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 Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2008 11:25 am Post subject: |
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Time's River
The Voyage of Life in Art and Poetry
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Hardcover
Selected by Kate Farrell
| Quote: | Waiting Both
A star looks down at me,
And says: "Here I and you
Stand each in our degree:
What do you mean to do, --
Mean to do?"
I say: "For all I know,
Wait, and let Time go by,
Till my change come." -- "Just so,"
The star says: "So mean I: --
So mean I."
Thomas Hardy, English, 1840-1928
(-- p. 44, adjacent to Italian, Playing Cards, 15th century) |
| Quote: | Absence
Every night I scan
the heavens with my eyes
seeking the star
that you are contemplating.
I question travelers
from the four corners of the earth
hoping to meet one
who has breathed your fragrance.
When the wind blows
I make sure it blows in my face:
the breeze might bring me
news of you.
I wander over roads
without aim, without purpose.
Perhaps a song
will sound your name.
Secretly I study
every face I see
hoping against hope
to glimpse a trace of your beauty.
Abu Bakr al-Turtushi, Eastern Andalusian,
1059-1126
Translated by Cola Franzen
(-- p. 48, adjacent to Albert Pinkham Ryder, Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens, 1888-1981) |
| Quote: | We Never Said Farewell
We never said farewell, nor even looked
Our last upon each other, for no sign
Was made when we the linkèd chain unhooked
And broke the level line.
And here we dwell together, side by side,
Our places fixed for life upon the chart.
Two islands that the roaring seas divide
Are not more far apart.
Mary Coleridge, English, 1861-1907
(-- p. 68) |
| Quote: | In Our Souls
In our souls everything
moves guided by a mysterious hand.
We know nothing of our own souls
that are ununderstandable and say nothing.
The deepest words
of the wise man teach us
the same as the whistle of the wind when it blows
or the sound of the water when it is flowing.
Antonio Machado, Spanish, 1875-1939
Translated by Robert Bly
(-- p. 70, adjacent to Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Seine, c. 1902) |
| Quote: | At a Window
Give me hunger,
O you gods that sit and give
The world its orders.
Give me hunger, pain and want,
Shut me out with shame and failure
From your doors of gold and fame,
Give me your shabbiest, weariest hunger!
But leave me a little love,
A voice to speak to me in the day end,
A hand to touch me in the dark room
Breaking the long loneliness.
In the dusk of day-shapes
Blurring the sunset,
One little wandering, western star
Thrust out from the changing shores of shadow.
Let me go to the window,
Watch there the day-shapes of dusk,
And wait and know the coming
Of a little love.
Carl Sandburg, American, 1878-1967
(-- p. 67, adjacent to Rene Magritte, La condition humaine, 1933) |
| Quote: | The Ticket
On the night table
Beside my bed
I keep a small
Blue ticket
One day I found it
In my pocket-book
I don't know how
It got there
I don't know
What it's for
On one side
There's a number
98833
And
INDIANA TICKET COMPANY
And on the other side
The only thing it says
Is KEEP THIS TICKET
I keep it carefully
Because I'm old
Which means
I'll soon be leaving
For another country
Where possibly
Some blinding-bright
Enormous angel
Will stop me
At the border
And ask
To see my ticket.
Anne Porter, American, b. 1911
(-- p. 103, adjacent to Lucille Chabot, Gabriel Weather Vane, c. 1939) |
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| Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 11:32 am Post subject: |
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Art and Nature
An Illustrated Anthology of Nature Poetry
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Hardcover
Selected by Kate Farrell
| Quote: | ARS POETICA
To gaze at the river made of time and water
And recall that time itself is another river,
To know we cease to be, just like the river,
And that our faces pass away, just like the water.
To feel that waking is another sleep
That dreams it does not sleep and that death,
Which our flesh dreads, is that very death
Of every night, which we call sleep.
To see in the day or in the year a symbol
of makind’s days and of his years,
To transform the ourtage of the years
Into a music, a rumor and a symbol,
To see in death a sleep, and in the sunset
A sad gold, of such is Poetry
Immortal and a pauper. For Poetry
Returns like the dawn and the sunset.
At times in the afternoon a face
Looks at us from the depths of a mirror;
Art must be like that mirror
That reveals to us this face of ours.
They tell how Ulysses, glutted with wonders,
Wept with love to descry his Ithaca
Humble and green. Art is that Ithaca
Of green eternity, not of wonders.
It is also like an endless river
That passes and remains, a mirror for one same
Inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
And another, like an endless river.
Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine, 1899-1986
(-- p. 64) |
| Quote: | Arte Poética
Mirar el río hecho de tiempo y agua
y recordar que el tiempo es otro río,
saber que nos perdemos como el río
y que los rostros pasan como el agua.
Sentir que la vigilia es otro sueño
que sueña no soñar y que la muerte
que teme nuestra carne es esa muerte
de cada noche, que se llama sueño.
Ver en el día o en el año un símbolo
de los días del hombre y de sus años,
convertir el ultraje de los años
en una música, un rumor y un símbolo,
ver en la muerte el sueño, en el ocaso
un triste oro, tal es la poesía
que es inmortal y pobre. La poesía
vuelve como la aurora y el ocaso.
A veces en las tardes una cara
nos mira desde el fondo de un espejo;
el arte debe ser como ese espejo
que nos revela nuestra propia cara.
Cuentan que Ulises, harto de prodigios,
lloró de amor al divisar su Itaca
verde y humilde. El arte es esa Itaca
de verde eternidad, no de prodigios.
También es como el río interminable
que pasa y queda y es cristal de un mismo
Heráclito inconstante, que es el mismo
y es otro, como el río interminable. |
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| Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 2:20 pm Post subject: |
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Loser Takes All
Paperback
By Graham Greene
| Quote: | I suppose the small greenish statue of a man in a wig on a horse is one of the famous statues of the world. I said to Cary, 'Do you see how shiny the right knee is? It's been touched so often for luck, like St. Peter's foot in Rome.'
She rubbed the knee carefull and tenderly as though she were polishing it. 'Are you superstitious?" I said.
'Yes.'
'I'm not.'
'I'm so superstitious I never walk under ladders. I throw salt over my right shoulder. I try not to tread on the cracks in pavements. Darling, you're marrying the most superstitious woman in the world. Lots of people aren't happy. We are. I'm not going to risk a thing.'
'You've rubbed that knee so much, we ought to have plenty of luck at the tables.
'I wasn't asking for luck at the tables,' she said. (Opening page of the novel) |
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| Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 11:21 am Post subject: |
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The First Man
Hardcover
By Albert Camus
His Final Work
| Quote: | ... "I hope you haven't touched the cord."
"No," said the woman, laughing. "We had to leave you something to do."
She got up and gave her place to the doctor, who again blocked the newborn from the sight of Cormery, still at the door, his head uncovered. The doctor squatted and opened his case; then he took the basin from the hands of the Arab woman, who immediately withdrew from the circle of light and took refuge in the dark angle of the fireplace. The doctor washed his hands, his back still to the door, then poured on thos hands some alcohol that smelled a bit like grape liquor; its odor at once filled the room. At that moment, the wife lifted her head and saw her husband. A marvelous smile transfigured that exhausted beautiful face. Cormery went over to the mattress. "He came," she said under her breath, and she reached out her hand to the infant.
"Yes," said the doctor. "But stay still." The wife gave him a questioning look.
Cormery, standing at the foot of the mattress, made a quieting gesture. "Lie down."
She lay back down again. The rain began to come down twice as hard on the old tile roof. The doctor went to work under the blanket. Then he straightened up and seemed to shake something in front of him. A small cry was heard. "It's a boy," the doctor said. "And a good sturdy one."
"There's one who's getting off to a good start," said the owner of the canteen. "By moving to a new home." (-- pgs. 16-17) |
About the book's publication gamble:
| Quote: | So, in denouncing totalitarianism, and in advocating a multicultural Algeria where both communities would enjoy the same rights, Camus antogonized both the right and the left. At the time of his death he was very much isolated and subject to attacks from all sides designed to destroy the man and the artist so that his ideas would have no impact.
In these circumstances, to have published an unfinished manuscript - 144 handwritten pages, often lacking periods and commas, never revised - might well have given ammunition to those who were saying Camus was through as a writer. His friends and my mother decided not to run that risk. My twin brother and I had no say in the decision, for we were only fourteen years old.
The years went by, my mother died in 1979, and I assumed the responsibility that had been hers. Between 1980 and 1985 voices began to be heard saying that perhaps Camus had not been so wrong, and little by little the old disputes died down. As for me, I first had to learn how to deal with a work of literature. I prepared Camus's Carnet III for publication, and then in the early 1990s my brother and I had to confront the question of Le Premier Homme. Two considerations persuaded us. First, we believed a manscript of such importance would sooner or later be published unless we destroyed it. Since we had no right to destroy it, we preferred to publish it ourselves so that it would appear exactly as it was. Secondly, it seemed to us that this autobiographical account would be of exceptional value to thos interested in Camus. (From Editor's Note, Catherine Camus, March, 1995, pgs. vi-vii) |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:39 pm Post subject: |
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Good Bones and Simple Murders
Hardcover
By Margaret Atwood
| Quote: | I always thought it was a mistake, calling you Hamlet. I mean, what kind of a name is that for a young boy? It was your father's idea. Nothing would do but that you had to be called after him. Selfish. The other kids at school used to tease the life out of you. The nicknames! And those terrible jokes about pork.
I wanted to call you George.
I am not wringing my hands. I'm drying my nails.
Darling, please stop fidgeting with my mirror. *That'll be the third one you've broken.
Yes, I've seen those pictures, thank you very much.
I know your father was handsomer than Claudius. High brow, aquiline nose and so on, looked great in uniform. But handsome isn't everything, especially in a man, and far be it from me to speak ill of the dead, but I think it's about time I pointed out to you that your dad just wasn't a whole lot of fun. Noble, sure, I grant you. But Claudius, well, he likes a drink now and then. He appreciates a decent meal. He enjoys a laugh, know what I mean? You don't always have to be tiptoeing around because of some holier-than-thou principle or something.
By the way, darling, I wish you wouldn't call your stepdad the bloat king. He does have a slight weight problem, and it hurts his feelings. (From Gertrude Talks Back, pgs. 16-17) |
| Quote: | | *Breaking a Mirror - Seven years of bad luck if you break a mirror, or so the superstition says. That’s a long time to believe that you have bad luck, so let’s find out the truth behind this one. Long before mirrors were invented, people used to see their reflections in pools of water. Since they had no scientific knowledge at the time, they believed this reflection to be their soul or their other self. And they believed that any interference with the other self would injure it. Hence when mirrors were invented, and they were broken, it was thought that the other self was harmed. And where did this seven year thing come in? Well, the Roman belief was that life renewed itself every seven years. And, since a mirror meant “broken” health, it was believed that the person who broke it would need seven years to recover. (From the website, Superstitions) |
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| Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2008 8:59 am Post subject: |
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I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Hardcover
By Margaret Craven
| Quote: | "It is an old village - nobody knows how old. According to the myth, after the great flood two brothers were the only human beings left alive in the world, and they heard a voice speak and it said, 'Come, Wolf, lend them your skin that they may go fleetly and find themselves a home.' And in the wolf's skin the brothers moved south until they came to a small and lovely valley on a river's edge, surrounded by high mountains, and here they returned the skin to their friend, the wolf, and they threw a magic stone to see which one would build his village here, and Quelele, the younger, moved on, and Khawadelugha, the elder, built his house, and in his dances he moved right as even now the dancers moved right because the wolf moved right, and on his totem he carved a wolf as one of the crests of his tribe.
"The Indian name of the village is Quee which means 'inside place,' and according to the tribal history its site was chosen wisely because the river, its access, is treacherous and easily defended. But the enemy was wise also, and in the great tribal wars it came through a mountain pass and down the river, and the spirit that lives in Whoop-Szo, the Noisy Mountain, that is across the river and towers over the village, heard the enemy coming and sent down a slide and buried it.
"Now Kingcome is known as a compact, Christian village, and this means that to run smoothly the elected chief, the vicar and the agent from the Indian Affairs Dpartment must be co-operative and wise, and though I am sure the Lord could pass a small miracle and manage this, He seldom does. Once there was a chief who agreed with anyone on anything. Once there was an agent who said there was no use educating the Indian because if you did, you'd have to find him a job, and he was bound to die off anyway. And once the church sent a man to Kingcome who had never worked out well anywhere because it was sure here he could do no harm. All were wrong, and the village survived them.
"The Indian knows his village and feels for his village as no white man for his country, his town, or even for his own bit of land. His village is not the strip of land four miles long and three miles wide that is his as long as the sun rises and the moon sets. The myths are the village and the winds and the rains. The river is the village, and the black and white killer whales that herd the fish to the end of the inlet the better to gobble them. The village is the salmon who comes up the river to spawn the seal who follows the salmon and bites off his head, the bluejay whose name is like the sound he makes - 'Kwiss-Kwiss.' The villlage is the talking bird, the owl, who calls the name of the man who is going to die, and the silver-tipped grizzly who ambles into the village, and the little white speck that is the mountain goat on Whoop-Szo.
"The fifty-foot totem by the church is the village, and the Cedar-man who stands at the bottom holding up the eagle, the wolf and the raven! And a voice said to the great cedar tree in Bond Sound, 'Come forth, Tzakamayi and be a man,' and he came forth to be the Cedar-man, the first mangod of the people and more powerful than all others."(From Chapter 1, pgs. 11-13) |
About Tsawateniuk (Kingcombe Inlet) Kwakwaka'wakw immortalized in the novel:
| Quote: | Harper, John (with Bob Sam and Chief Adam Dick) Coastal & Ocean Resources Inc., Sidney, B.C.
Clam Gardens of the Pacific Northwest: Sitka to Puget Sound
Clam gardens are areas of the intertidal zone that were cleared by aboriginal peoples for the purpose of clam harvesting and culturing. To date, several hundred of these clam gardens have been identified and mapped. The most southerly site identified to date is in Brentwood Bay near Victoria BC. The most northerly site is in Sitka Sound. Traditional knowledge indicates that construction of a clam garden entitled its creator to ownership and that such ownership would ensure sustainable harvesting at the site. (From Sharing our Knowledge: A Conference of Tsimshian, Haida and Tlingit Tribes and Clans, 2007). |
| Quote: | I Heard the Owl Call My Name
Audio CD
Narrated by popular U.S. reader, Frank Muller
Muller's reading is adequate, but we're open to new possibilities for this small, classic tale - one of few that portray First Nations as respectfully and lyrically as they richly deserve. |
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| Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:54 am Post subject: |
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The Chickens Fight Back
Pandemic Panics and Deadly Disease
that Jump from Animals to Humans
Paperback
By Dr. David Waltner-Toews
| Quote: | The Zoroastrians praised cocks for driving out the devils of night and guarding the household. From Persia, the birds invaded both northern Africa and Europe. Although the "rosy-fingered Dawn" Homer described in The Odyssey was not accompanied by cockcrows, Aeschylus (late in the fifth century BC) has Athena (in the play The Eumenides) warning the Greeks that civil war is like cockfighting, an image (fierce, small-brained, beautiful birds passionately slashing each other to death) that some of us would extend to war in general, although cockfighting itself has perhaps more to recommend it.
The Romans used live chickens for augurs; if the birds eagerly ate food thrown to them, things would go well. If not, this was a poor omen. As might be expected, the chickens were kept underfed until omen-reading time came around. During a 249 BC battle against the Carthaginians at Drepana, in what is now western Sicily, the Roman consul P. Claudius Pulcher threw the sacred chickens overboard when they refused to east, saying, "If they will not eat, let them drink." Later the same day, the Carthaginians sank 93 of the consul's 123 ships. The consul was promptly recalled and forced to pay a large fine. One could draw a lesson from this event, but it would be premature for me to pronounce omens so early in this story. (-- p. 100) |
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| Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 1:14 pm Post subject: |
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A Night Off for Prudente Moraes
Hardcover
By Louis de Bernières
With drawings by Jeff Fisher
| Quote: | Prudente drank his two caiprinhas over a period of one hour, engaged in conversation with a fat and intoxicated security man who rather tediously insisted upon showing him his pistol, and then wandered out into the night. It was humid, a trickle of sweat began to slip down his temple, and he wiped his nouth with the back of his sleeve. He decided that he would walk down the Rua Garcia d'Ávila to the lagoon, sot that he could look at the Christ, floodlit at the top of the Corcovado mountain. It was a sight of which he would never tire, for sometimes the top of the mountain would be enclosed in mist, and the gigantic Christ would glow gold, as if coming glory upon the clouds at the resurrection of the dead. Equally one could imagine that the ?Christ was an angel, perhaps Michael or Gabriel, and Prudente wondered how many crimes had been prevented by a thief or a murderer looking up at the last moment, and being reminded of the omnipresence, justice, and beauty of God. Sometimes Prudente wondered how anyone could do wrong in Rio, with the Christ resplendent in the sky at night.
Prudente knew that ti was foolish to wander these streets unaccompanied and without urgency or purpose in his stride. He realized with wry honesty that he did not live up to his name at times such as this, and therefore he was not altogether surprised when an arm went around his shoulder, and the barrel of a gun was stuck into his ribs. He knew immediately that he was being robbed, but, strangely enough, he also realized that he could not be bothered to be alarmed. (-- pgs. 27-29) |
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| Posted: Thu Mar 20, 2008 9:33 am Post subject: |
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The Complete Illustrated Guide to
Feng Shui
How to Apply the Secrets of Chinese
Wisdom for Health, Wealth and Happiness
Paperback
By Lillian Too
| Quote: | Activating the Wealth Sector
Every aspect of your business that involves cash and profitability should be located in the money or wealth sector (the southeastern corner of the building). This is where you should place the cash register or accounts office.
Feng Shui masters advise using old Chinese coins to activate this sector. Coins have always been a symbol of prosperity in China, and the usage of old and antique coins as amulets and for Feng Shui purposes is fairly widespread, even up until the present day. Ancient Chinese coins are round and have a square hole in the center. The method involves tying three old coins together with auspicious red thread, then attaching them to the top of your invoice and order books to attract excellent business and wealth luck.
There are several variations of this practice. You can use eitht coins to magnify the effect. You can also hang replica coins on the wall of the sales manager's office, or you can display them on your desk. Proprietors of retail outlets can also create a pathway of eight stepping stones, designed in the shape of coins, leading up to the shop's main entrance in a symbolic gesture in the hope of attracting wealth to the fronto door. (From Success in Business, p. 186) |
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| Posted: Wed Mar 26, 2008 7:49 am Post subject: |
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COUNTRY LIFE
Weekly Magazine Subscription
Spectator
The origin of the furies
By Carla Carlisle
Feb. 15/07
| Quote: | On Monday, the 'long-awaited' United Nations report on global warming was published. The result of 2,500 scientists pooling their data, it concluded what everybody but George Bush and Exxon Mobil already knew: that man has truly botched up the planet. Unless we come up with a unity of purpose greater than we've ever achieved, our children are going to pay a terrible price. ...
The UN report was released on the day the first turkeys died in Suffolk. Not that we knew. Nearly a week went by before we heard the news. But by sunset on Saturday, as I shut up my birds, I knew the worst. But it wasn't the 800 dead birds and the prospect of gassing the 160,000 remaining turkeys that caused me to tremble. It was the sight of 27 long sheds stretched across the landscape, and broadcasters calling it a 'farm' in Suffolk. This is no farm, Bernard Matthews is no farmer, and the sheds housing thousands of turkeys are not 'bio-secure' units, but havens for the development of new pandemic viruses.
...
Silent Spring
Paperback
Environmental Classic
By ecology icon Rachel Carson,
the visionary behind the DDT ban
For 30 years, I've carried around my grandfather's copy of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. A cotton farmer impoverished by the boll weevil, he still stood by Carson: put poison on the fields and you poison the rivers; poison the rivers and you poison the oceans. Carson dedicated her book 'to Albert Schweitzer who said: "Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.'"
... I latch onto a few lines in the book's introduction, from a speech by the Duke of Edinburgh in the early 1960s: 'Miners use canaries to warn them of deadly gases. It might not be a bad idea if we took the same warning from the dead birds in our countryside.' (-- p. 100) |
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Last edited by editor on Mon Mar 31, 2008 8:36 am; edited 1 time in total |
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| Posted: Mon Mar 31, 2008 8:35 am Post subject: |
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COUNTRY LIFE
Weekly Magazine Subscription
A Son's Tribute
Robert Graves moved to Deya, Mallorca, in 1929, seeking
both the simple and good life. His home there has now been
opened to the public, and Marcus Binney took a tour.
Nov. 15/07
| Quote: | | Graves had started losing his religious faith in the First World War, a process recorded in his classic Goodbye to All That. Instead, he recovered an archaic religion centred on the White Goddess. William recalls: "He'd stand on the terrace and bow nine time, turning a silver coin three times. He was superstitious. A broken mirror counted as seven years' bad luck, rain could be summoned by standing over flowing water and ringing a rain bell.' The first person to cross the threshold on New Year's Eve had to be the man with the darkest complexion in the village, who was duly rewarded with a bottle of brandy. (-- p. 84) |
| Quote: | Goodbye to All That
Paperback
By Robert Graves
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| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 2:28 pm Post subject: |
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New York Times Magazine
Magazine Subscription
She Was Supposed to Be Dead
A Vietnam war correspondent disappears for 23 days
By Maggie Jones
Feb. 24/08
| Quote: | When Kate Webb reported from the battlefields of Cambodia, she kept her chestnut hair cropped G.I-short and wore jeans and loose shirts to obscure her breasts. This was 1971. Only a handful of women were full-time correspondents in Vietnam, and even fewer women roughed the front lines next door in Cambodia, where military officers believed foreign women were, at best, a distraction. At worst, they were bad luck.
Bad luck was a virus among foreign-correspondents in Cambodia. Unlike in Vietnam - where Webb arrived four years earlier at age 23 with a philosophy degree, a one-way ticket from Australia, a Remington typewriter, $200 in cash and a whisky-and-cigarette voice so soft people leaned in to hear her - there were no reliable phone lines in Cambodia to call your editor in an emergency. Tehre were no American military hospitals to sew up your bullet wounds; no helicopters to evacuate you when things got bloody. By April 1971, several years before the Killing Fields, at least 16 foreign correspondents were missing and 9 were dead.
On April 7, it was Webb's turn.
... Throughout that afternoon and night, the six of them (Webb and Cambodian journalists) crept therough the wooded foothills of Cambodia's Elephant Mountains, holding their breath as they stood within inches of chatting North Vietnamese soldiers. At 11:30 the next morning, tired, thirsty, their clothes and skin shredded by branches, they were crouching in the underbrush when they looked up to see two skinny North Vietnamese soldiers with AK-47s. The soldiers bound Webb's arms behind her back with wire, vine and tape and roped all of the captives together in a single line. They confiscated their notebooks, their ID cards, their cameras, their watches. Then they took one thing that Webb held dear: a gold Chinese charm that she wore around her neck. She had clung to that charm in foxholes and always came out alive. Now without it, she felt naked.
After a soldier tossed her and other prisoners' shoes into the trees, laughing, Webb was forced to walk barefoot on the hot asphalt and through woods littered with bamboo splinters and stones, until another soldier brought Webb a pair of thongs. She winced, knowing they had been stripped from a dead paratrooper. (-- p. 43) |
More about Aussie Kate:
War Torn
Stories of War from the Women
Reporters who Covered Vietnam
By Tad Bartimus, Denby Fawcett, Jurate Kazickas,
Edith Lederer, Ann Bryan Mariano, Anne Morrissy
Merick, Laura Palmer, Kate Webb, and Tracy Wood;
Introduction by Gloria Emerson
Hardcover
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editor
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| Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 11:13 am Post subject: |
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Deadeye Dick
Paperback
By Kurt Vonnegut
| Quote: | Now that I have known Haiti, with its voodooism, with its curses and charms and zombies and good and bad spirits which can inhabit anybody or anything, and so on, I wonder if it mattered much that it was I who was in the cage in the basement f the old courthouse so long ago. A curiously carved bone or stick, or a dried mud doll with straw hair would have served as well as I did, there on the bench, as long as the community believed, as Midland City believed of me, that it was a package of evil magic.
Everybody could feel safe for a while. Bad luck was caged. There was bad luck, cringing on the bench in there. See for yourself. (From Chapter, um, er, 13, p. 91) |
Yes, and then again later on:
| Quote: | According to Fred T. Barry, a Jew named Joseph of Arimathea took Christ's goblet when the Last Supper was over. He believed Christ to be divine.
Joseph brought the goblet to the Crucifixion, and some of Christ's blood fell into it. Joseph was arrested for his Christian sympathies. He was thrown into prison without food or water, but he survived for several years. He had the goblet with him, and every day it filled up with food and drink.
So the Romans let him go. They couldn't have known about the goblet, or they surely would have taken it from him. And Joseph went to England to spread the word about Christ. The goblet fed him on the way. And this wandering Jew founded the first Christian church in England - at Glastonbury. He stuck his staff into the ground and there, it became a tree which bloomed every Christmas Eve.
Imagine that.
Joseph had children, who inherited the goblet, which came to be known as the "Holy Grail."
But sometime during the next five hundred years, the Holy Grail was lost. King Arthur and his knights would become obsessed with finding it again - the most sacred relic in England. Knight after knight failed. Supernatural messages indicated that their hearts weren't pure enough for them to find the Grail.
But then Sir Galahad presented himself at Camelot, and it was evident to everyone that his heart was perfectly pure. And he did find the Grail. He was not only spiritually entitled to it. He was legally entitled to it as well, since he was the last living descendant of that wandering Jew, Joseph of Arimathea. (From Chapter 20, pgs. 173-174) |
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editor
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 12:56 pm Post subject: |
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The New Yorker
Magazine Subscription
The Headstrong Historian
Fiction
By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
June 23/08
| Quote: | Mgbeke was called “missus” by everyone, even the non-Christians, all of whom respected the catechist’s wife, but on the day she went to the Oyi stream and refused to remove her clothes because she was a Christian the women of the clan, outraged that she had dared to disrespect the goddess, beat her and dumped her at the grove. The news spread quickly. Missus had been harassed. Anikwenwa threatened to lock up all the elders if his wife was treated that way again, but Father O’Donnell, on his next trek from his station in Onicha, visited the elders and apologized on Mgbeke’s behalf, and asked whether perhaps Christian women could be allowed to fetch water fully clothed. The elders refused—if a woman wanted Oyi’s waters, then she had to follow Oyi’s rules—but they were courteous to Father O’Donnell, who listened to them and did not behave like their own son Anikwenwa.
Nwamgba was ashamed of her son, irritated with his wife, upset by their rarefied life in which they treated non-Christians as if they had smallpox, but she held out hope for a grandchild; she prayed and sacrificed for Mgbeke to have a boy, because she knew that the child would be Obierika come back and would bring a semblance of sense again into her world. She did not know of Mgbeke’s first or second miscarriage; it was only after the third that Mgbeke, sniffling and blowing her nose, told her. They had to consult the oracle, as this was a family misfortune, Nwamgba said, but Mgbeke’s eyes widened with fear. Michael would be very angry if he ever heard of this oracle suggestion. Nwamgba, who still found it difficult to remember that Michael was Anikwenwa, went to the oracle herself, and afterward thought it ludicrous how even the gods had changed and no longer asked for palm wine but for gin. Had they converted, too? (-- p. 73) |
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editor
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Posts: 2940
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| Posted: Wed Aug 27, 2008 11:16 am Post subject: |
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From the ESL Gambler's Guide to Children's Literature:
Arabian Nights
Stories told by Scheherazade
retold by the great pacifist and supporter
of women's suffrage Laurence Housman, younger bro of poet A. E.
with illustrations by Edmund Dulac
Hardcover
| Quote: | Aladdin and the Magic Lamp
Once upon a time, in a far city of Cathay, there dwelt a poor tailor who had an only son named Aladdin. This boy was a born ne'er do well, and persistently resisted all his father's efforts to teach him a trade by means of which he would be able to in future to earn a livelihood. Aladdin would sooner play at knuckle-bones in the gutter with others as careless as himself than he would set his mind to honest business; and, as to obeying his parents int he smallest matter, it was not in his nature. Such was this Aladdin, and yet - so remarkable is the favor of fate - he was strangely predestined for great things.
Stricken with grief because of the waywardness and idle conduct of his son the father fell ill and died, and the mother found great difficulty in supporting herself, to say nothing of the worthless Aladdin as well. While she wore the flesh off her bones in the endeavor to obtain a meager susbsistence Aladdin would amuse himself with his fellow urchins of the street, only returning home to his meals. In this way he continued until he was fourteen years of age, when his extraordinary destiny took him by the hand, and led him, step by step, through adventures so wonderful that words can scarce describe them.
One day he was playing in the gutter with his ragged companions, as was his wont, when a Moorish Dervish came by, and, catching sight of Aladdin's face, suddenly stopped and approached him. This Dervish was sorcerer who had discovered many hidden secrets by his black art; in fact, he was on the track of one now; and, by the look on his face as he scrutinized Aladdin's features, it seemed that the boy was closely connected with his quest. (Thus opens the best translation of one of world's greatest tales, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, now, strangely, the exclusive purview of children's literature) |
A word about knuckle-bones:
| Quote: | The origin of knucklebones is closely connected with that of dice, of which it is probably a primitive form, and is doubtless Asiatic. Sophocles, in a fragment, ascribed the invention of draughts and knucklebones (astragaloi) to Palamedes, who taught them to his Greek countrymen during the Trojan War. Both the Iliad and the Odyssey contain allusions to games similar in character to knucklebones, and the Palamedes tradition, as flattering to the national pride, was generally accepted throughout Greece, as is indicated by numerous literary and plastic evidences. Thus Pausanias mentions a temple of Fortune in which Palamedes made an offering of his newly invented game.
According to a still more ancient tradition, Zeus, perceiving that Ganymede longed for his playmates upon Mount Ida, gave him Eros for a companion and golden dibs with which to play, and even condescended sometimes to join in the game (Apollonius). It is significant, however, that both Herodotus and Plato ascribe to the game a foreign origin. Plato (Phaedrus) names the Egyptian god Thoth as its inventor, while Herodotus relates that the Lydians, during a period of famine in the days of King Atys, originated this game and indeed almost all other games except chess. (Herodotus, History, Book I)
There were two methods of playing in ancient times. The first, and probably the primitive method, consisted in tossing up and catching the bones on the back of the hand, very much as the game is played today. In the Museum of Naples may be seen a painting excavated at Pompeii, which represents the goddesses Latona, Niobe, Phoebe, Aglaia and Hileaera, the last two being engaged in playing at Knucklebones. According to an epigram of Asclepiodotus, astragals were given as prizes to schoolchildren, and we are reminded of Plutarchs anecdote of the youthful Alcibiades, who, when a teamster threatened to drive over some of his knucklebones that had fallen into the wagonruts, boldly threw himself in front of the advancing team. This simple form of the game was generally played only by women and children, and was called pent alit ha or five-stones. There were several varieties of it besides the usual toss and catch, one being called tropa, or hole-game, the object having been to toss the bones into a hole in the earth. Another was the simple and primitive game of odd or even.
The second, probably derivative, form of the game was one of pure chance, the stones being thrown upon a table, either with the hand or from a cup, and the values of the sides upon which they fell counted. In this game the shape of the pastern-bones used for astralagoi, as well as for the tali of the Romans, with whom knucklebones was also popular, determined the manner of counting. The pastern-bone of a sheep, goat or calf has, besides two rounded ends upon which it cannot stand, two broad and two narrow sides, one of each pair being concave and one convex. The convex narrow side, called chios or the dog counted I; the convex broad side 3; the concave broad side 4; and the concave narrow side 6. Four astragals were used and 35 different scores were possible at a single throw, many receiving distinctive names such as Aphrodite, Midas, Solon, Alexander, and, among the Romans, Venus, King, Vulture, &c. The highest throw in Greece, counting 40, was the Euripides, and was probably a combination throw, since more than four sixes could not be thrown at one time. The lowest throw, both in Greece and Rome, was the Dog. (From helpful Wikipedia) |
| Quote: | Note: We're about to receive a Naxos CD of the tales narrated by UK actor Toby Stephens, who has received good reviews, but, ultimately, we search in vain for our ancient childhood recording, which sent us many nights - perhaps a thousand - to peaceful slumber with a booming basso voce cautioning,
'I am the GEE-nee-aye of the LOMP!
Com-MOND MEE!
For I am the SLAVE of who-EV-er holds the LOMP in his hand!'
This one, too, was punctuated by sweeping excerpts of Rimsky-Korsakov but, alas, we've been unable to find it. Sound familiar? If so, please e-mail legal@pokerpulse.com. Free beer for the first good soul to supply a lead! |
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