Bob Davidoff
and Lester Lanin,
an arrangement of
the Red Sox anthem:
Sunday, October 31, 2004 12:12 PM
| From today's New York Times, in reverse order: Vaughn Meader, Star as Kennedy Mimicker, Dies at 68 Vaughn Meader was a comic who attained instant celebrity in 1962 with his record "The First Family," a dead-on spoof of President John F. Kennedy and his entourage. James Rousmaniere, 86, Skilled Yachtsman, Dies James A. Rousmaniere was a socially prominent yachtsman and professional fund-raiser. Sister Nancy Salisbury, 74, Headmistress, Dies Sister Nancy Salisbury was the longtime headmistress of New York's oldest independent school for girls, the Convent of the Sacred Heart.. |
For more background, see the Log24.net entry of 3 AM Friday, the date of Meader's death. See also a Boston Globe obituary that quotes John F. Kennedy: "Vaughn Meader was busy tonight, so I came myself."
Note that Rousmaniere was John F. Kennedy's roommate at Harvard.
Note, too, that Kennedy's daughter Caroline attended Sister Salisbury's school.
A memorial Mass for Sister Salisbury will be held on Monday, November 22, 2004, at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola, 980 Park Avenue, at 5:30 pm.
What does all this Camelot portend? I do not know, but the following quote seems appropriate.
"Flores, flores para los muertos."
-- Tennessee Williams, 1947
Friday, October 29, 2004 12:12 PM
Song
"Each epoch has its singer."
-- Jack London, Oakland, California, 1901
"Anything but the void. And so we keep hoping to luck into a winning combination, to tap into a subtle harmony, trying like lock pickers to negotiate a compromise with the 'mystery tramp,' as Bob Dylan put it...."
-- Dennis Overbye, Quantum Baseball,
New York Times, Oct. 26, 2004
"You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp,
but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into
the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to
make a deal?"
-- Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone
"About a century ago scientists began to realize that beneath the too, too solid veneer of what had passed for reality for 2,000 years there was some pretty funny and fuzzy business going on....
Most of us, I suspect, would rather believe that the devil is running things than that no one is in charge, that our lives, our loves, World Series victories, hang on the whims of fate and chains of coincidences, on God throwing dice, as Einstein once referred to quantum randomness....
[But] we are people, with desires and memories and a sense of humor - not Ping-Pong balls."
-- Dennis Overbye, Quantum Baseball,
New York Times, Oct. 26, 2004
"You can be replaced by some ping-pong balls and a dictionary."
-- Anonymous source, March 29, 2001
Friday, October 29, 2004 3:00 AM
Thursday, October 28, 2004 7:11 PM
Hell Freezes Over
department:
In honor of this event, here is a recording of Sinatra singing "Sweet Caroline" (RealAudio, 782K) on the Fourth of July, 1974, aboard the U.S.S. Midway at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan.
Thursday, October 21, 2004 2:00 PM
A Date Which Will
Live in Infamy
| Log24.net Sunday, Annals of Education: Eyes on the Prize Dialogue from Will: He used to just put a belt, Sean: Gotta go with the belt, there. Will: I used to go with the wrench.
|
Today's saint's day:
St. Ursula
Today's birthday:
Ursula K. Le Guin
Today's Scripture:
Zen and the Art
of Motorcycle Maintenance
"Then, on impulse, Phædrus went over to his bookshelf and picked out a small, blue, cardboard-bound book. He'd hand-copied this book and bound it himself years before, when he couldn't find a copy for sale anywhere. It was the 2,400-year-old Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu. He began to read....
Phædrus read on through line after line, verse after verse of this, watched them match, fit, slip into place. Exactly. This was what he meant. This was what he'd been saying all along, only poorly, mechanistically. There was nothing vague or inexact about this book. It was as precise and definite as it could be. It was what he had been saying, only in a different language with different roots and origins. He was from another valley seeing what was in this valley, not now as a story told by strangers but as a part of the valley he was from. He was seeing it all.
He had broken the code.
He read on. Line after line. Page after page. Not a discrepancy. What he had been talking about all the time as Quality was here the Tao, the great central generating force of all religions, Oriental and Occidental, past and present, all knowledge, everything."
Thursday, October 21, 2004 3:28 AM
Wooing
"Cheering from Red Sox fans could be heard in the ninth, and when pinch-hitter Ruben Sierra grounded to second baseman Pokey Reese for the final out at 12:01 a.m., Boston players ran onto the field and jumped together in a mass huddle.
'The greatest comeback in baseball history,' Red Sox owner John Henry proclaimed."
-- Boston Red Sox Make History,
AP 10/21/04
Film dialogue:
Will
So, when did you know, like,
that she was the one for you?
Sean
October 21st, 1975.
Will
Jesus Christ.
You know the f---in' date?
See also the previous entry,
of 12:00:31 AM ET.
Thursday, October 21, 2004 12:00 AM
Today's birthdays:
See Oct. 21, 2002.
Monday, October 18, 2004 3:33 PM
Counting Crows
on the Feast of St. Luke
"In the fullness of time,
educated people will believe
there is no soul
independent of the body,
and hence no life after death."
-- Francis Crick, who was awarded
a Nobel Prize on this date in 1962
"She went to the men on the ground and looked at them and then she found Inman apart from them. She sat and held him in her lap. He tried to talk, but she hushed him. He drifted in and out and dreamed a bright dream of a home. It had a coldwater spring rising out of a rock, black dirt fields, old trees. In his dream, the year seemed to be happening all at one time, all the seasons blending together. Apple trees hanging heavy with fruit but yet unaccountably blossoming, ice rimming the spring, okra plants blooming yellow and maroon, maple leaves red as October, corn crops tasseling, a stuffed chair pulled up to the glowing parlor hearth, pumpkins shining in the fields, laurels blooming on the hillsides, ditch banks full of orange jewelweed, white blossoms on dogwood, purple on redbud. Everything coming around at once. And there were white oaks, and a great number of crows, or at least the spirits of crows, dancing and singing in the upper limbs. There was something he wanted to say."
-- Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
Sunday, October 17, 2004 1:00 AM
Last BellSaturday, October 16, 2004 3:09 PM
| The Necessity For Story
shows how readily we as individuals or we as a culture can automatically visualize a basic story motif. We may each see the particular elements of the story differently, but almost instantaneously we catch its drift. The hero sails up the river of death to discover what lies within his own heart: i.e., how much moral and physical strength he has. Indiana Jones sails up the River of Death. We are following Indiana Jones up the River of Death. We're going to visit with Colonel Kurtz. (You may not want to get off the boat.) No, I am not mixing up metaphors. These are the Story. |
Saturday, October 16, 2004 5:24 AM
Saturday, October 16, 2004 4:09 AM
4:09 AM:
Saturday, October 16, 2004 12:00 AM
Midnight in the Garden
continued
Umberto Eco, Here, too, you entered through a little garden... Amparo drew me aside as we went in. "I've figured it out," she said. "That tapir at the lecture talked about the Aryan age, remember? And this one talks about the decline of the West. Blut und Boden, blood and earth. It's pure Nazism." "It's not that simple, darling. This is a different continent.".... If the outside was seedy, the inside was a blaze of violent colors. It was a quadrangular hall, with one area set aside for the dancing of the cavalos. The altar was at the far end, protected by a railing, against which stood the platform for the drums, the atabaques. The ritual space was still empty.... |
"Atabaque - a large tom-tom
that is used in Afro-Brazilian
religious celebrations"
-- The Sounds of Samba
at Yale
"Of African origin, and made of jacarandá wood in a conical shape. A calfskin head covers the top of the drum. It is used a lot in capoeria and candomblé and umbanda rituals all over Brazil. There are three kinds of atabaques: Rum, Rumpi, and Lê. Rum has the deepest sound and is a solo drum; Rumpi has a medium sound, and Lê is the highest. These three hold the beat."
Like the beat, beat, beat of the tom-tom....
--- Cole Porter, "Night and Day"
| Your feats end enormous, your volumes immense, (May the Graces I hoped for sing your Ondtship song sense!), Your genus its worldwide, your spacest sublime! But, Holy Saltmartin, why can't you beat time? In the name of the former and of the latter and of their holocaust. Allmen. |
