There is a wisdom in the ordering of the world.

“Out of the golden remote wild west where the sea without shore is/Full of the sunset and sad if at all with the fullness of joy…” I love these lines from Swinburne, but dactylic hexameter is sadly out of the question. Though sometimes Longfellow really hits it right in Evangeline.

Windmills on the moon would kill the whales.

Afterwards I get up From the cafe table And go out through the swinging doors Absorbed And see outside everything is still —suddenly: a house that stares From wide open windows A dog that barks Far off —Good god!

From ‘Wind Over Romsdal’ (1982)
—Knut Odegard (tr. George Johnston)

#poetry #poem #booksky

Speaking as an Arizonan, I’m concerned about some of the choices you are making.

A garden in Arizona with yellow and orange flowers in front of an ocotillo.

When I was young I was indifferent to flowers. Then in my 50s a blue bergamot blossom in my overgrown yard opened the azure gates, and I’ve loved them ever since. The flowers in front of the ocotillo are Caesalpinia Pulcherrima, a common ornamental here in Arizona, native to the Caribbean.
#flowers

It’s been a while since I read it, but I recall that despite all the Victorian implausibilities in the plot line, Dickens’s portrayal of Headstone showed real insight into an aberrant stalker-type personality. Scary.

Good God!

I read in a history of England by Peter Ackroyd that for basically centuries the main concern of English monarchs was amassing personal wealth and power, and their only real obligation to the people was defense or conquest. This is where we seem to be heading, but with even defense conditional.

Uh, it’s a word. “If there’s a brussell in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now…”

(Flips through thesaurus)… homunculus

Agincourt, how well I remember. Grassley took an arrow straight in the occipital, says, “Don, it’s only a scratch. And I’ll be better, I’ll be better Don as soon as I am able.”

May be confusing myself here, but I seem to recall “It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry” from an album with Merle Saunders. Garcia’s delivery of the line “Don’t the sun look pretty good mama shining through the trees” has stuck with me.

From Danusha Laméris's book, Bonfire Opera: bit.ly/bonfireoperaBK

#poem #books #writing

A Courtyard in Delft at Evening: a Woman spinning Pieter de Hooch, 1657. (Royal Collection Trust, HM CIII)

If these protests were being managed by the DNC, I’m sure there would have been focus groups to work out the best optics. But since they are the spontaneous response of people being oppressed—who probably don’t have American flags just lying around—outsiders don’t have much say.

Interestingly, McClean had originally written the lyric as “Drove my Ford to the fjord with a baby on board” but feared the evoked landscape might be overly Scandinavian, if not in fact Norwegian. It was Mick Jagger, an Englishman, who nudged him in the right direction.

Khmer Orange, I should say.

Definitely giving Khmer Rouge.

Quite informative. Thanks!

Very interesting. My knowledge of this is admittedly slight, but phrase that always struck me as a little fishy is where he allows this Christ could be something other than a man. What, then? Seems unlikely he would consider the son of God claim.

The prohibition on sitting with crossed legs cracks me up. If you look at photos from the Civil War era, you’ll often see men—like general Grant—sitting with crossed legs. People who could snap Jesse Watters in two like a stale pretzel.

It is. Sometimes you just want to sit down and cross your legs.

Wishing you success and satisfaction in your new endeavor

Though it isn’t a curse word, my wife and I get great use out of the Russian word субъект (subyect), which has a pointedly dismissive sense when applied to a person. We use it to refer to someone present in an official capacity who does nothing but stand around uselessly.

Did she gaze into the middle distance as she casually rotated her head 270 degrees?

Bee: buzz buzz

Speech and Hearing: Enunciate, baby.

He’s been reading Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, so he’s naturally disaffected.

Bullock’s Oriole. Orange with black markings

Bullock’s Oriole, orange with black markings

Bullock’s Oriole, southeastern Arizona, May 7

#birds

Sometimes this seems almost incomprehensible to me, but then I realize that it isn’t really in pursuit of a policy agenda as such. They are doing this because they viscerally hate science, they hate art, they hate free speech. Then it makes sense.