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editor
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 Posted: Wed Jan 04, 2006 2:57 pm Post subject: A Gambler's Prayer |
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A Gambler's Prayer:
The Penelopiad
The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus
Hardcover
By Margaret Atwood
| Quote: | Who is to say that prayers have any effect? On the other hand, who is to say they don't? I picture the gods, diddling around on Olympus, wallowing in the nectar and ambrosia and the aroma of burning bones and fat, mischievous as a pack of ten-year-olds with a sick cat to play with and a lot of time on their hands. "Which prayer shall we answer today?" they ask one another. "Let's cast dice! Hope for this one, despair for that one, and while we're at it, let's destroy the life of that woman over there by having sex with her in the form of a crayfish!" I think they pull a lot of their pranks because they're bored.
Twenty years of my prayers had gone unanswered. But, finally, not this one. No sooner had I performed the familiar ritual and shed the familiar tears than Odysseus himself shambled into the courtyard. (From chapter xix, Yelp of Joy, at p. 135) |
Few curiosities are as pleasantly distracting as the ancient theme revisited by a contemporary novelist and poet sufficiently scholarly to be at home among the relics, but be warned: sensitive readers unfamiliar with Atwood may occasionally feel as if they've swallowed a handful of razor blades, especially when Penelope trades barbs with penultimate bitch Helen of Troy.
And as theatre:
| Quote: | COUNTRY LIFE
Weekly Magazine Subscription
Review Performing Arts
BY THE BOOK
Michael Billington applauds Margaret
Atwood's adaptation of The Penelopiad for the RSC
Aug. 9/07
| Quote: | I shall miss The Swan in Stratford-upon-Avon. Due to shut down until 2010 while the main theatre is rebuilt, it is a wonderfully intimate space that bre3aks down actor-audience barriers. And, as its closing production, it houses Margaret Atwood's own version of her book The Penelopiad, which offers a witty, elegant variation on Homeric myth. It makes for a short, spectacular evening in which the RSC joins forces with Canada's National Arts Centre; but, for all the fizz and bounce of Josette Bushell-Mingo's all-female production, I found myself yearning for the emotional satisfaction of drama.
... The execution is fine. What I question is the wisdom of turning Miss Atwood's dazzling literary conceit into a piece of kaleidoscopic, song-and-dance theatre. (-- p. 82) |
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 10:49 am Post subject: |
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Paintings that Changed the World
From Lascaux to Picasso
Hardcover
Edited by Jane Milosch and Michele Schons
| Quote: | | Pray and play: In the Bavarian monastery at Andechs the monks still observe the Rule of St. Benedict. But this does not mean they are not allowed to play the odd game of cards! (Cutline under a photo of monks in habits testing their luck at the card table in a lush garden patio, at p. 24). |
| Quote: | In Europe, the significance of the Rule and its fruit are far reaching. St. Benedict's basic principle of "ora et labora" (prayer and work) represents a deliberate rejection of the otherworldly piety practised by the early ascetics of the deserts. The Rule, in contrast, requires the individual monk to pay more than lip-service to God by serving Him with his hands. Thus many Benedictine monasteries became the leading centres of culture in Europe, in which the art of manuscript illumination and the chronicling of history, the writing of poetry and music, the practice of agriculture and animal husbandry flourished. The best schools and the most modern hospitals of the early and high Middle Ages were run by sophisticated and highly educated monks who wrore the habit of St. Benedict.
What do we know about St. Benedict himself, the "father of monks and educator of the West"? He was born in the Italian town of Nursia in c. 480, and later lived as a recluse in a forest east of Rome. Around 529, St. Benedict founded Europe's first monastery at Monte Cassino near Naples, which the fountain of European monasticism and, presumably, the place where the saint died in 547. Today, scholars question the veracity of the various details of his life which have come down to us; some even doubt whether there was a St. Benedict at all. Yet, it is certain that the Rule, which bears the name of St. Benedict, has powerfully formed European civilsation and culture. (-- p. 24) |
The Rule of St. Benedict
Paperback
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editor
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 2:41 pm Post subject: |
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Uncle Fred in the Springtime
Hardcover
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | "I wish you wouldn't keep saying 'Lord B.' It sounds as if you had been starting to call me something improper and changed your mind. Where was I? Oh, yes. When I'm at home, I don't get a chance of little games of cards. My wife objects."
"Some wives are like that. You start out in life a willing, eager sportsman, ready to take anybody on at anything and then you meet a girl and fall in love, and when you come out of the ether you find not only that you are married but that you have signed on for a lifetime of bridge at threepence a hundred."
"Too true," sighed Mr. Pott.
"No more friendly little games with nothing barred except biting and bottles."
"Ah!" said Mr. Pott.
"We could do far worse," said Lord Bosham, "while we're waiting for these impostors to get up steam, than have a friendly little game now."
"As your lordship pleases."
Lord Bosham winced.
"I wish you wouldn't use that expression. It was what counsel for the defence kept saying to the judge at my breach-of-promise case, every time the latter ticked him off for talking out of his turn. So don't do it, if you don't mind."
"Very good, your lordship."
"And don't call me 'your lordship,' either. I hate all this formality. I like your face...well, no, that's overstating it a bit...put it this way, I like your personality, bloodhound, and feel that we shall be friends. Call me Bosham."
"Right ho, Bosham."
"I'll ring for some cards, shall I?"
"Don't bother to do that, Bosham. I have some."
The sudden appearance of a well-thumbed pack from the recesses of Mr. Pott's costume seemed to interest Lord Bosham.
"Do you always go about with a pack of cards on you?"
"When I travel. I like to play solitaire in the train."
"Do you play anything else?"
"I am fond of Snap."
"Yes, Snap's a good game."
"And Animal Grab."
"That's not bad, either. But I can tell you something that's better than both."
"Have ----------------" said Mr. Pott.
"Have you -------------" said Lord Bosham.
"Have you ever ---------" said Mr. Pott.
"Have you ever," concluded Lord Bosham, "heard of a game called Persian Monarchs?"
Mr. Pott's eyes rolled up to the ceiling, and for an instant he could not speak. His lips moved silently. He may have been praying. (-- pgs. 139-140) |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 8:53 am Post subject: |
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The Vancouver Sun
Forgettable Corporate Medium
The quality of justice and the
right sentence
Critics complain when judges
don't appear to aplly the law,
and complain louder when they do
By Peter McKnight
April 14/07
| Quote: | | In the early 19th century, preacher Lorenzo Dow condemned his fellow ministers for giving their followers contradictory messages. "You're damned if you do and damned if you don't," Dow said of the no-win no man's land into which some preachers cast their flocks. (-- p. C10) |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 10:25 am Post subject: |
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The Poker Face of Wall Street
Hardcover
By Aaron Brown
| Quote: | ...The Bible and other ancient sources make frequent references to casting lots to determine God's will.
Recreational gambling got less respect. In general it was tolerated but discouraged. Playing with instruments God gave us for the most serious social decisions seemed impious. Monotheism introduced the idea that we should passively accept whatever fate God dealt. Gambling seemed to be a refusal to do that...(From Chapter 4, A Brief History of Risk Denial, at p. 75) |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Aug 20, 2007 10:10 am Post subject: |
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Thirst
Poems by Mary Oliver
Hardcover
| Quote: | Praying
It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attnetion, then patch
a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.
(-- p. 37) |
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| Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2007 9:16 am Post subject: |
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Staying Alive
Real Poems for Unreal Times
Paperback
Edited by Bloodaxe founder Neil Astley
| Quote: | Journey of the Magi
"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.
Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.
All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.
T.S. Eliot
(-- pgs. 427-428) |
Link to this entry
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Last edited by editor on Sat Dec 29, 2007 4:31 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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Death Comes for the Archbishop
Paperback
By Willa Cather
| Quote: | That congested heaping up of the Rocky Mountain chain about Pike's Peak was a blank space on the continent at this time. Even the fur trappers, coming down from Wyoming to Taos with their pelts, avoided that humped granite backbone. Only a few years before, Fremont had tried to penetrate the Colorado Rockies, and his party had come half-starved into Taos at last, having eaten most of their mules. But within twelve months everything had changed. Wandering prospectors had found large deposits of gold along Cherry Creek, and the mountains that were solitary a year ago were now full of people. Wagon trains were streaming westward across the prairies from the Missouri River.
The Bishop of Leavenworth wrote Father Latour that he himself had just returned from a visit to Colorado. He had found the slopes under Pike's Peak dotted with camps, the gorges black with placer miners: thousands of people were living in tents and shacks, Denver City was full of saloons and gambling-rooms; and among all the wanderers and wastrels were many honest men, hundreds of good Catholics, and not one priest. The young men were adrift in a lawless society without spiritual guidance. The old men died from exposure and mountain pneumonia, with no one to give them the last rites of the Church.
This new and populous community must, for the present, the Kansas bishop wrote, be accounted under Father Latour's jurisdiction. His great diocese, already enlarged by thousands of square miles to the south and west, must now, on the north, take in the still undefined but suddenly important region of the Colorado Rockies. The Bishop of Leavenworth begged him to send a priest there as soon as possible, - an able one, by all means, not only devoted, but resourceful and intelligent, one who would be at his ease with all sorts of men. He must take his bedding and camp outfit, medicines and provisions, and clothing for the severe winter. At Camp Denver there was nothing to be bought but tobacco and whisky. There were no women there, and no cook stoves. The miners lived on half-baked dough and alcohol. They did not even keep the mountain water pure, and so died of fever. All the living conditions were abominable. (From Gold Under Pike's Peak, pgs. 244-245) |
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