Wednesday, January 15, 2003

Mean Streets The title of tonight's "The West Wing" episode, "The Long Goodbye," refers to a phrase that the sentimental do-gooders of the Democratic party apparently now use to refer to senility.   I find the phrase of more interest as it is used in the work of Raymond Chandler, where it has more to do with alcoholism than with Alzheimer's. Another memorable phrase from Chandler is found in his essay, "The Simple Art of Murder": "...down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean...." The phrase also occurs in the works of C. S. Lewis in an extended parable about Heaven and Hell: The Great Divorce, Chapter One: "I seemed to be standing in a busy queue by the side of a long, mean street. Evening was just closing in and it was raining. I had been wandering for hours in similar mean streets, always in the rain and always in evening twilight. Time seemed to have paused on that dismal moment when only a few shops have lit up and it is not yet dark enough for their windows to look cheering. And just as the evening never advanced to night, so my walking had never brought me to the better parts of the town." The most interesting part of this very interesting tale is summarized in an article on the work of Lewis: "In the last chapter, Lewis sees a great assembly of motionless figures standing... around a silver table, watching the actvities of little figures that resembled chessmen: 'And these chessman are men and women as they appear to themselves and to one another in this world. And the silver table is Time. And those who stand and watch are the immortal souls of these same men and women.'" It is perhaps not completely irrelevant that Humphrey Bogart, who played Chandler's detective "who is not himself mean," loved chess and was born on Christmas Day. A related religious meditation: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley." — Karl Cullinane in The Silver Crown, by Joel Rosenberg 11:11 pm Comments on this post: I had the greatest time reading all the quotes from your link to Michael Rostenberg's quote page! Thank you. The Great Divorce is one of my favorite C.S. Lewis books, even above the Chronicles of Narnia. Posted 1/18/2003 at 8:27 am by jkaucher

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

Conversations in Hell Part I: Locating Hell "Noi siam venuti al loco ov' i' t'ho detto            che tu vedrai le genti dolorose         c'hanno perduto il ben de l'intelletto." — Dante, Inferno, Canto 3, 16-18 "We have come to where I warned you we would find             Those wretched souls who no longer have         The intellectual benefits of the mind." — Dante, Hell, Canto 3, 16-18 From a Harvard student's weblog: Heard in Mather  I hope you get gingivitis You want me to get oral cancer?! Goodnight fartface Turd. Turd. Turd. Turd. Turd. Make your own waffles!! Blah blah blah starcraft blah blah starcraft blah starcraft. It's da email da email. And some blue hair! Oohoohoo Izod! 10 gigs! Yeah it smells really bad. Only in the stairs though. Starcraft blah blah Starcraft fartface. Yeah it's hard. You have to get a bunch of battle cruisers. 40 kills! So good! Oh ho ho grunt grunt squeal.  I'm getting sick again. You have a final tomorrow? In What?! Um I don't even know. Next year we're draggin him there and sticking the needle in ourselves.  " ... one more line / unravelling from the dark design / spun by God and Cotton Mather" — Robert Lowell Part II: The Call of Stories From a website on college fund-raising:  • “The people who come to us bring their stories. They hope they tell them well enough so that we understand the truth of their lives.”—Robert Coles, Harvard professor, The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination • “If there’s anything worth calling theology, it is listening to people’s stories, listening to them and cherishing them.”—Mary Pellauer, quoted in Kathleen Norris’ Dakota: A Spiritual Geography From a website on "The West Wing": THE LONG GOODBYE    9pm 2003-01-15     "ALL NEW! In a special episode guest written by playwright Jon Robin Baitz, C.J. (Allison Janney) reluctantly returns to Dayton, Ohio, to speak at her 20th high school class reunion..." From a website illustrating language in Catholic religious stories: "Headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, the Sisters of the Precious Blood is a Catholic religious congregation..." From a Catholic religious story by J. R. R. Tolkien: "It shone now as if verily it was wrought of living fire. 'Precious, precious, precious!' Gollum cried. 'My Precious! O my Precious!'" From a website on Philip Pullman, author of His Dark Materials:  "'Stories are the most important thing in the world.  Without stories, we wouldn't be human beings at all." From the same website, a short story: "Philip Pullman was born in Norwich on 19th October 1946." Part III: My Story For a different story, see my weblog of 19th October 2002: Saturday, October 19, 2002 What is Truth? 5:55 pm

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Remarks on Day 14 of the Year of Our Lord 2003 On this date — Alfred Tarski was born in 1902 in Warsaw, and Kurt Friedrich Gödel died in 1978 in Princeton. What is Truth? "What is called 'losing' in chess may constitute winning in another game." Cited in "A Note on Wittgenstein's 'Notorious Paragraph' about the Gödel Theorem," by Juliet Floyd (Boston University) and Hilary Putnam (Harvard University), Journal of Philosophy (November 2000), 45 (11): 624-632.   See also Juliet Floyd's "Prose versus proof : Wittgenstein on Gödel, Tarski and truth," Philosophia Mathematica  3, vol. 9 (2001): 901-928, and Juliet Floyd's "The Rule of the Mathematical: Wittgenstein's Later Discussions." PhD Dissertation, Harvard University, 1990. Abstract in Dissertation Abstracts International (June 1991), 51 (12A): 4146-A: "My thesis aims to defend Wittgenstein from the charges of benighted arrogance traditionally levelled against him." Romeo: O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! — "Romeo and Juliet," Act One, Scene V   Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics (revised edition, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978) 5:55 pm

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Day 14 — The More I Learn My heart's been cared for My heart's been used It only makes me more confused Just when I'm sure I've gotten wise That's when I realize The more I learn The less I understand about love It'll drive you crazy or make you sane Moment by moment It's a brand new game The more I learn The less I understand about love — Ronna Reeves, 1992     (Song by Steve Dean/Karen Stanley) 4:07 pm

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Long Winter Evening Humphrey Bogart took The Big Sleep on this date in 1957.  As his character said in that film,  "I don't mind if you don't like my manners. I don't like them myself. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them long winter evenings." He may at times have been short on manners, but never on style.  Perhaps his spirit will revisit the City of Angels on this long winter evening, as the film industry seems to need a refresher course in that subject. Here is a scene that seems tailor-made for his reappearance. Yale Club of Southern California January 14, 2003 Yale in Hollywood: Entertainment Mixer Beverly Hills, 7-10 p.m. "We're kicking off the new year with our first Yale in Hollywood entertainment mixer."     "Meet other Yalies in - or interested in - entertainment at this informal casual mixer at the Continental." "It's rumored Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were investors in this hipster minimalist-decor bar. If you want their Tuesday night all-you-can-eat sushi for $9.95, call to make a reservation. The Continental is located at 8400 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, (323) 782-9717." Mmmm... Blue booze and sushi! 5:28 am Comments on this post: Those wonderful stars of yesterday. I grew up with wonderful actors like Bogart. I often watch the AMC channel....with all the wonderful grapics, bells and whistles in todays movies...I think for me, they shall never hold a candle to the classics. Gawd am I dating myself now? Guess I too am a classic! You have a nice blog here...found your site through my sisters site......oOMisfito0  I'll be back again. Have a great day! Posted 1/14/2003 at 8:16 am by Lady_Roxy

Monday, January 13, 2003

Wake In honor of St. James Joyce, who died at Zurich, Switzerland, on January 13, 1941, our site music now returns to the theme of last Sept. 20: Finnegans Wake. 11:32 pm

Monday, January 13, 2003

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Sunday, January 12, 2003

Ask Not... For you it's goodbye, For me it's to cry, "For whom the bell tolls"... — The Bee Gees The Bells of Notre Dame (Recall Julia Ormond in  the 1995 "Sabrina.") JAN. 12, 2003,  N. Y. TIMES OBITUARIES   C. Douglas Dillon, Financier Who Served in Kennedy Cabinet, Dies at 93 By ERIC PACE .Douglas Dillon was named secretary of the Treasury by President Kennedy and ambassador to France under President Eisenhower. Monique Wittig, 67, Feminist Writer, Is Dead By DOUGLAS MARTIN Monique Wittig was a French writer and literary theorist whose imaginative, fiercely innovative books tried to create a new mythology for the feminist movement.  Getty Images Maurice Gibb, Bassist for the Bee Gees, Dies at 53 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Maurice Gibb played bass and keyboard for the Bee Gees, whose 1977 album, "Saturday Night Fever," sold more than 40 million copies. Added Jan. 13, 2003 (feast day of St. James Joyce): For more on feminism and mythology, see This Will Kill That,   Victor Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris, Book 5, Ch. 2, on the printing press versus architecture, and The Alphabet Versus the Goddess.  For the rest of the Dillon story, click on the big red C above. In this case, the victory of the alphabet over the goddess may have been rather short-lived. Here is Miss Audrey Hepburn (the original film Sabrina) as a very credible — and victorious — goddess: See also the journal entries below. 4:17 pm

Saturday, January 11, 2003

METROPOLITAN ART WARS: The First Days of Disco Some cultural milestones, in the order I encountered them today: From Dr. Mac's Cultural Calendar: "On this day in 1963, Whiskey-A-Go-Go—believed to be the first discotheque in the world—opened on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles with extraordinary hype and fanfare." From websites on Whit Stillman's film, "The Last Days of Disco": Scene: Manhattan in the very early 1980's. Alice and her friend Charlotte are regulars at a fashionable disco. Roger Ebert: "Charlotte is forever giving poor Alice advice about what to say and how to behave; she says guys like it when a girl uses the word 'sexy,' and a few nights later, when a guy tells Alice he collects first editions of Scrooge McDuck comic books, she..." Bjorn Thomson: "... looks deep into his eyes and purrs 'I think Scrooge McDuck is sexy!' It is a laugh-out-loud funny line and a shrewd parody, but is also an honest statement." (Actually, to be honest, I encountered Thomson first and Ebert later, but the narrative sequence demands that they be rearranged.) The combination of these cultural landmarks suggested that I find out what Scrooge McDuck was doing during the first days of disco, in January 1963.  Some research revealed that in issue #40 of "Uncle Scrooge," with a publication date of January 1963, was a tale titled "Oddball Odyssey."  Plot summary: "A whisper of treasure draws Scrooge to Circe." Further research produced an illustration:   Desiring more literary depth, I sought more information on the story of Scrooge and Circe. It turns out that this was only one of a series of encounters between Scrooge and a character called Magica de Spell.  The following is from a website titled Duckburg Religion: "Magica's first appearance is in 'The Midas Touch' (US 36-01). She enters the Money Bin to buy a dime from Scrooge. Donald tells Scrooge that she is a sorceress, but Scrooge sells her a dime anyway. He sells her his first dime by accident, but gets it back. The fun starts when Scrooge tells her that it is the first dime he earned. She is going to make an amulet...." with it.  Her pursuit of the dime apparently lasts through a number of Scrooge episodes. "...in Oddball Odyssey (US 40-02). Magica discovers Circe's secret cave. Inside the cave is a magic wand that she uses to transform Huey, Dewey and Louie to pigs, Donald to a goat (later to a tortoise), and Scrooge to a donkey. This reminds us of the treatment Circe gave Ulysses and his men. Magica does not succeed in transforming Scrooge after stealing the Dime, and Scrooge manages to break the spell (de Spell) by smashing the magic wand." At this point I was reminded of the legendary (but true) appearance of Wallace Stevens's wife on another historic dime.  This was discussed by Charles Schulz in a cartoon of Sunday, May 27, 1990:    Here Sally is saying... Who, me?... Yes, Ma'am, right here. This is my report on dimes and pennies... "Wallace Stevens was a famous poet... His wife was named Elsie..." "Most people do not know that Elsie was the model for the 1916 'Liberty Head' dime." "Most people also don't know that if I had a dime for every one of these stupid reports I've written, I'd be a rich person." Finally, sitting outside the principal's office: I never got to the part about who posed for the Lincoln penny. I conclude this report on a note of synchronicity: The above research was suggested in part by a New York Times article on Ovid's Metamorphoses I read last night.  After locating the Scrooge and Stevens items above, I went to the Times site this afternoon to remind myself of this article.  At that point synchronicity kicked in; I encountered the following obituary of a Scrooge figure from 1963... the first days of disco: The New York Times, January 12, 2003 (So dated at the website on Jan. 11) C. Douglas Dillon Dies at 93; Was in Kennedy Cabinet By ERIC PACE . Douglas Dillon, a versatile Wall Street financier who was named secretary of the Treasury by President Kennedy and ambassador to France under President Eisenhower, and was a longtime executive of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, died Friday [Jan. 10, 2003] at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Mr. Dillon, who lived with his wife on Jupiter Island in Hobe Sound, Fla., was 93. Mr. Dillon was born to wealth and influence as the son of the founder of Dillon, Read & Company, an international banking house. Mr. Dillon was widely respected for his attention to detail — he had a reputation for ferreting out inconspicuous errors in reports — and his intellect, which his parents began shaping at an early age by enrolling Mr. Dillon in elite private schools. Mr. Dillon is said to have been able to read quickly and to fully comprehend what he read by the time he was 4 years old. At the Pine Lodge School in Lakehurst, N.J., Mr. Dillon's schoolmates included Nelson, Laurance and John Rockefeller III. Mr. Dillon later graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and sharpened his analytical powers on Wall Street. Strapping and strong-jawed, Mr. Dillon sometimes seemed self-effacing or even shy in public, despite his long prominence in public affairs and in business. He served over the years as chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation, president of Harvard University's board of overseers..." Et cetera, et cetera, and so forth. (See yesterday's two entries, "Something Wonderful," and "Story.") Two reflections suggest themselves: "I need a photo opportunity. I want a shot at redemption. Don't want to end up a cartoon In a cartoon graveyard." — Paul Simon Ending up in a cartoon graveyard is indeed an unhappy fate; on the other hand... It is nice to be called "sexy." Added at 1:50 AM Jan. 12, 2003: Tonight's site music, in honor of Mr. Dillon and of Hepburn, Holden, and Bogart in "Sabrina" —  "Isn't It Romantic?"   6:24 pm

Friday, January 10, 2003

Something Wonderful In keeping with this evening's earlier entry "Story," and with W. M. Spackman's discussion of Greek equivalents of the word "wonderful" in Homer and Sophocles in his book On the Decay of Humanism (p. 6), tonight's site music is "Something Wonderful," from "The King and I." A book I think is wonderful, in a rather more mundane sense than that of Sophocles, is The World in Tune, by Elizabeth Gray Vining, tutor to Crown Prince Akihito during the American occupation of Japan. Mrs. Vining died on November 27, 1999, at the age of 97. From a web page on Mrs. Vining:  "Friends report that even in her last years, around the time of her birthday [Oct. 6] a sleek diplomatic limousine would pull up at Kendal, and disgorge the Japanese ambassador, often accompanied by a large spray of sumptuous flowers, for a courtesy call on behalf of her former pupil, now the emperor." 11:11 pm

Friday, January 10, 2003

Story "How much story do you want?"  — George Balanchine While researching yesterday's entry on Balanchine, Apollo, and the nine Muses, I came across this architect's remarks, partially quoted yesterday and continued here: "The icon that I use for this element is the nine-fold square.... This is the garden of Apollo, the field of Reason....  This is the Temple of Solomon, as inscribed, for example, by a nine-fold compartmentation to provide the ground plan of Yale, as described to me by Professor Hersey." — Duncanology Part 3 Checking this out yesterday, I came across the following at a Yale University Art Gallery site: "This exhibition of nine boldly colored, asymmetrically designed quilts selected from a private collection will be displayed in the Matrix Gallery.... With the guidance of Professor Maude Southwell Wahlman, author of 'Signs and Symbols: African Images in African American Quilts,' the collector has explored and gathered examples...." Exploring and gathering examples myself today, I received a book in the mail — W. M. Spackman's On the Decay of Humanism (Rutgers University Press, 1967) — and picked up a second-hand book at a sale — Barbara Michaels's Stitches in Time (Harper Collins Publishers, 1995). The Spackman book includes the following poem at the end: In sandarac etui for sepulchre   lies the cered body of a poisoned queen;      and in her mouth and hair, and at her feet,      and in the grey folds of her winding-sheet,   there sifts a dreamy powder, smooth and green, the magic of an idle sorcerer,   an ancient spell, cast when the shroud was spun.      In death her hands clasp amourously a bowl      that still contains the fragments of her soul,   a tale of Beauty sought, and Beauty won, his false lips kissed, and Beauty dead for her. — Alexander B. Griswold, Princeton '28, in the     Nassau Literary Magazine of December 1925 From a synopsis of Michaels's Stitches in Time: "Michaels follows Rachel, a graduate student studying women's crafts--weaving, spinning, quilting, embroidery--and the superstitions connected with them. Linking all important rites of passage to the garments created as markers of these occasions leads Rachel to her theory: in societies in which magic was practiced, the garment was meant to protect its wearer. She gains evidence that her theory is valid when an evil antique bridal quilt enters her life." Although Stitches in Time is about a quilt — stitched, not spun — Griswold's line "an ancient spell, cast when the shroud was spun"  is very closely related to the evil spell in Michaels's book.  The above events display a certain synchronicity that Wallace Stevens might appreciate, especially in light of the following remark in a review of Stitches in Time: "...the premise is too outlandish for even the suspension of disbelief...." (Publishers Weekly, 4/24/95) Stevens might reply, The very man despising honest quilts Lies quilted to his poll in his despite. — "The Comedian as the Letter C," Part V Finally, those who prefer stories to the more formal qualities of pure dance (ballet) pure mathematics (see previous entry), pure (instrumental) music, and pure (abstract, as in quilt designs) art, can consult the oeuvre of Jodie Foster — as in my  Pearl Harbor Day entry on Buddhism. An art historian named Griswold — perhaps that very same Griswold quoted above — might have a thing or two to say to Jodie on her recent film "Anna and the King."  In the April, 1957, issue of The Journal of the Siam Society, Alexander B. Griswold takes issue with Broadway's and Hollywood's "grotesque caricature" of Siamese society, and ultimately with Anna herself: "The real fault lies in the two books they ultimately spring from — The English Governess at the Court of Siam and The Romance of the Harem — both written by Mrs. Anna Leonowens.'' Is a puzzlement. See also The Diamond 16 Puzzle for some quilt designs. 8:15 pm

Thursday, January 09, 2003

Balanchine's Birthday Today seems an appropriate day to celebrate Apollo and the nine Muses. From a website on Balanchine's and Stravinsky's ballet, "Apollon Musagète": In his Poetics of Music (1942) Stravinsky says: "Summing up: What is important for the lucid ordering of the work – for its crystallization – is that all the Dionysian elements which set the imagination of the artist in motion and make the life-sap rise must be properly subjugated before they intoxicate us, and must finally be made to submit to the law: Apollo demands it." Stravinsky conceived Apollo as a ballet blanc – a "white ballet" with classical choreography and monochromatic attire. Envisioning the work in his mind's eye, he found that "the absence of many-colored hues and of all superfluities produced a wonderful freshness." Upon first hearing Apollo, Diaghilev found it "music somehow not of this world, but from somewhere else above." The ballet closes with an Apotheosis in which Apollo leads the Muses towards Parnassus. Here, the gravely beautiful music with which the work began is truly recapitulated "on high" – ceaselessly recycled, frozen in time. — Joseph Horowitz Another website invoking Apollo: The icon that I use... is the nine-fold square.... The nine-fold square has centre, periphery, axes and diagonals. But all are present only in their bare essentials. It is also a sequence of eight triads. Four pass through the centre and four do not. This is the garden of Apollo, the field of Reason....  In accordance with these remarks, here is the underlying structure for a ballet blanc: This structure may seem too simple to support movements of interest, but consider the following (click to enlarge): As Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, paraphrasing Horace, remarks in his Whitsun, 1939, preface to the new edition of the Oxford Book of English Verse, "tamen usque recurret Apollo." The alert reader will note that in the above diagrams, only eight of the positions move. Which muse remains at the center? Consider the remark of T. S. Eliot, "At the still point, there the dance is,"  and the fact that on the day Eliot turned 60, Olivia Newton-John was born.  How, indeed, in the words of another "sixty-year-old smiling public man," can we know the dancer from the dance? 4:48 pm Comments on this post: More synchronicity from the Minority: Human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy. —George Eliot Paradox?  Then it must be true.  A different Eliot.  ----- I read your site daily, and more often than not, I am left wondering at the corridors and hallways in your mind.  The connections you create from what appears to be sheer coincidence are incredible. When I have an extra moment or two, I also research your myriad of links. I'm always pleased with those travels too.  Thank you. Posted 1/10/2003 at 2:51 am by oOMisfitOo "...intellectualistic elitism...esoteric and compelling...nothing here for the novice, 'rock on'?!" ~ Alan Dietrich Xanga Gazette Posted 1/10/2003 at 5:56 am by Alan_Dietrich Indeed.  Rock on! You are the inspiration for my latest post.  I began thinking about why we blog, and where we blog.  The sharing of information on a personal level, the spread of individual resources and belief.  Sometimes we connect, sometimes we don't (that's a metaphorical 'we'). The trick is finding those we connect with.  There doesn't always have to be a 'why'. Posted 1/10/2003 at 3:16 pm by oOMisfitOo

Wednesday, January 08, 2003

Work in Progress From the website "Conrad Hall Looks Back and Forward to a Work in Progress" on a cinematographer who died on Jan. 4, 2003 (see today's earlier entry): "Hall concentrated on writing an original script and another based on Wild Palms, a William Faulkner novel.  He was determined to direct his own films based on those scripts.  Hall explained that just once in his life he wanted to control the process of making a film from beginning to end.  It's still a work in progress.... If he discovered Aladdin's magic lantern, and had only one wish which could be granted, Hall says he would use it to bring Wild Palms to the screen." Crazy Protestant Drunk  An Amazon.com review of Faulkner's novella Wild Palms: ***** "A Great Introduction to Faulkner" Reviewer: Stephen M. Bauer from Hazlet, N.J., July 7, 2002 — I love this guy Faulkner. I read another half chapter of The Wild Palms on the train. Never read anything by him before. Faulkner's characters don't sit around and examine their navel. They just Do. Yes act on their passions they Do. His characters are not beautiful people. They have scars, injuries, poverty, depraved morals, injustices, suffering upon suffering. What makes The Wild Palms beautiful is the passion of people living life right on the bone. A married woman is planning on abandoning her husband and two kids and running away with another man. The other man asks her what about her two kids. On page 41, she answers, "I know the answer to that and I know that I cant change that answer and I dont think I can change me because the second time I ever saw you I learned what I had read in books but I never had actually believed: that love and suffering are the same thing and that the value of love is the sum of what you have to pay for it and anytime you get it cheap you have cheated yourself." No Catholic saint-mystic ever said it better. Pretty good for a crazy Protestant drunk. "The oral history of Los Angeles is written in piano bars."  — Joan Didion in Slouching Towards Bethlehem Tonight's site music, "Long Ago and Far Away," by Jerome Kern (with lyrics, including "Aladdin's lamp," by Ira Gershwin) is from the 1944 Rita Hayworth film "Cover Girl."  It was featured in the 1987 film "Someone to Love," the final performance (on film) of Orson Welles.  See also "For the Green Lady of Perelandra, from the City of Angels," my entry of December 21, 2002. 11:59 pm Comments on this post: Thanks for commenting at my site again.  i honestly can't imagine why you'd find it interesting, but i think it's cool that you read it.  :)  About my post, evidentiality (expressed in language) and epistemology (understood abstractly) sort of intersect my fields of research, and so the particular book i mentioned in my last post is actually really important to me.  it could turn into the thoughts behind a thesis paper or something! :)  i wasn't trying to bandy big words around for self-aggrandizement; i just sort of assumed that the folks reading the post would know why i'm interested...  too much assuming, though.  sorry about that. About your last post... have you read The Wild Palms?  The Sound and the Fury was really good for me, but it's been a while since I read it, and I never could get as interested in anything else I picked up by Faulkner (As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom were the 2 that I failed to finish reading).  Would you recommend The Wild Palms?  I'm not so sure about that Amazon reviewer...  just in that I don't think catholics are particularly more attuned to love or suffering than protestants (as he implied). Posted 1/9/2003 at 1:20 pm by habergrrl Thanks for the comment. I replied via email. Posted 1/9/2003 at 8:31 pm by m759

Wednesday, January 08, 2003

In the Labyrinth of Memory Taking a cue from Danny in the labyrinth of Kubrick's film "The Shining," today I retraced my steps. My Jan. 6 entry, "Dead Poet in the City of Angels," links to a set of five December 21, 2002, entries.  In the last of these, "Irish Lament," is a link to a site appropriate for Maud Gonne's birthday — a discussion of Yeats's "Among School Children." Those who recall a young woman named Patricia Collinge (Radcliffe '64) might agree that her image is aptly described by Yeats: Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind And took a mess of shadows for its meat This meditation leads in turn to a Sept. 20, 2002, entry, "Music for Patricias," and a tune familiar to James Joyce, "Finnegan's Wake," the lyrics of which lead back to images in my entries of Dec. 20, 2002, "Last-Minute Shopping," and of Dec. 28, 2002, "Solace from Hell's Kitchen."  The latter entry is in memory of George Roy Hill, director of "The Sting," who died Dec. 27, 2002. The Dec. 28 image from "The Sting" leads us back to more recent events — in particular, to the death of a cinematographer who won an Oscar for picturing Newman and Redford in another film — Conrad L. Hall, who died Saturday, Jan. 4, 2003.  For a 3-minute documentary on Hall's career, click here. Hall won Oscars for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "American Beauty," and may win a posthumous Oscar for "Road to Perdition," last year's Irish-American mob saga: "Tom Hanks plays Angel of Death Michael Sullivan. An orphan 'adopted' by crime boss John Rooney (Paul Newman), Sullivan worships Rooney above his own family. Rooney gave Sullivan a home when he had none. Rooney is the father Sullivan never knew. Too bad Rooney is the Rock Island branch of Capone's mob." In keeping with this Irish connection, here is a set of images. American Beauty © Suzanne Harle 1997 Conrad L. Hall   A Game of Chess I need a photo-opportunity. I want a shot at redemption. Don't want to end up a cartoon In a cartoon graveyard. — Paul Simon "Like a chess player, he knows that to win a tournament, it is sometimes wise to offer a draw in a game even when you think you can win it." — Roger Ebert on Robert Duvall's character in "A Civil Action" Director Steven Zaillian will take part in a tribute to Conrad L. Hall at the Palm Springs International Film Festival awards ceremony on Jan 11.  Hall was the cinematographer for Zaillian's films "A Civil Action" and "Searching for Bobby Fischer."  "A Civil Action" was cast by the Boston firm Collinge/Pickman Casting, named in part for that same Patricia Collinge ("hollow of cheek") mentioned above. See also "Conrad Hall looks back and forward to a Work in Progress."  ("Work in Progress" was for a time the title of Joyce's Finnegans Wake.) What is the moral of all this remembrance? An 8-page (paper) journal note I compiled on November 14, 1995 (feast day of St. Lawrence O'Toole, patron saint of Dublin, allegedly born in 1132) supplies an answer in the Catholic tradition that might have satisfied Joyce (to whom 1132 was a rather significant number):  How can you tell there's an Irishman present at a cockfight?      He enters a duck. How can you tell a Pole is present?      He bets on the duck. How can you tell an Italian is present?      The duck wins. Every picture tells a story. Hall wins Oscar for "American Beauty"   4:17 pm

Wednesday, January 08, 2003

xxx 12:00 am

Wednesday, January 08, 2003

Into the Woods From the Words on Film site: "The proximal literary antecedents for Under the Volcano are Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, especially The Inferno, on the one hand, and on the other, the Faust legend as embodied in the dramatic poem Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and the play Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe." "In the opening page of the novel, we find the words "The Hotel Casino de la Selva stands on a slightly higher hill ..." (Lowry, Volcano p. 3). "Selva" is one of the Spanish words for "woods." One of the cantinas in the novel is named El Bosque, and bosque is another Spanish word for "woods." The theme of being in a darkling woods is reiterated throughout the novel." Literary Florence Tonight's site music is "Children Will Listen," by Stephen Sondheim, from "Into the Woods." Stephen Hawking is 61 today.  An appropriate gift might be a cassette version of The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis, narrated by John Cleese.  See also this review of Lewis's That Hideous Strength and my entries of Dec. 31, 2002, and Jan. 4, 2003.      12:00 am Comments on this post: Ah yes.  The Wormwood connection.  Posted 1/10/2003 at 3:00 am by oOMisfitOo