Log24

In related news . . .

http://log24.com/log/pix23/231018-X-Girl-at-Twitter.jpg —

In other X-Art news —

See as well a remark on DNA  here  on Tuesday.

From the above  Essays on the Plays  —

"In the first short play of 365 Days  . . . ."

Some will prefer a film  with the same title —

For a memorable eccentric who reportedly died
on Wednesday, July 24, 2013—

• A photo collection of other eccentrics at
  halmos.tumblr.com with a concluding note
  dated April 10, 2013
• Log24 posts from that date, which might
  be summarized as "This way to the egress"
• A musical version of that theme

"Here was finality indeed, and cleavage!"
— Malcolm Lowry, Under the Volcano

Update of 1:28 PM ET on November 19, 2024 —

"The decadent legacy of Berlin between the World Wars,
and that of the American speak-easy era, have left their marks
on fashion, of course. At the Golden Globes on Sunday night,
Nicole Kidman incarnated the steamy eroticism of the Weimar
years in a clingy 20's-style gold-spangled dress by Tom Ford for
YSL Rive Gauche. Ms. Kidman's illusion top, with its suggestion
of nudity, set tongues wagging well into the next day."

— By Ruth La Ferla, The New York Times, Jan. 27, 2004

Tonight's news from Green Bay, Wisconsin . . .

"Say Cheese!"

From a New York Times  obituary today —

From Piligrimage: The Book of the People  by Zenna Henderson
(a 1961 collection, published by Doubleday, of earlier stories) —

But all things have to end, and I sat one May afternoon, 
staring into my top desk drawer, the last to be cleaned out, 
wondering what to do with the accumulation of useless 
things in it. But I wasn’t really seeing the contents of the 
drawer, I was concentrating on the great weary emptiness 
that pressed my shoulders down and weighted my mind. 
“It’s not fair,” I muttered aloud and illogically, "to show 
me Heaven and then snatch it away.” 

“That’s about what happened to Moses, too, you know.” 

My surprised start spilled an assortment of paper clips 
and thumb tacks from the battered box I had just picked up. 

“Well forevermore!” I said, righting the box. "Dr. Curtis! 
What are you doing here?” 

"Returning to the scene of my crime,” he smiled, coming 
through the open door.

This is from Henderson's "Pottage," a story first published in 1955.

Beauty Bare!

Related: https://www.tiktok.com/@stevenhcullinane/
video/7066662037895777582

“Well, I’ve helped to wind up the clock —
I might as well hear it strike!”

— Said to be a quotation from the grandfather
of a “pirate radio” founder who reportedly died
at 79 on April 20.

See as well this journal on the night of April 20 —

Wheel Turnin’ ’Round and ’Round —

and a search for “Wheel of Time.”

L'Heureux*  Meets  Les Misérables

The above theater is named for a soldier who died on May 14, 2006.

* "… whose novels wrestled with faith… " — NY Times obituary today

“Faith! Faith!” cried the husband.
“Look up to Heaven,
and resist the Wicked One!”

— "Young Goodman Brown"

A death last Sunday —

Meanwhile . . .

Amy Adams attends the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscar Party 
at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on
Sunday, February 24, 2019, in Beverly Hills, California.

"Here was finality indeed, and cleavage!" 

             — Under the Volcano

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!"

Line from the 1957 cartoon in the previous post —

"C'mon in , Eddie!"

Related dramatic monologue —

For the former, see the previous post.

For the latter, see yesterday's The Unfolding.

Related material —

(Screenshot at 9:08 PM ET)

Heimel on Dating —

<meta property="article:published"
itemprop="datePublished"
content="2018-02-27T19:37:54-05:00" />

"In 'Sophistry,' a new play by Jonathan Marc Sherman
at the Playwrights Horizons Studio, a popular tenured
professor stands accused of sexual harassment
by a male student."

— Frank Rich in The New York Times , theater review
on October 12, 1993

"At which point another play, inchoate but arresting,
edges into view." — Rich, ibid.

"Johansson began acting during childhood,
after her mother started taking her to auditions.
She made her professional acting debut
at the age of eight in the off-Broadway production
of 'Sophistry' with Ethan Hawke, at New York's
Playwrights Horizons."

— IMDb Mini Biography by: Pedro Borges 

" 'Suddenly, I was 19 again and I started to remember
all the men I'd known who had taken advantage of
the fact that I was a young woman who didn't yet have
the tools to say no, or to understand the value of
my own self-worth,' the Avengers star described. 
'I had many relationships both personal and professional
where the power dynamic was so off that I had to create
a narrative in which I was the cool girl who could hang in
and hang out, and that sometimes meant compromising
what felt right for me . . . . ' "

— Scarlett Johansson yesterday at the 2018 Women's March
in Los Angeles, as reported in E! News .

Image in a Log24 post
of March 12, 2009.

See also Log24 posts on and just after the date of Eder's demise.

A phrase of baroque weariness —

"Pull it … Surprise!"

For Evangeline

(Some background — See Limerick in this journal.
See also "He's a mad scientist and I'm his beautiful daughter.")

"There was a young lady named Bright…."

Related material — The Quick and the Dead

* For example, from the Marvel Comics realm

This post is thanks to Nicole Kidman …

E! Online  today reminds us that "Bowie's song 'Nature Boy' 
was ... featured in Kidman's 2001 film Moulin Rouge ."

A YouTube video of the Moulin Rouge  "Nature Boy"
was uploaded on April 1, 2011. That date in this journal —

James Joyce reportedly died on today's date in 1941.

An excerpt from http://yarchive.net/med/middle_ages.html —

From: ((Steven B. Harris))
Subject: Re: Problems with sci.med.aids FAQ (section 7) Part II
Date: 09 Jun 1995

In <173AD1188AS85.AVIRAMA@UNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU>
AVIRAMA@UNIVSCVM.CSD.SCAROLINA.EDU (Amittai F. Aviram) writes to
David Mertz:

>Ahem....  With all due respect, it seems to me to make no sense
>to criticize a scientist or medical doctor for "a childish
>little schoolboy positivism."

    Well, I think he was referring to the Vienna School, where
the schoolboys shout childish things like "Your mother still
believes in Compte!" and "Well, at least my mother has values and
isn't a logical empiricist like YOUR old man!"  Woody Allen went
there, but says he was expelled during a philosophy test for
looking into the soul of the kid next to him.

Midrash —

"There's a concert hall in Vienna
Where your mouth had a thousand reviews"

— Leonard Cohen lyric, "Take This Waltz"

Here's looking at you, kid.

Synchronicity check:

"Thinking Outside the Square:
Support for Landscape and Portrait
Formats on Instagram"

Related material from March 18, 2015 —

Or:  Swan Boat for Kristen

In the recent film "Danny Collins," Al Pacino plays aging
rock star Danny and Christopher Plummer plays his agèd
agent-manager Frank …

"… when Danny tells Frank about his burgeoning relationship
with hotel manager Mary (Annette Bening), he declares happily,
'And she's age-appropriate!' 'Not really,' frowns Frank.
'Baby steps,' Danny replies."

(A saying of Friedrich Fröbel)

See also the previous two posts,      
        Dude!  and Focus! .

Part I:

The sermon, “God’s Architecture,” at Nassau Presbyterian
Church in Princeton on Sunday, Feb. 23, 2014.  (This is the
“sermon” link in last Sunday’s 11 AM ET Log24 post.)

An excerpt:

“I wonder what God sees when God looks at our church.
Bear with me here because I’d like to do a little architectural
redesign. I look up at our sanctuary ceiling and I see buttons.
In those large round lights, I see buttons. I wonder what would
happen if we unbutton the ceiling, Then I wonder if we were to
unzip the ceiling, pull back the rooftop, and God were to look in
from above – What does God see? What pattern, what design,
what shape takes place?” — Rev. Lauren J. McFeaters

Related material —  All About Eve: 

A. The Adam and Eve sketch from the March 8 “Saturday Night Live”

B. “Katniss, get away from that tree!” —

C. Deconstructing God in last evening’s online New York Times .

Part II:

“Heavensbee!” in the above video, as well as Cartier’s Groundhog Day
and Say It With Flowers.

Part III:

Humans’  architecture, as described (for instance) by architecture
theorist Anne Tyng, who reportedly died at 91 on Dec. 27, 2011.
See as well Past Tense and a post from the date of Tyng’s death.

Continues…

Other Times content — ("O Me!") —

Other non -Times content — ("O Life!") —

The author of the above pairing has suggested a topic she
seems ill-prepared to discuss — poetry and psychosis.

Her background is in grade-school education.
For one possible result when grade-school education
meets psychosis, see Log24 posts tagged Danvers.

For better-informed discussion of the relation of poetry  
to psychological states that are more normal, see (for instance)
Roberts Avens on James Hillman.

From The Iceman Cometh  (1946, set in 1912) —

HOPE— (calls effusively) Hey there, Larry! Come over
and get paralyzed! What the hell you doing, sitting there?
(Then as Larry doesn't reply he immediately forgets him
and turns to the party. They are all very drunk now, just a
few drinks ahead of the passing-out stage, and hilariously
happy about it.) Bejees, let's sing! Let's celebrate! It's my
birthday party! Bejees, I'm oreyeyed! I want to sing! (He
starts the chorus of "She's the Sunshine of Paradise Alley,"
and instantly they all burst into song. But not the same song.
Each starts the chorus of his or her choice….)

From Paradise Alley  (1978, set in 1946) —

"I have now come to the most difficult part of my story."

— George MacDonald

"265" — Page number and centered square number

"153" — Triangular number (as noted by St. Augustine)

"265/153" — Object Lesson

An accurate description of such number lore:

"These are odd facts, very suitable for puzzle columns
and likely to amuse amateurs, but there is nothing
in them which appeals much to a mathematician.
The proofs are neither difficult nor interesting—
merely a little tiresome. The theorems are not serious;
and it is plain that one reason (though perhaps not the
most important) is the extreme speciality of both the
enunciations and the proofs, which are not capable of
any significant generalization." — G. H. Hardy

See also some remarks on figurate numbers in this journal.

Shem and Shaun present… NewsArse!

Part I:  Camp Germania

Part II:  NewsArse

"Well, I got there!"

— D. H. Lawrence,
"The Rocking-Horse Winner"

In memory of Copenhagen saxophonist John Tchicai,
who reportedly died last Sunday, October 7, 2012—

Quoted in this journal on the reported date of his death—

But passion ever spins our plots,
And Gretchen is my treasure!

— Wolfgang Pauli character in
     Faust in Copenhagen

Related material—

"Physik als Quelle der Spiritualität:
Ein Weg von 'Gretchen' zurück zu 'Beatrice'?  "
by Bruno Binggeli

"I am a skeptic to whom the idea that a benign God 
created us and watches over us is something between
a fairy story and a bad joke." 

— The late art critic Robert Hughes in Things I Didn't Know*

A followup to this afternoon's previous Amy Adams post—

"Here was finality indeed, and cleavage!" 

             — Under the Volcano

     * Vintage paperback, December 2007, page 7

"And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word."

— T. S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday"

This suggested a search for commentary on
Conrad Aiken's phrase "where whirled and well."

Of the nine (Google) search results, one is not  from
my own journal entries—

[PDF] TIME! TIME! TIME!
https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/id/131009/UBC_1968_A8%20C33.pdf
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat
by G Cameron – 1968 – Related articles
well where whirled and well where whirled and well—
-3. The stress on words such as "wing" is expanded for use
in Aiken's musical paragraph as follows: … 

From a short story:

"In the desert you can remember your name,
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain."

— America

See also June 12, 2005,  September 11, 2007, and Something Anonymous.

"A New York Jew imitates D. H. Lawrence at his peril."

Magic Time!

           For fans of Douglas Adams and St. Augustine

Update of 2:20 AM June 13:

For the midday "042" as a reference to Adams, see Wikipedia. The "828" may be interpreted as a reference to St. Augustine's feast day, 8/28… or, for the more secularly minded, a reference to the time 8:28 PM (to go with the evening "0845" as a reference to 8:45 PM). For further details, see Times of the Times . The midday "7286" is more difficult. See midnight's Broadway Cinderella.

From http://www.douban.com/note/63358774/ —

An Ode to the Unity of Time and Space 

Time, ah, time,
how you go off like this!

Physical things, ah, things,
so abundant you are!

The Ruo’s waters are three thousand,
how can they not have the same source?

Time and space are one body,
mind and things sustain each other.

Time, o time,
does not time come again?

Heaven, o heaven,
how many are the appearances of heaven!

From ancient days constantly shiftling on,
black holes flaring up.

Time and space are one body,
is it without end?

Great indeed
is the riddle of the universe.

Beautiful indeed
is the source of truth.

To quantize space and time
the smartest are nothing.

To measure the Great Universe with a long thin tube
the learning is vast.
 
                                 By Shing-Tung Yau

《时空统一颂》
作者：丘成桐
时乎时乎 逝何如此
物乎物乎 繁何如斯
弱水三千 岂非同源
时空一体 心物互存
时兮时兮 时不再欤
天兮天兮 天何多容
亘古恒迁 黑洞冥冥
时空一体 其无尽耶
大哉大哉 宇宙之谜
美哉美哉 真理之源
时空量化 智者无何
管测大块 学也洋洋 

A counterbalance to this morning's New York Times  story (see previous post) on a leftist Columbia University seminar might be C.S. Lewis's famous quote "It's all in Plato."  Unfortunately, a search for discussions of this quote yields, as the top result, a typically shoddy Christian polemic.

From a Christian professor at Seattle Pacific University—

"Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) can serve us well as a negative example. Nietzsche's 'new morality' was 'mere innovation,' according to [C.S.] Lewis  [Christian Reflections ]. Nietzsche announced through Zarathustra (and numerous other ways) the relativity of all values and moralities, saying that each people had adhered to a different scheme of values worked out solely in connection with local conditions. 'Nothing is true, everything is permitted,' states Nietzsche, quoting one of Dostoevsky's characters."

No source is given for either the Nietzsche quote or the alleged Dostoevky quote.

This is from a web page titled "In Defense of the Permanent Things." The Christian professor is, according to a far better scholar, permanently wrong. See Note 8 on pages 586-587 of Walter Kaufmann's Basic Writings of Nietzsche  (Random House, November 28, 2000).

One hopes that a more capable scholar, such as Lewis himself* was, might at some point attack the Columbia University leftist nonsense— and Nietzsche— by quoting a more damning passage, such as

" 'Everything is false! Everything is permitted!' "

(from Kaufmann's edition of The Will to Power , Random House, 1968, page 326)

This version of the "Everything is permitted" quote is much more directly related to Nietzsche's relativism, as seen in this image of Kaufmann's edition—

   (Click to enlarge.)

* Or Steven Michels of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, CT.
  See his "Nietzsche, Nihilism, and the Virtue of Nature"— in particular, note 29.
 

Home Delivery

"But wait, there's more!"
— Stanley Fish, NY Times today

For a larger image, click on The Catcher.

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all.  Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around– nobody big, I mean– except me.  And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.  What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff– I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them.  That's all I'd do all day.  I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.  I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."

— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 22

Death and the Apple Tree
continued from January 4

— "Araby," by James Joyce.
 Joyce died on this date in 1941.

New York Times, January 12, 2010, 12:26 PM–

"Spider-Man" Musical Will Refund Tickets

"With… direction by Julie Taymor ['Frida'], 'Spider-Man' has been marred by delays….

The musical’s troubles have unfolded at the same time that the next “Spider-Man” movie has been descending into disarray…."

Related material:

"No Great Magic," by Fritz Leiber–

"The white cosmetic came away, showing sallow skin and on it a faint tattoo in the form of an 'S' styled like a yin-yang symbol left a little open.

'Snake!' he hissed. 'Destroyer! The arch-enemy, the eternal opponent!'"

“Ay que bonito es volar  
    A las dos de la mañana….”
— “La Bruja“