F. Kennedy’s
TV announcement of Cuban blockade during the
missile crisis in a department store.  (Photo by
Ralph Crane/Life Magazine/The LIFE Picture
Collection/Getty Images) 

A Sunday opinion column from 2011,
"The Enduring Cult of Kennedy" —

"In this landscape, the death of J.F.K. looms up
like the Overlook Hotel." — Ross Douthat
on November 27, 2011

From this journal on that date —

The title of the previous post, "For Quantum Mystics,"
suggests a search in this journal for Quantum + Mystic.

That search in turn suggests, in particular, a review of
a post of October 16, 2007 — a discussion of the 
P.T. Barnum-like phrase "deep beauty" used to describe
a topic under discussion at Princeton by physicists.

Princeton, by the way, serves to illustrate the "gutter"
mentioned by Sir Laurence Olivier in a memorable
classroom scene from 1962. 

Hexagram 51:

"I woke last night to the sound of thunder,
How far off, I sat and wondered.
Started humming a song from 1962.
Ain't it funny how the night moves?"

An essay linked to here on the date of Kuhn’s
death discussed the film “Good Will Hunting”:

“You can be sure that when an experienced movie director
like Gus Van Sant selects an establishing shot for the lead
character, he does so with considerable care, on the advice
of an expert.”

Establishing shots —

1. From a post of January 29, 2014:

2. From a post of April 12, 2011:

Parting shot —

From another post of January 29, 2014:

Note Watson‘s title advice.

… Continues.

A post by Margaret Soltan this morning:

Links (in blue) from the above post:
Cane and Mondo Cane.

Bagger Vance — “Time for you to see the field.”

From Pictures for Kurosawa (Sept. 6, 2003) —

“As these flowing rivers that go towards the ocean,
when they have reached the ocean, sink into it,
their name and form are broken, and people speak of
the ocean only, exactly thus these sixteen parts
of the spectator that go towards the person (purusha),
when they have reached the person, sink into him,
their name and form are broken, and people speak of
the person only, and he becomes without parts and
immortal. On this there is this verse:

‘That person who is to be known, he in whom these parts
rest, like spokes in the nave of a wheel, you know him,
lest death should hurt you.’ “

— Prasna Upanishad

Related material — Heaven’s Gate  images from Xmas 2012:

“This could be heaven or this could be hell.” — Hotel California

Those who prefer mathematics to narrative may consult Root Circle.

"Give 'em hell." — Ben Bernanke at Princeton's Baccalaureate, 2013

Some background — Janet Leigh and the Museum of Modern Art

"The Varnedoe Debacle," by Hilton Kramer (Dec. 1991)

Hell… Hell. — Sinatra in The Manchuran Candidate

You say goodbye, I say …

A YouTube video uploaded on March 2, 2012—

This  journal on the date of the above video's uploading— March 2, 2012:

"…des carreaux mi-partis de deux couleurs par une ligne diagonale…."

See also Josefine Lyche in Vril Chick and Bowling in Diagon Alley.

  Source: Rudolf Koch, The Book of Signs

The American Mathematical Society
(AMS) yesterday:

Some related material:

• A 1990 AMS review of a book by another mathematician,
  Harmonic Analysis in Phase Space , that is closely
  related to Hörmander's research (and perhaps more
  accessible to the nonspecialist than his books),
• Mathematical Imagery (Log24, Jan. 19, 2012),
• The Eight-Pointed Star, and yesterday's
• Point.

See also posts on Damnation Morning and, from the
date of Hörmander's death,

• Will and Representation.

(Mythopoetic continued)

Voice of America  today—

Thousands of Norwegians Defy Confessed Killer Breivik in Song

"The demonstrators waved roses and flags
Thursday as they and Norwegian folk singer
Lillebjoern Nilsen sang an adaptation
of the children's song, 'My Rainbow Race,' 
which Breivik in court last week called
an example of Marxist brainwashing."

[See also PETE SEEGER AND LILLEBJØRN NILSEN.
Click on the image below for Seeger's original version.]

Liberia Reacts to Taylor Conviction With Mixed Emotions

"As the verdict was read out, a rainbow was seen
in the sky, encircling the sun.  For many Liberians,
superstition is a part of life.  The rainbow heralded
a new era, they said, beginning with the verdict of Taylor."

["You're not the only one… with mixed emotions."]

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Monday, April 2, 2012—

"I think there is in this country a war on religion.
 I think there is a desire to establish a religion
 in America known as secularism."

Nancy Haught of The Oregonian  on Leap Day, Feb. 29, 2012—

(See also this  journal on Leap Day.)

From New College: The Honors College of Florida—

See also, in this journal, "Greatest Show on Earth" and The Harvard Crimson—

Steve Buscemi last night on Saturday Night Live
describing Christmas tree ornaments with his mate Sheila—

"This one's a little computer."

"Beep Boop Beep"

"This one's a little pinecone. … Beep Boop Beep"

Meanwhile…

In related news…

"Her name drives me insane."

— Rosetta Stone, 1978 cover of "Sheila," Tommy Roe's 1962 classic

Click image for sketch.

A search on the word "innermost" in a PDF copy of a book
by Suzanne Gieser on Jung and Pauli yields no definite meaning
for the book's title, The Innermost Kernel  (Springer, 2005).

The author does, however, devote a section (pp. 36-41) to the
influence of Schopenhauer on Jung and Pauli, and that section at least
suggests that the historical  origin of her title is in Schopenhauer's
reformulation of Kant's "Ding an sich."

The Innermost Kernel , p. 37—

"… an expression of an underlying invisible world,
the one that forms the innermost essence of reality,
the thing-in-itself. This is the will, a blind existence
that forms an omnipresent entity beyond time, space
and individuality." *

* Arthur Schopenhauer, "Über die Vierfache Wurzel
  des Satzes vom zureichenden Grunde" (1813),
  Kleinere Schriften, SämtlicheWerke III 
  (Stuttgart, 1962), 805–806.

* See also Mann on Schopenhauer and an "innermost kernel."

COLLEGE OF THE DESERT
Minutes — Organization Meeting
11:00 a.m., Saturday, July 1, 1961—

15. Preparation of College Seal:

By unanimous consent preparation of a College
Seal to contain the following features was
authorized: A likeness of the Library building
set in a matrix of date palms, backed by
a mountain skyline and rising sun; before
the Library an open book, the Greek symbol
Alpha on one page and Omega on the other;
the Latin Lux et Veritas, College of the
Desert, and 1958 to be imprinted within or
around the periphery of the seal.

From the website http://geofhagopian.net/ of
Geoff Hagopian, Professor of Mathematics,
College of the Desert—

Note that this version of the seal contains
an Aleph  and Omega instead of Alpha and Omega.

From another Hagopian website, another seal.

Continued from Good Friday —

The New Yorker , in the above excerpt, says of David Deutsch that
"his books have titles of colossal confidence
('The Fabric of Reality,' 'The Beginning of Infinity')."

The Fabric of Reality — A post from Good Friday —

The Beginning of Infinity — Another Good Friday death—

Sidney Michaels, adapter of the 1962 play "Tchin-Tchin."

"At play's end they are Chaplinesque waifs living in the charmed circle
of innocents that includes saints, children, drunkards and madmen.
Subliminally, Tchin-Tchin is a Christian existential fable." — TIME

Martin Heidegger, Being and Time,  translated by
John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, Harper hardcover, 1962, p. 262—

"…the ultimate business of philosophy is to preserve
the force of the most elemental words…."

Heidegger was quoted, in a different translation, by Richard Rorty in 1998
in a review of Ein Meister aus Deutschland.

Related material: an August 18 death and this journal on that date—

"… it is impossible that there should be time if there is no soul,
  except that there could be that X which time is…."
  — Aristotle, Physics, IV.14, translated by Edward Hussey

See also Berlinerblau in this journal on August 10.

“There are two silences.
One when no word is spoken.
The other when perhaps a torrent
of language is being employed.”

— Harold Pinter, 1962

Stille Nacht…

Pinter died on December 24, 2008:

Heilige Nacht…

Also on Christmas Eve, 2008

(“24/12/08  3:23 pm”):

Click to enlarge.

“Treatment of Autistic Schizophrenic Children with LSD-25 and UML-491“–

“Autistic schizophrenic children present challenging and baffling problems in treatment…. Many of the children have been followed subsequently into later childhood, adolescence, and adulthood…. Meanwhile, a new group of young autistic children are always available for new treatment endeavors as the new modes become available.”*

In the above screenshot of New York Times obituaries on the date of Brewster Beach’s death, Tim Russert seems to be looking at the obituary of Air Force Academy chapel architect Walter Netsch.

This suggests another chapel, more closely related to my own experience, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Some background…

Walter Netsch in Oral History (pdf, 467 pp.):

“I also had a book that inspired me– this is 1947– called Communitas by Percival and Paul Goodman. Percival Goodman was the architect, and Paul Goodman was the writer and leftist. And this came out of the University of Chicago– part of the leftist bit of the University of Chicago….

I had sort of in the back of my mind, Communitas appeared from my subconscious of the new town out of town, and there were other people who knew of it….”

Log24, May 8, 2007:

The August 2007 issue of Notices of the American Mathematical Society contains tributes to the admirable personal qualities and mathematical work of the late Harvard professor George Mackey.  For my own tributes, see Log24 on March 17, 2006,  April 29, 2006, and March 10, 2007.  For an entry critical of Mackey’s reductionism– a philosophical, not mathematical, error– see Log24 on May 23, 2007 (“Devil in the Details”).

Here is another attack on reductionism, from a discussion of the work of another first-rate mathematician, the late Gian-Carlo Rota of MIT:

“Another theme developed by Rota is that of ‘Fundierung.’ He shows that throughout our experience we encounter things that exist only as founded upon other things: a checkmate is founded upon moving certain pieces of chess, which in turn are founded upon certain pieces of wood or plastic. An insult is founded upon certain words being spoken, an act of generosity is founded upon something’s being handed over. In perception, for example, the evidence that occurs to us goes beyond the physical impact on our sensory organs even though it is founded upon it; what we see is far more than meets the eye. Rota gives striking examples to bring out this relationship of founding, which he takes as a logical relationship, containing all the force of logical necessity. His point is strongly antireductionist. Reductionism is the inclination to see as ‘real’ only the foundation, the substrate of things (the piece of wood in chess, the physical exchange in a social phenomenon, and especially the brain as founding the mind) and to deny the true existence of that which is founded. Rota’s arguments against reductionism, along with his colorful examples, are a marvelous philosophical therapy for the debilitating illness of reductionism that so pervades our culture and our educational systems, leading us to deny things we all know to be true, such as the reality of choice, of intelligence, of emotive insight, and spiritual understanding. He shows that ontological reductionism and the prejudice for axiomatic systems are both escapes from reality, attempts to substitute something automatic, manageable, and packaged, something coercive, in place of the human situation, which we all acknowledge by the way we live, even as we deny it in our theories.”

— Robert Sokolowski, foreword to Rota’s Indiscrete Thoughts

Father Robert Sokolowski Fr. Robert Sokolowski, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1962, he is internationally recognized and honored for his work in philosophy, particularly phenomenology. In 1994, Catholic University sponsored a conference on his work and published several papers and other essays under the title, The Truthful and the Good, Essays In Honor of Robert Sokolowski. — Thomas Aquinas College newsletter

The tributes to Mackey are contained in the first of two feature articles in the August 2007 AMS Notices.  The second feature article is a review of a new book by Douglas Hofstadter.  For some remarks related to that article, see Thursday’s Log24 entry “Not Mathematics but Theology.”

Instance

Log24, Feb. 25, 2004:

From a review by Adam White Scoville of Iain Pears’s novel titled An Instance of the Fingerpost:

“Perhaps we are meant to see the story as a cubist retelling of the crucifixion, as Pilate, Barabbas, Caiaphas, and Mary Magdalene might have told it. If so, it is sublimely done so that the realization gradually and unexpectedly dawns upon the reader. The title, taken from Sir Francis Bacon, suggests that at certain times, ‘understanding stands suspended’ and in that moment of clarity (somewhat like Wordsworth’s ‘spots of time,’ I think), the answer will become apparent as if a fingerpost were pointing at the way.”

Another instance:

The film “Barabbas” (1962) shown on Turner Classic Movies at 8 PM Friday, Nov. 10.

Compare and contrast–

• Barabbas emerging from prison as if from Plato’s cave, and Barabbas’s vision of Christ in blinding sunlight: “Flung into the sunlight, he stands blinking at a young man in white robes; is it merely the unaccustomed light that dazzles his eyes, or does he really see a radiance streaming from the young man’s face?” —TIME Magazine, 1962
• 1 Peter 2 on Christ as the “living stone”
• The cover of the novel Stone 588 shown in Friday’s 11:20 PM entry

The film is based on the novel by Par Lagerkvist, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The Lagerkvist novel may be of more enduring interest than Stone 588, but, as Friday’s lottery numbers indicate, even lesser stories have their place.

for Isak Dinesen,
who died in 1962
on this date

 Meanwhile…

Click on pictures for details.

“… Max Black, the Cornell philosopher, and others have pointed out how ‘perhaps every science must start with metaphor and end with algebra, and perhaps without the metaphor there would never have been any algebra’ ….”

— Max Black, Models and Metaphors, Cornell U. Press, 1962, page 242, as quoted in Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, by Victor Witter Turner, Cornell U. Press, paperback, 1975, page 25

The Great Bartender
by Peter Viereck (1948)

Being absurd as well as beautiful,
Magic– like art– is hoax redeemed by awe.
(Not priest but clown,
     the shuddering sorcerer
Is more astounded than
     his rapt applauders:
“Then all those props and Easters
     of my stage
Came true?  But I was joking all the time!”)
Art, being bartender, is never drunk;
And magic that believes itself, must die.
My star was rocket of my unbelief,
Launched heavenward as
     all doubt’s longings are;
     It burst when, drunk with self-belief,
I tried to be its priest and shouted upward:
“Answers at last!  If you’ll but hint
     the answers
For which earth aches, that famous
     Whence and Whither;
Assuage our howling Why? with final fact.”

— As quoted in The Practical Cogitator,
   or The Thinker’s Anthology,
   Selected and Edited by
   Charles P. Curtis, Jr., and
   Ferris Greenslet,
   Third Edition, Revised and Enlarged,
   With a new Introduction by
   John H. Finley, Jr.,
   Houghton Mifflin Company,
   Boston, 1962

The dates of Viereck’s birth and death are according to this morning’s New York Times.

Dance

Yesterday’s AP “Thought for Today”–

“In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.” – J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist (1904-1967).

From Log24 on Dec. 17, 2002:

The Dancing Wu Li Masters,
by Gary Zukav, Harvard ’64:

“The Wu Li Masters know that physicists are doing more than ‘discovering the endless diversity of nature.’ They are dancing with Kali [or Durga], the Divine Mother of Hindu mythology.”

“Eastern religions have nothing to say about physics, but they have a great deal to say about human experience. In Hindu mythology, Kali, the Divine Mother, is the symbol for the infinite diversity of experience. Kali represents the entire physical plane. She is the drama, tragedy, humor, and sorrow of life. She is the brother, father, sister, mother, lover, and friend. She is the fiend, monster, beast, and brute. She is the sun and the ocean. She is the grass and the dew. She is our sense of accomplishment and our sense of doing worthwhile. Our thrill of discovery is a pendant on her bracelet. Our gratification is a spot of color on her cheek. Our sense of importance is the bell on her toe.

This full and seductive, terrible and wonderful earth mother always has something to offer. Hindus know the impossibility of seducing her or conquering her and the futility of loving her or hating her; so they do the only thing that they can do. They simply honor her.”

How could I dance with another….?

— John Lennon and Paul McCartney, 1962-1963  

For more background, see the Log24.net entry of 3 AM Friday, the date of Meader’s death. See also a Boston Globe obituary that quotes John F. Kennedy: “Vaughn Meader was busy tonight, so I came myself.”

Note that Rousmaniere was John F. Kennedy’s roommate at Harvard.

Note, too, that Kennedy’s daughter Caroline attended Sister Salisbury’s school.

A memorial Mass for Sister Salisbury will be held on Monday, November 22, 2004, at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, 980 Park Avenue, at 5:30 pm.  

What does all this Camelot portend?   I do not know, but the following quote seems appropriate.

“Flores, flores para los muertos.”

— Tennessee Williams, 1947

Counting Crows
on the Feast of St. Luke

"In the fullness of time,
educated people will believe
there is no soul
independent of the body,
and hence no life after death."

— Francis Crick, who was awarded
a Nobel Prize on this date in 1962

"She went to the men on the ground and looked at them and then she found Inman apart from them. She sat and held him in her lap. He tried to talk, but she hushed him. He drifted in and out and dreamed a bright dream of a home. It had a coldwater spring rising out of a rock, black dirt fields, old trees. In his dream, the year seemed to be happening all at one time, all the seasons blending together.  Apple trees hanging heavy with fruit but yet unaccountably blossoming, ice rimming the spring, okra plants blooming yellow and maroon, maple leaves red as October, corn crops tasseling, a stuffed chair pulled up to the glowing parlor hearth, pumpkins shining in the fields, laurels blooming on the hillsides, ditch banks full of orange jewelweed, white blossoms on dogwood, purple on redbud.  Everything coming around at once.  And there were white oaks, and a great number of crows, or at least the spirits of crows, dancing and singing in the upper limbs.  There was something he wanted to say."

— Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain

"Fullness… Multitude."
 

Today in History:
The Comeback Kid

(Courtesy of Dr. Mac’s Cultural Calendar)

On this date:

In 1962, having lost the California governor’s race, Richard Nixon said to the press, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around any more.”

In 1972, Republican incumbent President Richard Nixon was re-elected, defeating Democratic candidate George McGovern, 520 electoral votes to 17.

From the archives of singer/songwriter Shannon Campbell (“voice of an angel, mouth of a truckdriver”)–

Feb. 6, 2002: The Essential Matrix

NEO: (whines) Who am I?

TRINITY: You are The One.

EVERYONE ELSE: Eh, he might be The One.

TRINITY: He is The One.

NEO: I am not The One.

TRINITY: You are The One.

THE ORACLE: You are not The One, but you can’t tell anybody.

NEO: (whines) But I wanted to be The One. I want to go home….

TRINITY: Fuck. He’s not The One.

EVERYONE ELSE: Told you so.

MORPHEUS: Sure wish someone was The One. I’m in deep shit.