Log24

Image from Matrix.Bingo —

Commentary added on June 8, 2022 —

"First we'll show and tell
'Till I reach your pony tail"

— Song lyric

Another image from Matrix.Bingo —

From a more recent Sandra Bullock film —

The times are still a-changin'.

(Remark adapted from a webpage of Halloween 2020.)

"The UK will host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference
of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow on 31 Oct. – 12 Nov. 2021."

UK mathematician Peter J. Cameron today —

"If I could send a message to the world leaders
who will soon assemble…."

Cameron quotes a number of phrases from Bob Dylan's 1963 song
"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall."

A line from the song that I  particularly like:

"I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it."

A more popular thoroughfare: The Giant's Causeway.

“But perhaps its most iconic reinvention came with the longstanding
Marlboro Man campaign, which ran from 1963 to 1971. In an article
by Denver Post journalist Jim Carrier, who spent six months traveling
across the American West to meet former Marlboro Men, we’re told
that the campaign began in late 1954, when ad exec Leo Burnett asked
his top creatives, ‘What is the most masculine image in the U.S. today?’

According to Carrier, ‘Philip Morris, the fourth-largest American tobacco
company, wanted to create a filter cigarette to deal with the rising problem
of smoker’s cough and lung disease. But they had to overcome the early
image of filters as being for sissies.'”

Related story from The New York Times  on Monday, March 1  —

Related flashback from this  journal on Sunday, February 28 —

In memory of Stephen Schwartz, a member of
the Harvard College class of 1963 —

Synchronology check —

From "Point," a Log24 post on St. Andrew's Day 2012 —

"….mirando il punto  
a cui tutti li tempi son presenti"

— Dante, Paradiso , XVII, 17-18

 For instance…

Related material —

In memory of George F. Simmons, a mathematician
who reportedly died Aug. 6 at the age of 94  —

"It seems to me that a worthwhile distinction can be made
between two types of pure mathematics.  The first …
centers attention on particular functions and theorems
which are rich in meaning and history…. The second is
concerned primarily with form and structure."

— George F. Simmons, Introduction to Topology and
     Modern Analysis (1963)

" . . . Only by the form, the structure, 
Can words or music reach
The stillness . . . ."

— Adapted from T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets 
     by replacing "pattern" with "structure."

Two posts related to Eliot's theological interests:

Form:  Jan. 10, 2012.
Structure:  June 6, 2016.

Graeme McMillan in The Hollywood Reporter  Saturday —

"The Quantum Realm is a place where time and space
work differently, and has all sorts of potential to help
keep the MCU fresh for its second decade of films. . . .

So where did it all come from?

What is known to movie audiences as the Quantum Realm
debuted in 1963’s Fantastic Four  No. 16, in a story called
'The Micro-World of Doctor Doom!' "

Related art —

A Ghost Ship —

Related tales for the Church of Synchronology —
See excerpts from an RSS feed this evening.

Earlier related material — Peregrine in this journal.

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

Then …

And now.

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 The Cincinnati Kid , a 1963 novel
by Richard Jessup —

"Funeral services will be held Sunday at 2 p.m. 
at Weil Funeral Home at 8350 Cornell Road….
Burial will follow the funeral service at the
United Jewish Cemetery in Walnut Hills."

"There'll be time enough for counting
when the dealing's done." — Kenny Rogers

"Have you ever thought about
 the properties of numbers?"

 — "The Maiden" in Shaw's
 Back to Methuselah , quoted in
 the Fritz Leiber Changewar  story
“No Great Magic” (1963), Part V

… Professionally, at least …

Click image to enlarge.

See also the previous post, Lechner's End.

For a more up-to-date look at harmonic analysis
and switching functions (i.e., Boolean functions),
see Ryan O'Donnell, Analysis of Boolean Functions ,
Cambridge U. Press, 2014.  Page 40 gives an
informative overview of the history of this field.

“Bit by bit, putting it together.
Piece by piece, working out the vision night and day.
All it takes is time and perseverance
With a little luck along the way.”
— Stephen Sondheim

See also, in this journal,  528,  1963,  522, and  3273.

"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

See also some context for these quotations.

Google search result at 1 PM ET April 24, 2013:

New York Stage and Film 2013 Musicals – EPA – Playbill
www.playbill.com/jobs/find/job_detail/51922.html
14 hours ago – BRIGHT STAR
Casting: Howie Cherpakov
Music by Edie Brickell and Steve Martin
Lyrics by Edie Brickell Book by Steve Martin…

The musical is set in North Carolina.

From Howie Cherpakov:

From North Carolina:

Archibald Henderson monument, Chestnut Hill Cemetery, Salisbury, NC

Henderson died in 1963 on the Feast of St. Nicholas.
Related material: Santa vs. the Obelisk.

(Continued from Seize the Dia,  April 6)

Two chess games by Fischer, against two brothers—

1956: "In this game, Fischer (playing Black) demonstrates
noteworthy innovation and improvisation." — Wikipedia

1963: "Fischer [playing Black] had engineered a brilliantly
disguised trap for him and … he had fallen into it." — NY Times

See also this evening's Times  obituaries and The Unfolding.

Some context:  The Crosswicks Curse.

John Berryman in The New York Review of Books :

FEBRUARY 1, 1963 • VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1

"Now he has become, abrupt, an industry.
Professional-Friends-Of-Robert-Frost all over
open their mouths
while the quirky medium of so many truths
is quiet. Let’s all be quiet. Let’s listen:
while he begins to talk with Horace."

In memory of two figures from tonight's NY Times  obituaries index
(not  Nora Ephron and Anthony J. Wiener)—

Tower Envy

Erin Burnett and Jenga blocks yesterday

Related material—

The Bible Puzzle Book

and the monumental treatise
by Leonard Shlain

The Alphabet Versus
the Goddess: The Conflict
Between Word and Image.

A song for Bridget and Nina (see midnight's post).

A film director's obituary in today's New York Times—

"Mr. Donner broke through as a director in 1963 with a low-budget black-and-white film of Harold Pinter’s play 'The Caretaker,' with Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence and Robert Shaw. Since he couldn’t find traditional backing for the film, a group of well-wishers that included Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Peter Sellers and Noël Coward financed it."

   A lower-budget version:

All work and no play 

makes Jack a dull boy.

See also "Patrick Blackburn, meet Gideon Summerfield" in Building a Mystery.

or, Deja Vu All Over Again

Top two obituaries in this morning's NY Times list–

Simons reportedly died on April 5,
Aubrey on April 6.

This journal on those dates–

April 5 —

April 6 —

"Concept (scholastics' verbum mentis)– theological analogy of Son's procession as Verbum Patris, 111-12" –Index to Joyce and Aquinas, by William T. Noon, Society of Jesus, Yale University Press 1957, second printing 1963, page 162

"Back in 1958… [four] Air Force pilots were Team Daedalus, the best of the best." –Summary of the film "Space Cowboys"

"Man is nothing if not labyrinthine." –The Vicar in Trevanian's The Loo Sanction

The above text on Joyce’s theory of epiphanies:

“It emphasizes the radiance, the effulgence, of the thing itself revealed in a special moment, an unmoving moment, of time. The moment, as in the macrocosmic lyric of Finnegans Wake, may involve all other moments, but it still remains essentially static, and though it may have all time for its subject matter it is essentially timeless.”

— Page 17 of Stephen Hero, by James Joyce, Theodore Spencer, John J. Slocum, and Herbert Cahoon, Edition: 16, New Directions Publishing, 1963

Related epiphanies —

Detail from
the above text:

Cover of
a paperback novel
well worth reading:

Related material:

“Joyce knew no Greek.”
— Statement by the prototype
of Buck Mulligan in Ulysses,
Oliver St. John Gogarty,
quoted in the above
New Directions Stephen Hero

“Chrysostomos.”
— Statement in Ulysses
by the prototype
of Stephen Dedalus,
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce

See also the link to
Mardi Gras, 2008,
in yesterday’s entry,
with its text from
the opening of Ulysses:

“He faced about and
blessed gravely thrice
the tower,
the surrounding country
 and the awaking mountains.”

Some context:

(Click on images for details.)

and

“In the process of absorbing
the rules of the institutions
we inhabit, we become
who we are.”

— David Brooks, Jewish columnist,
in today’s New York Times

The Prisoner,
Episode One, 1967:
“I… I meant a larger map.”

Kindred Spirit

On the late film director Robert Mulligan, who died early Saturday [Dec. 20, 2008] at 83:

Mulligan received a best director Oscar nomination in 1963 for “[To Kill a] Mockingbird”….

While some debated whether he had a discernible personal vision in his films, Mulligan was known for his casting and direction of children, including “[Up the Down] Staircase,” where he personally interviewed more than 500 New York high school students.

Sensing a kindred spirit, Francois Truffaut was a vocal champion, particularly cognizant of what he perceived as undue criticism of Mulligan’s work for lacking a particular “style.” Mulligan himself was dismissive of critics/cineaste talk: “I don’t know anything about ‘the Mulligan style,’ ” he told the Village Voice in 1978. “If you can find it, well, that’s your job.”

— Duane Byrge, The Hollywood Reporter

Thanks to desconvencida for a trailer of “The Man in the Moon” (1991), Reese Witherspoon’s first film and Mulligan’s last.

Mulligan also directed Natalie Wood in a personal favorite of mine, “Love with the Proper Stranger.”

Aesthetics for Jesuits,
continued from
St. Ignatius Loyola's Day —

"Highly instructive and readable"

— Description of Dorothy Sayers's The Mind of the Maker on page 106 of Joyce and Aquinas, Yale University Press paperback, 1963, by William T. Noon, Society of Jesus

Related material:

• Yesterday's "The Third Person,"

• The Left Hand of God:
  A Biography of the Holy Spirit,

• Holy the Firm.

Prequel on
Saint Cecilia’s Day

“Death itself would start
working backward.”

— Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia

Celebrity Obits, Nov. 22, 2005 —

Intelligence and
Counterintelligence
(continued):

See also the previous entry, and this follow-up:

“Shattuck’s death on Thursday… was reported by his nephew, John Shattuck, head of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, The Boston Globe reported Saturday.” – Boston.com

Related material:

“The White Witch rules Narnia,
and has brought to it
the Hundred Years of Winter.”
— The Narnia Academy

and the foundation of the
David Morrell Counterintelligence Library:

Shemp

Wikipedia on the tesseract:

Robert A. Heinlein in Glory Road:

Johnny Cash: “And behold, a white horse.”

On The Last Battle, a book in the Narnia series by C. S. Lewis:

Lewis said in “The Weight of Glory”—
 

On enchantments that need to be broken:

See the description of the Eater of Souls in Glory Road and of Scientism in

• Mathematics and Narrative,

• The Rhetoric of Scientism,

• and the C. S. Lewis classic,
  That Hideous Strength.

Barrington Moore Jr. in 1978 On Moral Outrage:

“People’s organizations, loudspeakers, newspapers, the secret police, and the courts all swing into action and the campaign is launched. A reasonably intelligent person, particularly the educated product of Chinese civilization, which for centuries has stressed the nuances of moral indignation in a setting of intrigue and bureaucratic protocol, will know at once just how to adjust facial expressions and tones of voice in showing the correct degree of indignation for each degree on the official set of priorities that ranks all possible varieties of the execrable behavior of the enemies of the people. A poor peasant or worker cannot be expected to do as well.

Worse still, a peasant or a worker may have trouble understanding why this year’s enemies of the people include some of last year’s heroes, and why it is necessary to have another exhausting campaign so soon if the last one was as successful as everybody said it was. But since socialism is a workers’ and peasants’ state that belongs to the people, there are lots of people to explain such matters to workers and peasants, and indeed to anybody else who cares to listen. Furthermore just about everybody must care to listen. Woe to the person who stubbornly refuses to listen to the right noises or to try to make the right noises under socialism, since a socialist state is very efficient in its allocation of human as well as material resources.”

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  

Reuters – "Joe Grant, a legendary Disney artist who designed the Queen/Witch in 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,' died of a heart attack while doing what he loved most, drawing, the Walt Disney Co. said Monday.

Grant, 96, died at his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale last Friday while sitting at his drawing board."
 

— Opening sentence of
Martha Cooley's The Archivist

From Log24 last Friday,
a Greek cross:

Click on picture for details.
 
And from Sunday, May 1
(Orthodox Easter):

Rosalind Krauss,

Columbia University's
Meyer Schapiro Professor
of Modern Art and Theory:

"There is no painter in the West
who can be unaware of
the symbolic power of
the cruciform shape¹
and the Pandora's box

of spiritual reference²
that is opened
once one uses it."

April 1 at Noon

“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, C12, N.Y. Times, 5/20/96

From Nov. 24, 2002:

Searched the web for “Joyce and Aquinas” “William T. Noon“.  Results 1-5 of about 15:

Dogma
… Dogma, theological” — entry in the index (paper, not marble) to Joyce and Aquinas, by William T. Noon, SJ, Yale U. Press 1957, 2nd printing 1963, page 162. …
m759.freeservers.com/2001-03-20-dogma.html – 9k 

The Matthias Defense
… Contemplatio: aesthetic joy of, 54-5″ — index to Joyce and Aquinas, by William T. Noon, SJ, Yale University Press, second printing, 1963, page 162. …
m759.freeservers.com/2001-03-22-matthias.html – 6k 

Wag the Dogma
… One economy would be to teach the trivium using only one book — Joyce and Aquinas, by William T. Noon (Yale, 1957), which ties together philology, logic, and …
m759.freeservers.com/2001-04-06-wag.html – 6k 

Shining Forth
… Please go away, Paz begged silently…. “De veras! It’s so romantic!”. — Let Noon Be Fair William T. Noon, SJ, Chapter 4 of Joyce and Aquinas, Yale University …
m759.freeservers.com/2001-03-15-shining.html – 10k 

Midsummer Eve’s Dream
… notions… The quidditas or essence of an angel is the same as its form. (See William T. Noon, SJ, Joyce and Aquinas, Yale, 1957). …
m759.freeservers.com/1995-06-23-midsummer.html – 12k

See also Monday’s entry.

Show Business
according to Fritz Leiber

(Leiber's "Changewar" is my
favorite mythology.)

From the Changewar story
"No Great Magic" (1963) Part V:

Even little things are
turning out to be great things
and becoming intensely interesting.
Have you ever thought about
the properties of numbers?
— The Maiden

"I've had this idea– it's just a sort of fancy, remember– that if you wanted to time-travel and, well, do things, you could hardly pick a more practical machine than a dressing-room and a sort of stage and half-theater attached, with actors to man it…."

For the remainder of this section
of Leiber's story, see

Show Business.

Related material:
The previous entry,
The Eight, and
Now We See Wherein
Lies the Pleasure.

Symmetry and Change
in the Dreamtime

Notes from the Journal
of Steven H. Cullinane

Summary:

Aug 31 2004  07:31:01 PM	Early Evening, Shining Star
Sep 01 2004 09:00:35 AM	Words and Images
Sep 01 2004 12:07:28 PM	Whale Rider
Sep 02 2004 11:11:42 AM	Heaven and Earth
Sep 02 2004 07:00:23 PM	Whale Road
Sep 03 2004 12:00:54 AM	Cinderella’s Slipper
Sep 03 2004 10:01:56 AM	Another September Morn
Sep 03 2004 12:00:25 PM	Noon
Sep 03 2004 01:13:49 PM	De Nada
Sep 03 2004 03:17:13 PM	Ite, Missa Est

Symmetry and Change, Part 1…

Early Evening,
Shining Star

7:31:01 PM ET

Hexagram 01
The Creative:

The Image

The movement of heaven
is full of power.

Click on picture
for details.

The Clare Lawler Prize
for Literature goes to…

Wednesday, September 1, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 2…

Words and Images

9:00:35 AM ET

Hexagram 35
Progress:

The Image

The sun rises over the earth.

For
James Whale
and
William French Anderson —

Words
In the Spirit of
Dave Barry’s Book of Bad Songs:

Stay for just a while…
Stay, and let me look at you.
It’s been so long, I hardly knew you.
Standing in the door…
Stay with me a while.
I only want to talk to you.
We’ve traveled halfway ’round the world
To find ourselves again.

Look at what you’ve done…
Why, you’ve become a grown-up girl…

— Neil Diamond

Images
In the Spirit of
September Morn:

The Last Day of Summer:
Photographs by Jock Sturges

“In 1990, the FBI entered Sturges’s studio and seized his work, claiming violation of child pornography laws.”

Related material:

Bill’s Diamond Theory

and

Log24 entries of
Aug. 15, 2004.

Those interested in the political implications of Diamond’s songs may enjoy Neil Performs at Kerry Fundraiser.

I personally enjoyed this site’s description of Billy Crystal’s remarks, which included “a joke about former President Clinton’s forthcoming children’s book — ‘It’s called The Little Engine That Could Because It Could.'”

“Puff, puff, woo, woo, off we go!” 

Symmetry and Change, Part 3…

Whale Rider

12:07:28 PM

Hexagram 28
Preponderance of
the Great:

The Image

The lake rises
above the trees.

Cullinane College News:

“Congratulations to Clare Lawler, who participated very successfully in the recently held Secondary Schools Judo Championships in Wellington.”

For an explanation of this entry’s title, see the previous two entries and

Oxford Word
(Log24, July 10, 2004) 

Thursday, September 2, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 4…

Heaven and Earth

11:11:42 AM ET

Hexagram 42
Increase:

The Image

Wind and thunder:
the image of Increase.

“This time resembles that of
the marriage of heaven and earth”

“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
James Myers Thompson

“The Old Man’s still an artist
with a Thompson.”
— Terry in “Miller’s Crossing”

For some of “the music which
each person had inside,”
click on the picture
with the Thompson.

It may be that Kylie is,
in her own way, an artist…
with a 357:

(Hits counter at
The Quality of Diamond
as of 11:05 AM Sept. 2, 2004)

For more on
“the marriage of heaven and earth,”
see
Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star. 

Thursday, September 2, 2004

Symmetry and Change, Part 5…

Whale Road

7:00:23 PM

Hexagram 23
Splitting Apart:

The Image

The mountain rests
on the earth.

“… the plot is different but the monsters, names, and manner of speaking will ring a bell.”

— Frank Pinto, Jr., review of Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf 

Other recommended reading, found during a search for the implications of today’s previous entry, “Hexagram 42”:

Water Wings.

This excellent meditation
on symmetry and change
comes from a site whose
home page
has the following image:

Friday, September 3, 2004

 Symmetry and Change, Part 6…

Cinderella’s Slipper

12:00:54 AM ET

Hexagram 54
The Marrying Maiden:

The Image

Friday, September 3, 2004  

Symmetry and Change, Part 4…

Heaven and Earth

11:11:42 AM ET

Hexagram 42
Increase:

The Image

Wind and thunder:
the image of Increase.

“This time resembles that of
the marriage of heaven and earth”

Feel lucky?
Well, do you?

  This entry was inspired by the following…
1.  A British blogger’s comment today.  This man, feeling like a miserable failure himself, was cheered up by the following practical joke: “If really fed up you could try putting in, miserable failure, (no quote marks) into Google and pressing the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button.”

2. The page, excerpts from which are shown  above, that you get if you put lucky (no quote marks) into Google and press the “I’m feeling lucky” button.

3. My own entries of May 31 on Language Games and of June 1 on language and history,  Seize the Day and One Brief  Shining Moment.

4.  The related June 1 entry of Loren Webster, Carpe Diem, on the Marilyn Monroe rose.  Images from Carpe and Shining are combined below:

5.  The fact that the “day” to be seized in Language Games is numbered 22, and that on day 22 of November 1963,  the  following died:

C. S. Lewis
John F. Kennedy
  Aldous Huxley.

6. The fact that November 22 is the feast of  Cecilia, patron saint of music.

7. Yesterday’s entry about the alignment of stars, combined with the alignment of Venus with Apollo (i. e., the sun) scheduled for June 8.

All of the above suggest the following readings from unholy scripture:

A.  The “long twilight struggle” speech of JFK

B.  “The Platters were singing ‘Each day I pray for evening just to be with you,’ and then it started to happen.  The pump turns on in ecstasy.  I closed my eyes, I held her with my eyes closed and went into her that way, that way you do, shaking all over, hearing the heel of my shoe drumming against the driver’s-side door in a spastic tattoo, thinking that I could do this even if I was dying, even if I was dying, even if I was dying; thinking also that it was information.  The pump turns on in ecstasy, the cards fall where they fall, the world never misses a beat, the queen hides, the queen is found, and it was all information.”

— Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis, August 2000 Pocket Books paperback, page 437

C.  “I will show you, he thought, the war for us to die in, lady.  Sully your kind suffering child’s eyes with it.  Live burials beside slow rivers.  A pile of ears for a pile of arms.  The crisps of North Vietnamese drivers chained to their burned trucks…. Why, he wondered, is she smiling at me?”

— Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise,  Knopf hardcover, 1981, page 299

A Contribution to Trudeau’s
“Story Theory of Truth” —

Epic of the Chosen People:

After Forty Years
in the Wilderness,

The Winners Are…

Dallas, 1963:

Sam the Sham
“started his music career
in Dallas in the early sixties”
— The Pharaohs Discography

Leesville, La., 2003:

Forty years later,
Leesville to honor
“Wooly Bully” singer

Poetic Justice:
The Peacock Throne

Yesterday was the death day of two proponents of Empire: George III (in 1820) and Robert Frost (in 1963).  Lord Byron argued that the King slipped through heaven's gate unobserved while a friend distracted St. Peter with bad poetry.  We may imagine, on this dark night of the soul, Frost performing a similar service.

Though poets of the traditional sort may still perform such services in Heaven, here on earth they have been superseded by writers of song lyrics.  An example, Roddy Frame (formerly of the group "Aztec Camera"), was born on yesterday's date in 1964.  A Frame lyric:

Transformed by some strange alchemy,*
You stand apart and point to me
And point to something I can't see….

— Back Door to Heaven         

Namely:

    The Back Door to Heaven    

For poetic purposes, we may think of surreptitious entry into Heaven as being conveniently accomplished through a portal like the above back door, which is that of a small hotel in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

This is not your average Motel 6 back door.  As a former New York Times correspondent has written,

"Over the years, the guest list has drawn the likes of Prince Philip and the Shah of Iran, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. But informality still reigns."

This small hotel (or its heavenly equivalent), whose gardens are inhabited by various exotic birds, including peacocks, may still be haunted by the late Shah, who apparently styled himself "King of Kings and Emperor of the Peacock Throne."  Of course, the ghost of the King of Kings, after entering the garden of Paradise, may not be able to resume his former human shape.  He might still, however, be among those greeted by his fellow Emperor, George III, with the famous words

"My Lords and Peacocks…"

*For more on alchemy and Cuernavaca, see
  my journal note "The Black Queen."

Inaugural Address for Cullinane College (undelivered):

The Prisoner

Cullinane College was scheduled to open its doors officially on January 29, 2003.  The following might have been an appropriate inaugural address.

From The Prisoner: Comments
 on the Final Episode, “Fall Out”:

“When the President asks for a vote, he says: ‘All in favor.’ But he never asks for those opposed. (Though it appears that none will be opposed — and though he says its a democratic assembly, it is hardly that. The President even says that the society is in a ‘democratic crisis,’ though without democracy present, it’s just a sham.)

#48/Young Man sings ‘Dry Bones,’, which is his rebellion (notice its chaotic effect on ‘society’). But then the song gets taken over, ‘polished,’ and sung by a voice-over (presumably set up by #1). Does this mean that society is stealing the thunder (i.e. the creative energy) of youth, and cheapening it, or does it mean that youth is just rebelling in the same way that their fathers did (with equal ineffectiveness)? Perhaps it is simply a comment on the ease with which society can deal with the real rebellion of the 1960’s, which purported to be led by musicians; one that even the Beatles said was impossible in ‘Revolution.'”

President: Guilty! Read the Charge!

#48 is guilty, of something, and then the society pins something on him.”

The Other Side of the Coin

Excerpt from the poem that Robert Frost (who died on this date in 1963) meant to read at the 1961 inauguration of John F. Kennedy:

It makes the prophet in us all presage
The glory of a next Augustan age
Of a power leading from its strength and pride,
Of young ambition eager to be tried,
Firm in our free beliefs without dismay,
In any game the nations want to play.
A golden age of poetry and power
Of which this noonday’s the beginning hour.

I greatly prefer Robinson Jeffers’s “Shine, Perishing Republic“:

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,
    heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, 
    and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember….

See also the thoughts on Republic vs. Empire in the work of Alec Guinness (as Marcus Aurelius and as Obi-Wan Kenobi).

Durga

Today's site music* is in honor of a memorable date.   *© 1963 Northern Songs. Quiet may be restored by using the midi control box at the top right of this page.  Please let me know if your browser is not showing this control box.

Veronica

From a June/July 1997
Hadassah Magazine article:

"Plato is obviously Jewish."

— Rebecca Goldstein

Readings on the Dark Lady  

From a July 27, 1997
New York Times article
by Holland Cotter:

"The single most important and sustained model for Khmer culture was India, from which Cambodia inherited two religions, Buddhism and Hinduism, and an immensely sophisticated art. This influence announces itself early in this exhibition in a spectacular seventh-century figure of the Hindu goddess Durga, whose hip-slung pose and voluptuous torso, as plush and taut as ripe fruit, combine the naturalism and idealism of the very finest Indian work."

From 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  

In honor of
William F. Buckley’s birthday

Results of a Google search –

Searched the web for “Joyce and Aquinas” “William T. Noon“.  Results 1-5 of about 15:

Dogma
… Dogma, theological” — entry in the index (paper, not marble) to Joyce and Aquinas,
by William T. Noon, SJ, Yale U. Press 1957, 2nd printing 1963, page 162. …
m759.freeservers.com/2001-03-20-dogma.html – 9k – Nov. 23, 2002 – Cached – Similar pages

The Matthias Defense
… Contemplatio: aesthetic joy of, 54-5″ — index to Joyce and Aquinas, by William
T. Noon, SJ, Yale University Press, second printing, 1963, page 162. …
m759.freeservers.com/2001-03-22-matthias.html – 6k – Nov. 23, 2002 – Cached – Similar pages

Wag the Dogma
… One economy would be to teach the trivium using only one book — Joyce and Aquinas,
by William T. Noon (Yale, 1957), which ties together philology, logic, and …
m759.freeservers.com/2001-04-06-wag.html – 6k – Nov. 23, 2002 – Cached – Similar pages

Shining Forth
… Please go away, Paz begged silently…. “De veras! It’s so romantic!”. — Let Noon
Be Fair William T. Noon, SJ, Chapter 4 of Joyce and Aquinas, Yale University …
m759.freeservers.com/2001-03-15-shining.html – 10k – Nov. 23, 2002 – Cached – Similar pages

Midsummer Eve’s Dream
… notions… The quidditas or essence of an angel is the same as its
form. (See William T. Noon, SJ, Joyce and Aquinas, Yale, 1957). …
m759.freeservers.com/1995-06-23-midsummer.html – 12k – Nov. 23, 2002 – Cached – Similar pages

Trinity

On this date in 1963…

1. Father:  C. S. Lewis (The Abolition of Man), 
2. Son:  John F. Kennedy (“Grace under Pressure” — displayed, not written), and 
3. Holy Spirit:  Aldous Huxley (The Perennial Philosophy)

all died.

On the bright side:

On this date, Tarzan (John Clayton III, the future Lord Greystoke) was born and Ravel’s “Bolero” was first performed.

Today's birthdays: Mike Nichols and Sally Field.

From A Beautiful Mind, by Sylvia Nasar:

Prologue

Where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
— WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

John Forbes Nash, Jr. — mathematical genius, inventor of a theory of rational behavior, visionary of the thinking machine — had been sitting with his visitor, also a mathematician, for nearly half an hour. It was late on a weekday afternoon in the spring of 1959, and, though it was only May, uncomfortably warm. Nash was slumped in an armchair in one corner of the hospital lounge, carelessly dressed in a nylon shirt that hung limply over his unbelted trousers. His powerful frame was slack as a rag doll's, his finely molded features expressionless. He had been staring dully at a spot immediately in front of the left foot of Harvard professor George Mackey, hardly moving except to brush his long dark hair away from his forehead in a fitful, repetitive motion. His visitor sat upright, oppressed by the silence, acutely conscious that the doors to the room were locked. Mackey finally could contain himself no longer. His voice was slightly querulous, but he strained to be gentle. "How could you," began Mackey, "how could you, a mathematician, a man devoted to reason and logical proof…how could you believe that extraterrestrials are sending you messages? How could you believe that you are being recruited by aliens from outer space to save the world? How could you…?"

Nash looked up at last and fixed Mackey with an unblinking stare as cool and dispassionate as that of any bird or snake. "Because," Nash said slowly in his soft, reasonable southern drawl, as if talking to himself, "the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously."

What I  take seriously:

Introduction to Topology and Modern Analysis, by George F. Simmons, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1963 

An Introduction to Abstract Harmonic Analysis, by Lynn H. Loomis, Van Nostrand, Princeton, 1953

"Harmonic Analysis as the Exploitation of Symmetry — A Historical Survey," by George W. Mackey, pp. 543-698, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, July 1980

Walsh Functions and Their Applications, by K. G. Beauchamp, Academic Press, New York, 1975

Walsh Series: An Introduction to Dyadic Harmonic Analysis, by F. Schipp, P. Simon, W. R. Wade, and J. Pal, Adam Hilger Ltd., 1990

The review, by W. R. Wade, of Walsh Series and Transforms (Golubov, Efimov, and Skvortsov, publ. by Kluwer, Netherlands, 1991) in the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, April 1992, pp. 348-359

Music courtesy of Franz Schubert.

Meditation for the Feast of
Saint James Dean

From a Xanga journalist in the wee small hours:

For your consideration:

I think I’ll stick with Olivia Newton-John, the cast of “Grease,” and the school zone.