this journal blug

Virginia Woolf has a birthday today...

The Scilly Isles were turning bluish; and suddenly blue, purple, and green flushed the sea; left it grey; struck a stripe which vanished; but when Jacob had got his shirt over his head the whole floor of the waves was blue and white, rippling and crisp, though now and again a broad purple mark appeared, like a bruise; or there floated an entire emerald tinged with yellow. He plunged. He gulped in water, spat it out, struck with his right arm, struck with his left, was towed by a rope, gasped, splashed, and was hauled on board.

so... some students had the idea that... since i was having trouble finding an appropriate graphic device for my front page i might put their mugs up... so... a few posed today... and i'll post them... with their permission... in some kind of random sequence... i have fiddled with all of them in photoshop... so the quality of the picture should in no way be taken for the quality of the actual factual face...

TV's 'Captain Kangaroo' dies:

Bob Keeshan, who gently entertained and educated generations of children as television's walrus-mustachioed Captain Kangaroo, died Friday at 76.

lots of time... back in the day... passed in this guy's presence... i thought he'd be much older... ninety, at least...

fait accompli

I associate narrative structure with predictable outcomes,
even when the outcomes are predictably unpredictable. The
more predictable outcomes become for the practiced viewer
(and we are all now incredibly practiced viewers) the more
outrageous the endings have to become, in their soon to
be predictable ways. (nick piombino)

Language is a Trojan horse by which the universe gets into the mind.
-Hugh Kenner, Canadian scholar and literary critic, The Portrait in Perspective, 1962

look what happens here in this from Jacob's Room:

"But the Daily Mail isn't to be trusted, " Jacob said to himself, looking about for something else to read. And he sighed again, being indeed so profoundly gloomy that gloom must have been lodged in him to cloud him at any moment, which was odd in a man who enjoyed things so, was not much given to analysis, but was horribly romantic, of course, Bonamy thought, in his rooms in Lincoln's Inn.

this seamless drift from Jacob to Bonamy... from Jacob thinking about the newspaper to Bonamy thinking about Jacob... nothing but perception itself is stable in this book's world... a weekend assignment for ap lit... compose three pieces like this... that drift...

The Word Spy looks like a really good spot.

i really hate when it's late at night and i take a lot of time to type up a message to the wendell berry group and i send it off... only to realize that my email has... once again... reset itself (?)... and i've lost all my settings... and none of my mesages go through... i really hate when that happens...

also been trying to think of a favorite passage for the current business over at the wendell berry group... there are a few... we'll see...

The Rules of the Game came today and i watched it tonight... to my untrained eye, criterion has done a great job... sure beats the old tape i've been watching for years... it's such a gently vicious movie...

and all the supplementary features make it a class in a box... i've barely scratched the surface... loved renoir's "rotten culture" comments in his intro...

i never watch movies on thursday nights... i've always got school work... but tonight was a little different... i think i know what's happening in class tomorrow... so i took a deep breath and popped in the dvd...

loren at In a Dark Time is thinking about one of my favorites, Sherman Alexie...

happy birthday suzanne!!!

today might be Leadbelly's Birthday... a quick scan of google gives at least three different dates: 1.29.85, 1.20.89, 1.21.88 (and last night i think i stumbled onto two or three others)... at any rate, leadbelly's cool and probably deserves three or five birthdays...

worldlit turned in their brief papers on Siddhartha... and... i was struggling to determine what's next... we need to get into HoD and TFA... but i'm aweary of them now... another 150 pages of Midnight's Children is due in a week... so that's their big reading (and mine) i guess... so... i begin showing Pather Panchali... to continue the india theme... how do i get out of india? perhaps there is no way out... but then... slip on over to Africa for a bit... after we do MC, of course... next week... and more writing... we will all write much more this quarter... i promise

London Bloggers: organised by the rather laconic London Tube map

Map of John Snow's London in 1859

tonio has written an exceptionally clear consideration of depression and suicide... one of the best i (who... thankfully... have never been in that whale's belly) have ever read...

Hotel Point responds to the believer/atkinson/yasusada/hoax thingy:

The best way to respond to a hoax is to "hoax more, hoax without remission." So Rufus Grattius put it. (Akin, I suppose, to Oscar Wilde's dictum, a favorite of mine: "To stay young, what one must needs do is continue uninterruptedly and repeatedly to commit the follies of youth." Akin, too, to Henry Adams's singular admission, as a writer of history, that "the worst lives were the candid.")

Do American flags belong in Catholic churches?

In some Catholic parishes, of course, the flag has always been around, placed in a corner of the sanctuary or flying in front of the church building. For some Catholics, seeing the flag in church joins God and country-the way they should be-while for others, flags in church represent an abhorrent marriage of nationalism and faith.

Flags in Church?:

The USA Bishops Committee on the Liturgy document Environment and Art in Catholic Worship [1978] advised us for years saying in paragraph 101:


Although the art and decoration of the liturgical space will be that of the local culture, identifying symbols of particular cultures, groups, or nations are not appropriate as permanent parts of the liturgical environment. While such symbols might be used for a particular occasion or holiday, they should not regularly constitute a part of the environment of common prayer.


The current document on liturgical art and norms for the United States, Built on Living Stones, does not address the issue at all.

this piece... part's beati mundo corde... (no... it's not by arvo part...just some lovely generic church chant... i guess... the album is ikos) folds itself up just as i'm finishing jacob's room... just as jacob dissolves... like the voices here