Hepburn's Mass
at Heaven's Gate

Katharine Hepburn died at 2:50 PM EDT
on the Feast of St. Peter. 

"The Consecration and Sacrifice effected by the priest (standing in the place of Christ) is, then, the visible manifestation of an eternal and timeless act. After the Consecration, as Gueranger says in The Liturgical Year, 'the divine Lamb is lying on our altar!' Thus we see that the Mass is the visible reality, here and now, of the timeless eternal Mass of Heaven, described in the Apocalypse. Through it we participate in the Celestial Liturgy; through it the gates of Heaven are opened to us and the possibility of eternal life is made available to us."

The Source:

The Church Militant recommends
Defense of the Inquisitions.

For a different viewpoint,
see my May 12 entries.

Today is the Feast of Saint Peter.

The most timely quote I know of for today's religious observances is from Oh What a Web They Weave, by F. John Loughnan:

"Every boy has a daddy."

This was written as part of an attack on the father of a Latin-Mass Catholic who authored the website Ecclesia Militans, which has the logo

Note the resemblance to the Iron Cross.

Soldier of Fortune magazine, April 2002, contains a brief discussion of the German motto "Gott mit uns" that is relevant to the concept of The Church Militant.

Soldier of Fortune,
April 2002

The actor on the cover, Mel Gibson, also serves to illustrate our meditation for today, "Every boy has a daddy."  See Christopher Noxon's article in the New York Times Magazine of March 9, 2003:

Is the Pope Catholic... Enough?

Noxon attacks Gibson's father Hutton -- like his son Mel, a Latin-Mass Catholic, and author of

Is the Pope Catholic?

A related "Every boy has a daddy" attack appears in the June 2003 issue of Playboy magazine.  An entertaining excerpt from this attack on Joseph P. Kennedy, father of JFK, may be found at Orwell Today.  

Finally, let us meditate on the ultimate "Every boy has a daddy" attack -- by novelist Robert Stone on the alleged father of Jesus of Nazareth:

The New York Times Magazine article mentioned above was prompted, in part, by Mel Gibson's current movie production, "The Passion," about the final 12 hours in the (first, or possibly second) life of Jesus.  If I were producing a Passion play, as Peter I would certainly cast Stone.

See also the 11 PM sequel to the above.

The following entry of Feb. 25, 2003, was written for painter Mark Rothko, and may serve as well for minimalist artist Fred Sandback, also connected to the de Menil family of art patrons, who, like Rothko, has killed himself.

Plagued in life by depression -- what Styron, quoting Milton, called "darkness visible" -- Rothko took his own life on this date [Feb. 25] in 1970.  As a sequel to the previous note, "Song of Not-Self," here are the more cheerful thoughts of the song "Time's a Round," the first of Shiva Dancing: The Rothko Chapel Songs, by C. K. Latham.  See also my comment on the previous entry (7:59 PM). Time’s a round, time’s a round, A circle, you see, a circle to be. — C. K. Latham 10/23/02

The following is from the cover of
"Finnegans Wake: a Symposium,"

a reprint of

Our Exagmination Round His Factification
for Incamination of Work in Progress,

Paris, Shakespeare and Company, 1929.

As well as being a memorial to Rothko and Sandback, the above picture may serve to mark the diamond anniversary of a dinner party at Shakespeare and Company on this date in 1928.  (See previous entry.)

A quotation from aaparis.org also seems relevant on this, the date usually given for the death of author Malcolm Lowry, in some of whose footsteps I have walked:

"We are not saints." 

— Chapter V, Alcoholics Anonymous

Today, the birthday of Bob Keeshan (aka Captain Kangaroo), seems an appropriate day to meditate on religious issues.

The death of minimalist artist Fred Sandback on June 23, coupled with my vitriolic attack on Christianity of that same date, suggest that I should give some recognition to defenders of that bizarre religion.

Two of Christianity's most able defenders are singer Martina McBride and professor of English Gerald McDaniel.

McBride has stated loudly and clearly her conviction that

"Love's the only house big enough for all the pain in the world."

I may be mistaken, but this sounds to me like a profession of faith in the Christian church.

McDaniel's Cultural Calendar includes many items of Christian interest (saints' days, etc.) but also includes a greater variety of general cultural history than any other online calendar I know of.  Like all Christian documents, it displays little regard for the truth (dates are often wrong), but its heart seems to be in the right place.  Most important, in light of McBride's persuasive song lyric, is the fact that McDaniel's calendar -- and therefore, perhaps, his church -- does seem to be big enough -- at least in principle -- for some of the pain in the world, as well as some of the joy.  Unfortunately, the church has much less room for truth than for emotion.

For emotion, see McBride's album of that title.  For some thoughts on truth, see McBride's fellow country singer, Patty Loveless (whom I greatly prefer to McBride).

The above reflection was prompted by McDaniel's having a written a document that includes both of the following items for June 27:

• TV's Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan, was born on this day in 1927. He was also Clarabelle the Clown on Howdy Doody.
  
• On this day in 1928, an American expatriate bookseller, Sylvia Beach, and her companion Adrienne Monnier, had a dinner party to which they invited James Joyce and Scott Fitzgerald. It was held at her flat above her bookstore Shakespeare & Company....

These two items appear to have been placed by McDaniel in the right date slot.  (Christians may sometimes have the right values, but should never be trusted to have their facts straight.)

"I really don’t believe in magic. I believe in some kinds — the magic of imagination and the magic of love."

— J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter's creator,
June 26, 2003

Amen, Sister.

From the web page Art Wars:

"For more on the 'vanishing point,'
or 'point at infinity,' see
Midsummer Eve's Dream."

On Midsummer Eve, June 23, 2003, minimalist artist Fred Sandback killed himself.

Sandback is discussed in The Dia Generation, an April 6, 2003, New York Times Magazine article that is itself discussed at the Art Wars page.

Sandback, who majored in philosophy at Yale, once said that

"Fact and illusion are equivalents."

Two other references that may be relevant:

The Medium is
the Rear View Mirror,

which deals with McLuhan's book Through the Vanishing Point, and a work I cited on Midsummer Eve  ...

Chapter 5 of Through the Looking Glass:

" 'What is it you want to buy?' the Sheep said at last, looking up for a moment from her knitting.

'I don't quite know yet,' Alice said very gently.  'I should like to look all round me first, if I might.'

'You may look in front of you, and on both sides, if you like,' said the Sheep; 'but you ca'n't look all round you -- unless you've got eyes at the back of your head.'

But these, as it happened, Alice had not got: so she contented herself with turning round, looking at the shelves as she came to them.

The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things -- but the oddest part of it all was that, whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite, empty, though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold.

'Things flow about so here!' she said at last in a plaintive tone...."

 "When Alice went
     through the vanishing point"

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.

Mate Change Problem

White to mate in 2 moves

H.W.Grant, 1st Prize,
Australian Column 1924

The concept of "mate change," appropriate on this, the coronation date of Henry VIII, is explained at Chathurangam.com, my source for the above problem.

For the connection with Leon Uris, find the "key" to the above chess problem... i.e., the notation for White's first move.

From the New York Times, June 24:

"Reviewing Mr. Uris's 1976 novel Trinity in The New York Times Book Review, Pete Hamill wrote: 'Leon Uris is a storyteller, in a direct line from those men who sat around fires in the days before history and made the tribe more human.'"

Uris, 78, died at the summer solstice... Saturday, June 21, 2003. 

See also Force Field of Dreams.

Some comments on yesterday's entry that are too good to be hidden under a "comments" link.  References are to Through the Looking Glass.

My understanding of the "Red Queen" was that it was a metaphorical reference to a womans menstrual cycle.

The two queens were representative of a womans behaviors throughout. Or some such thing.

Posted 6/24/2003 at 11:12 AM by oOMisfitOo

Humn. [affects very proper British Accent:]  I suppose then the good reverend is out of his bloody mind?

Posted 6/24/2003 at 11:14 AM by oOMisfitOo

Speaking of religion, blood, and the 23rd, perhaps Sissy Spacek should play both the Red and the White Queen in Looking Glass. Remember her prom night?

See my entry of May 23rd, The Prime Cut Gospel. 

Posted 6/24/2003 at 2:46 PM by m759

For today's musical offering, click here.

Lest the incautious reader gain the impression from yesterday's entry "The Real Hogwarts" that Christianity is anything other than a pack of damned lies, or that the phrase "oasis of civilisation" I used yesterday was meant otherwise than with tongue in cheek, I would like to nominate a well-known professional Christian liar as Queen of the Fairies this Midsummer Eve.

The reader is referred to

The Good Book:
Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart,

by the Rev. Peter Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard and pastor of that institution's Memorial Church.

The Rev. Gomes, an acknowledged homosexual, gave a commencement address recently wearing a gorgeously red academic gown.  This comported well with his contention that the real heroine of "Through the Looking Glass" was not Alice, but the Red Queen.  The reason?  The Red Queen, Gomes says, could believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.  Apparently this is a virtue in Christian Morals, at least at Harvard.

For a RealOne video of Gomes's address, click on the link below:

The Red Queen

(Actually, the queen who discusses "six impossible things" in Chapter 5 of Through the Looking Glass is the White Queen, but clergymen never let a little detail like truth stand in their way.)

In memory of playwright George Axelrod, who died Saturday, June 21, 2003.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

"In 1987, Mr. Axelrod was saluted at the New York Film Festival. He told the admiring crowd: 'I always wanted to get into the major leagues, and I knew my secret: luck and timing. I had a small and narrow but very, very sharp talent, and inside it, I'm as good as it gets.'

'The Manchurian Candidate,' in 1962, based on Richard Condon's novel about wartime brainwashing and subversive politics, may have been Mr. Axelrod's best achievement. He declared in 1995 that the script 'broke every rule. It's got dream sequences, flashbacks, narration out of nowhere . . . Everything in the world you're told not to do.'

He considered 'The Manchurian Candidate' a comedy...."

"Don't you draw the queen of diamonds,
     boy, she'll beat you if she's able.
You know the queen of hearts
     is always your best bet."

— The Eagles, "Desperado"

Another quotation that seems relevant:

"The hypnosis was performed by
the good and pious nuns...."

For the Diocese of Phoenix 

See entries of June 4 and June 15.

See also two items from Tuesday, June 17, 2003:

A 6/17 Arizona Daily Star article on Phoenix bishop Thomas O'Brien, and the 6/17 cartoon below.

Tony Auth, Philadelphia Inquirer,
June 17, 2003

For background, see Frank Keating in the New York Times, 6/17/03.

My entry of 5 PM EDT Saturday, June 14, 2003, which preceded the death involving Bishop O'Brien, may also be of interest.

is at no single geographical location; it is distributed throughout the planet, and it is perhaps best known (apart from its disguises in the fiction of J. K. Rowling, C. S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and other Inklings) as Christ Church.  Some relevant links:

Christ Church College, Oxford

• Harry Potter at Christ Church, Oxford

Christchurch, New Zealand

• University of Canterbury
  Physical Sciences Library:
  
  Keeping Current with the Web:
  Maths & Statistics, June 2002
  
  

  Diamond Theory:
  Symmetry in Binary Spaces
  http://m759.freeservers.com/
  The author of this site is Steven Cullinane, who has also written booklets on the subject.  The web site provides detailed discussions of Diamond Theory, and is intended for college math students or mathematicians.  According to Cullinane, Diamond Theory is best classified in the subject of "finite automorphism groups of algebraic, geometric, or combinatorial structures." The site also includes links to other resources.    From the NSDL Scout Report for Math, Engineering and Technology, Volume 1, No. 9, 7 June 2002, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2002.  http://scout.cs.wisc.edu
  

Christ Church, Christchurch Road,
Virginia Water, England

• The Vicar of Christ Church has written a scathing attack on white-trash religion, "Christian Zionism," that should be required reading for all prospective U. S. demagogues.

Finally, on this Sunday in June, with The New York Review of Books of July 3, 2003, headlining the religion of Scientism (Freeman Dyson reviewing Gleick's new book on Newton), it seems fitting to provide a link to an oasis of civilisation in the home town of mathematician John Nash -- Bluefield, West Virginia.

Christ Church,
Bluefield, West Virginia

Some links of interest
on this day of Potter-mania:

The Royal Order of the Phoenix

Knight's Gold Cross
 With Swords

awarded to
Arthur Edmonds,
Royal New Zealand Engineers,
attached to Special Operations Executive and parachuted into occupied Greece
1 October 1941,
serving with Greek guerrillas.

St. James Church Cemetery,
Kerikeri, New Zealand

In Loving Memory of
 Arthur Edmonds
who died June 20th,
1914, aged 88 years:

Logos

 Logo,
Anglican Diocese
of Auckland


Logo,
Catholic Diocese
of Phoenix

See also Cullinane College.

— Me and Frodo Down by the Schoolyard

http://www.skytopia.com/project/scale.html

http://www.tunesmithy.connectfree.co.uk/
musical_note_intervals.htm

http://www.kirnberger.fsnet.co.uk/

On actor Gregory Peck, who died Thursday, June 12, 2003:

"He had early success in 'The Keys of the Kingdom,' in which he played a priest."

As Peck noted in a videotape played at his memorial service June 16,

"As a professional," he added, "I think I'd like to be thought of as a good storyteller; that's what's always interested me."

June 16, besides being the day of Peck's memorial, was also Bloomsday.  My entry for 1 PM on Bloomsday, a day celebrating the Ulysses of James Joyce, consists of the three words "Hickory, Dickory, Dock."  A comment on that entry:

"I prefer the Wake."

The following, from the Discordian Scriptures, provides a connection between the Bloomsday mouse and the Wake of patriarch Gregory Peck.

Hickory Dickory Dock

Hickory, dickory, dock!

Here we are on higher ground at once. The clock symbolizes the spinal column, or if you prefer it, Time, chosen as one of the conditions of normal consciousness. The mouse is the Ego; "Mus", a mouse, being only "Sum", "I am", spelt Qabalistically backwards.  This Ego or Prana or Kundalini force being driven up the spine, the clock strikes one, that is, the duality of consciousness is abolished. And the force again subsides to its original level. "Hickory, dickory, dock!" is perhaps the mantra which was used by the adept who constructed this rime, thereby hoping to fix it in the minds of men; so that they might attain to Samadhi by the same method. Others attribute to it a more profound significance -- which is impossible to go into at this moment, for we must turn to:
 
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall....

The Bloom of Ulysses has a certain philosophical kinship with Yale literary critic Harold Bloom.  For material related to the latter Bloom's study of Gnosticism, see Chaos Matrix.  For the conflict between Gnostic and Petrine approaches to religion, see Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos.

From an account of Peck's memorial service:

"Mourners included... Piper Laurie...."

OK, he's in.

Hickory Dickory Dock.

Hickory Dickory Dock.

See Bloom and Midsummer Eve's Dream.

1. Triune knot:
   Problems in Combinatorial Group Theory, 7 and 8, in light of the remark in Section 8.3 of Lattice Polygons and the Number 12 
2. Cardinal Newman:
   Sermon 24
3. Simon Nickerson:
   24=8x3.

For more on the structure
discussed by Nickerson, see

Raiders of the Lost Matrix:

For theology in general, see

Jews Telling Stories.

Who is my father in this world,
    in this house,
At the spirit's base?

My father's father,
    his father's father, his --
Shadows like winds

Go back to a parent before thought,
    before speech,
At the head of the past.

They go to the cliffs of Moher
    rising out of the mist,
Above the real,

Rising out of present time
    and place, above
The wet, green grass.

This is not landscape,
    full of the somnambulations
Of poetry

And the sea. This is my father
    or, maybe,
It is as he was,

A likeness, one of
    the race of fathers: earth
And sea and air.

(Collected Poems, 501-02)

Oxford philosopher, who died Tuesday, June 10, 2003. 

"...in... Truth and Truthfulness [September, 2002], he sought to speak plainly, and took on the post-modern, politically correct notion that truth is merely relative..."

-- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

"People have always longed for truths about the world -- not logical truths, for all their utility; or even probable truths, without which daily life would be impossible; but informative, certain truths, the only 'truths' strictly worthy of the name. Such truths I will call 'diamonds'; they are highly desirable but hard to find....

A new epistemology is emerging to replace the Diamond Theory of truth. I will call it the 'Story Theory' of truth: There are no diamonds. People make up stories about what they experience. Stories that catch on are called 'true.' The Story Theory of truth is itself a story that is catching on. It is being told and retold, with increasing frequency, by thinkers of many stripes.... My own viewpoint is the Story Theory...."

-- Richard J. Trudeau, The Non-Euclidean Revolution, Birkhauser Boston, 1987

Today is the feast day of Saint Jorge Luis Borges (b. Buenos Aires, August 24, 1899 - d. Geneva, June 14, 1986).

From Borges's "The Aleph":

"The Faithful who gather at the mosque of Amr, in Cairo, are acquainted with the fact that the entire universe lies inside one of the stone pillars that ring its central court.... The mosque dates from the seventh century; the pillars come from other temples of pre-Islamic religions.... Does this Aleph exist in the heart of a stone?"

("Los fieles que concurren a la mezquita de Amr, en el Cairo, saben muy bien que el universo está en el interior de una de las columnas de piedra que rodean el patio central.... la mezquita data del siglo VII; las columnas proceden de otros templos de religiones anteislámicas.... ¿Existe ese Aleph en lo íntimo de una piedra?")

From The Hunchback of Notre Dame:

Un cofre de gran riqueza
Hallaron dentro un pilar,
Dentro del, nuevas banderas
Con figuras de espantar.*

* A coffer of great richness
In a pillar's heart they found,
Within it lay new banners,
With figures to astound.

See also the figures obtained by coloring and permuting parts of the above religious symbol.

Lena Olin and Harrison Ford
in "Hollywood Homicide"

"Surely some revelation
  is at hand" — W. B. Yeats

Behold a Pale Horse:
A link in memory of Gregory Peck.

In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion wrote that

"The oral history of Los Angeles
is written in piano bars."

Today's site music, a piano rendition of "Speak Low," from "One Touch of Venus," was suggested by

• the "black triangle" theme of Wednesday's entry and by
• the name "Amy Hollywood." 

Ms. Hollywood has an essay in the April 2003 Princeton journal Theology Today.

My own theological interests (besides those expressed in the "black triangle" link above) are much closer to those in a 2001 First Things essay, The End of Endings. 

 Washington Square Press paperback, 1981, page 222

From yesterday's New York Times:

As Spinoza noted, "If a triangle could speak, it would say... that God is eminently triangular."

— "Giving God a Break" by Nicholas D. Kristof

The figure above is by 
Robert Anton Wilson.

From today's New York Times:

"The film's personal, impious God embodies some central premises of black theology."

— Samuel G. Freedman on Morgan Freeman as God in "Bruce Almighty"

Django Reinhardt       Gypsy Jazz

Okay, okay,  a black triangle. Gypsy Symbol

From the New York Times of June 10, 2003:

As Spinoza noted, "If a triangle could speak, it would say... that God is eminently triangular."

— "Giving God a Break," by Nicholas D. Kristof

Related material:

The figure above is by
Robert Anton Wilson.

From "The Cocktail Party," Act One, Scene One, by T. S. Eliot:

UNIDENTIFIED GUEST [Sings]:

Tooryooly toory-iley
   What's the matter with One Eyed Riley?

[Exit.]

JULIA:  Edward, who is that dreadful man? 

From T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950 (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1952), page 144:

"The end is where we start from."

From the end of that same book:

"And me be-in' the One-Eyed Ri-ley"

For more on this song, see

Reilly's Daughter (with midi tune),

One-Eyed Riley (adults only), and

Riley's Daughter question (forum).

See also my previous journal entry of June 6, 2003

and the perceptive analysis of the Shakti-Shiva symbol that I quoted on May 25, 2003.

Here is a note from Sept. 15, 1984, for those who would like to
block that metaphor.

See also Block Designs from the Cabinet of Dr. Montessori and Sacerdotal Jargon.

Today is the feast day of Saint Gerard Manley Hopkins, "immortal diamond."

"At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being--the reward he seeks--the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity."

— Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River

Thomas Wolfe

"entered the university at Chapel Hill at fifteen 'an awkward, unhappy misfit.' By the time he graduated, he was editor of the college newspaper...."

Jeff MacNelly, who died on this date in the Year of Our Lord 2000,

"in 1977 started drawing the comic strip 'Shoe'.... The strip was named in honor of the legendary Jim Shumaker, for whom MacNelly worked at the Chapel Hill Weekly." 

From my Monday, June 2, 2003 entry:

Two quotations from "The Diamond Project":

"We all know that something is eternal," the Stage Manager says. "And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even stars—everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings."
— John Lahr, review of "Our Town" 

"Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; for love is strong as death, passion fierce as the grave.  Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame."
— Song of Solomon

Here are some other thoughts from the same date, but a different time, fictional time, Faulkner time:

June Second, 1910

Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water a long time after a while the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibers waving slow as the motion of sleep. They dont touch one another, no matter how knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the bones. And maybe when He says Rise the eyes will come floating up too, out of the deep quiet and the sleep, to look on glory.

— William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

The concluding link from my June 2, 2003, entry furnishes a clue to the timelessness of Quentin Compson's thoughts above:

Glory... Song of Songs 8. 7-8

From the King James Bible's rendition of the Song of Songs:

8:7  Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.
8:8  We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?

For Quentin Compson's thoughts on his little sister Caddy, consult the online hypertext edition of

For the birthday of Miss Jessica Tandy

Wien, Wien, nur du allein
Sollst stets die Stadt meiner Träume sein!
Dort, wo die alten Häuser stehn,
Dort, wo die lieblichen Mädchen gehn!
Wien, Wien, nur du allein
Sollst stets die Stadt meiner Träume sein!
Dort, wo ich glücklich und selig bin,
Ist Wien, ist Wien, mein Wien!

The web page where I found today's midi of "Wien, Wien, nur du allein" offers a view of the pulpit of the Stephansdom in Vienna.  From Hermann Weyl's Symmetry:

"Here (Fig. 41) is the gracefully designed staircase of the pulpit of the Stephan's dome in Vienna; a triquetrum alternates with a swastika-like wheel."

The closest to Weyl's Figure 41 that I can find on the Web is located here.

Perhaps Stanley Kowalski had a lower opinion than Blanche DuBois of swastika-like wheels.

"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 my entry of Monday, June 2, 2003:

William Holden and Martha Scott
in "Our Town," 1940 

Holden            Scott

From a website titled Child of a Voice: 

"The Talmud says, even in a time when there is no more prophecy there can still be the Daughter of a Voice.

The Tosefot explain: this is like the sound the echo of a hammer makes when it strikes something, and the sound echoes back from mountains. Not the Voice, but a daughter, a child of it.

Not the sound but the echo of a sound. Not the prophecy from God in its purest way, but in a less pure way.

Now because of our sins there is no more prophecy but in a time when there is no prophecy there can be Daughter of a Voice."

Copyright Abraham Mezrich 2003

From a July 1999 review of a novel:

"The good news is that this is perhaps Ben Mezrich’s finest thriller. The irony is that he used a pen name on it."

Departing New York Times executive editor
Howell Raines:

"Remember, when a great story breaks out,
go like hell."

Returning executive editor Joseph Lelyveld

Good Will's Oscar

From the date "Good Will Hunting" was released:

Friday, December 5, 1997 "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 To: The executive editor, The New York Times Re: The Front Page/His Girl Friday Match the speaker with the speech —
The Speech— "The son of a bitch stole my..."			The Speaker	Frame of Reference
1.	rosebud	A.	J. Paul Getty	The front page, N.Y. Times, Monday, 12/1/97
2.	clock	B.	Joel Silver	Page 126, The New Yorker, 3/21/94
3.	act	C.	Blanche DuBois	The Elysian Fields
4.	waltz	D.	Bob Geldof	People Weekly 12/8/97
5.	temple	E.	St. Michael	Heaven's Gate
6.	watch	F.	Susanna Moore	In the Cut (pbk., Dec. '96) p. 261
7.	line	G.	Joseph Lelyveld	Page A21, The New York Times, 12/1/97
8.	chair	H.	Kylie Minogue	Page 69, People Weekly, 12/8/97
9.	religion	I.	Carol Gilligan	The Garden of Good and Evil
10.	wife	J.	John Travolta	"Michael," the movie
11.	harp	K.	Shylock	Page 40, N.Y. Review of Books, 12/4/97
12.	Oscar	L.	Stephen King	The Shining (pbk., 1997), pp. 316, 317

Postscript of June 5, 2003:

"...while the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time ... all forming an instantaneous and transparent organism of events...."

— Vladimir Nabokov

"Where is Evelyn Waugh when you need him?"
— Roger Kimball, "Minimalist Fantasies" 

"Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell —
known collectively in the Catholic world as
the Four Last Things. They would have
formed the basis for a course of
uncomfortable meditations...."
— A Companion to Evelyn Waugh's
Brideshead Revisited, by David Cliffe

Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell.

Click on pictures for details.

A follow-up to yesterday
afternoon's entry of

O fearful meditation! Where, alack,
Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid?

— Shakespeare, Sonnet 65

Pop Culture's answer:

"Flashes of fire,
a raging flame!"
— Song of Solomon

Click on the album title "0304" for details.

A different answer:

03/04

Click on the date "03/04" for details.

From the New York Times of May (Mental Health Month) 31, 2003:

Martha Scott,
Original Emily in "Our Town,"
Dies at 88

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Martha Scott, who created the role of the sweet, ethereal Emily in the original Broadway production of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" and was nominated for an Oscar for repeating it in the film version, died on Wednesday [May 28, 2003] in Los Angeles. She was 88.

United Artists

Martha Scott with William Holden
in the 1940 film of "Our Town."

A quotation from Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon: