Log24

See also this  journal on the above reported dies natalis .

The previous post, and Wallace Stevens, suggest a search
in this journal for “The Trials of Device.” That search yields,
among other images, the following —

The Mephisto Waltz  author, Fred Mustard Stewart, reportedly died
on February 7, 2007.  A check of that date in this journal yields . . .

This is not John Belushi, whose cover of
Frankie Laine’s “Rawhide” was memorable,
but Laine himself.

Some Frankie Laine lyrics quoted here on Stewart’s death date:

“Times when I know you’ll be lonesome,
times when I know you’ll be sad
Don’t let temptation surround you,
don’t let the blues make you bad”

— “We’ll Be Together Again,”
Frankie Laine,
March 30, 1913 —
February 6, 2007

Mephisto  fans may prefer Sting’s version of the phrase
“we’ll be together.” See Complex Reflection,  April 20, 2012.

This post was suggested by the phrase "Froebel Decade" from
the search results below.

This journal a decade ago had a post on the late Donald Westlake,
an author who reportedly died of a heart attack in Mexico on Dec. 31,
2008, while on his way to a New Year's Eve dinner.

One of Westlake's books —

Related material —

"La Despedida " and "Finality indeed, and cleavage!"

(Happens)

For Tapia— Looking Back at "Mi Vida Loca"

For Richmond— Goodnight, Irene

McGee Thanks the Academy:

“The ulterior motive behind this essay [“Reading Authority,” above], the purpose for which I seize this occasion, concerns the question or problem of authority. I stress at the outset my understanding of authority as the constructed repository of value or foundation of a system of values, the final effect of fetishism– in this case, literary fetishism. [Cf. Marx, Das Kapital] Reading– as in the phrase ‘reading authority’– should be grasped as the institutionally determined act of constructing authority….”

Wikipedia:

“[In Peter Pan] Smee is Captain Hook’s right-hand man… Barrie describes him as ‘Irish’ and ‘a man who stabbed without offence‘….”

Background: In yesterday’s morning entry, James Joyce as Jesuit, with “Dagger Definitions.”

A different Smee appears as an art critic in yesterday’s afternoon entry “Design Theory.”–

Smee Stabs Without Offence:

“Brock, who has a brisk mind, is a man on a mission. He read mathematical economics and political philosophy at Princeton (he has five degrees in all) and is the founder and president of Strategic Economic Decisions Inc., a think tank specializing in applying the economics of uncertainty to forecasting and risk assessment.

But phooey to all that; Brock has deeper things to think about. He believes he has cracked the secret of beautiful design. He even has equations and graphs to prove it.”

A Jesuit in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:

“When may we expect to have something from you on the esthetic question?”

Beckett Bethicketted:

“Our entanglement in the wilderness of Finnegans Wake is exemplified by the neologism ‘Bethicket.’ This word condenses a range of possible meanings and reinforces a diversity of possible syntactic interpretations. Joyce seems to allude to Beckett, creating a portmanteau word that melds ‘Beckett’ with ‘thicket’ (continuing the undergrowth metaphor), ‘thick’ (adding mental density to floral density)…. As a single word ‘Bethicket’ contains the confusion that its context suggests. On the one hand, ‘Bethicket me for a stump of a beech’ has the sound of a proverbial expletive that might mean something like ‘I’ll be damned’ or ‘Well, I’ll be a son of a gun.’….”

— Stephen Dilks

At the Oscars, 2009

Related material:

Frame Tales and Dickung

At Midnight

“At midnight
   on the Emperor’s pavement flit
Flames that no faggot feeds,
   nor steel has lit,
Nor storm disturbs, flames
   begotten of flame,
Where blood-begotten spirits come
And all complexities of fury leave,
Dying into a dance,
An agony of trance,
An agony of flame that cannot
   singe a sleeve.”

— From Byzantium, by
    William Butler Yeats

“The only hope, or else despair
    Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre–
    To be redeemed from fire by fire.”

— From Four Quartets, by
    Thomas Stearns Eliot

“Look around you. There is an eerie sense of Panic in the air, a silent Fear and Uncertainty that comes with once reliable faiths and truths and solid Institutions that are no longer safe to believe in…”

— Prepare for the Weirdness, by Hunter S. Thompson, quoted in a sermon for Pentecost Sunday, 2005

“If you passed, you got to live, and if you failed you were burned alive on a pyre that’s now the Transgender Studies Building.”

— Baccalaureate address at the interfaith worship service, Princeton University, on Pentecost Sunday, June 4, 2006

Review:

“At midnight on the Emperor’s pavement….”

In memory of Staige D. Blackford: 

Introibo ad Altare Dei

“…they [the clergy] believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly; for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

“Stately, thin Thomas Jefferson came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed…. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
— Introibo ad altare Dei.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:
— Come up, Staige! Come up, you fearful editor!”

With apologies to the University of Virginia, to the Virginia Quarterly Review, and to James Joyce.

“Man, it’s long…
It’s a long, long, long road.”

— Frank Sinatra

See also memorials to George Axelrod and Leon Uris, both of whom died at the summer solstice, June 21.

From an obituary of a biographer of Emily Dickinson, Richard B. Sewall, who died on Wednesday, April 16, 2003:

"Descended from a line of Congregational ministers dating back to the Salem of the witch trial era, Mr. Sewall was known for infusing his lectures with an almost religious fervor."

Riddle

What is the hardest thing to keep?

For one answer, see my entry of April 16, 2003.   For commentary on that answer, see the description of a poetry party that took place last April at Sleepy Hollow, New York.

See, too, the story that contains the following passages:

"As to the books and furniture of the schoolhouse, they belonged to the community, excepting Cotton Mather's History of Witchcraft, a New England Almanac, and book of dreams and fortune-telling….

The schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue, and the plough-boy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow."

— Washington Irving

Update of 11:55 PM April 21, 2003,

in memory of
Nina Simone:

See also the last paragraph of this news story,
this website, and this essay,
or see all three combined.

From the entry of midnight, October 25-26, 2002:

Make my bed and light the light,
I'll arrive late tonight,
Blackbird, Bye-bye.

Nina Simone

For more on the eight-point star of Venus,
see "Bright Star," my note of October 23, 2002.