A Thought for the Day
If not as often as not, then nonetheless far too often from those who hold themselves out as erstwhile ‘caretakers,’ our parents put themselves in the position of being enemies to their children, to us, who are doing our damndest to make good choices and succeed in life while we have some modicum of enjoyment, a situation that cannot help but end in both monstrosity and tragedy: indeed, just as life’s most horrific social cataclysms, in both personal and collective spheres, stem to a large degree from just the sort of monstrous mayhem that inevitably follows from any rigid program of rejecting one’s children, so too does the occasional case of a child’s more or less completely denouncing a parent lead to the most insalubrious results, though in all these instances of Tolstoy’s ‘unhappy families, incredible stories flow out of the experiences of these particularly troubling and tragic tribulations and trials, struggles in sum for life itself.
We alone was the face of our Time. Through us the horn of time blows in the art of the world.
The past is too tight. The Academy and Pushkin are less intelligible than hieroglyphics.
Throw Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc., etc. overboard from the Ship of Modernity.
He who does not forget his first love will not recognize his last.
Who, trustingly, would turn his last love toward Balmont’s perfumed lechery? Is this the reflection of today’s virile soul?
Who, faint-heartedly, would fear tearing from warrior Bryusov’s black tuxedo the paper armor-plate? Or does the dawn of unknown beauties shine from it?
Wash your hands which have touched the filthy slime of the books written by the countless Leonid Andreyevs.
This Day in History
Today in Nicaragua, for all true-hearted scrappy scribes and stalwart citizens to commemorate, is Sandinista Day, or, equally apt, Liberation Day; as splits widened in the late Roman empire fifteen hundred thirty-three years ago, the military leader Leontius arrogated to himself the title of Emperor of the East, which some folks in what is now Turkey and Syria accepted till his beheading four years afterward; two centuries, two decades, and seven years subsequent to that instance of declining empire, in 711,a case of rising imperial extension took place at the Battle of Guadalete, after which Ummayyad fighters consolidated rule of almost the entire Iberian Peninsula, even extending into parts of what is now Southwester France; eleven centuries and fifty-one before our very own point in space and time, a different evolution of Islamic imperial sway, the Shia Fatimids, who controlled almost all of North Africa and parts of Palestine and the Levant, scored a significant victory over Byzantine forces at the Battle of Apamea, in what is now Syria; six hundred forty-three years back, the thinker and poet and progenitor of many of the aspects of the early Renaissance, Petrarch, lived out his final passionate scene; MORE HERE
Doc of the Day
1 Cola di Rienzo has recently come, or rather been brought, a prisoner to the papal curia. . . In this plight, as I understand from the letters of friends, one hope is left him: a rumor has spread among the people that he is an illustrious poet. . . I am delighted, and rejoice more than words can tell, that such honor is now rendered to the muses, and—what is more astonishing—by those who are unacquainted with them; so that they are able to save by their name alone a man otherwise hateful even to his very judges. . .What greater tribute, I ask, could be paid to the power of the Muses than that they should be permitted to snatch from death’s door a man certainly detested—with how much reason I will not discuss—, a convicted and confessed criminal (even if not guilty of the offence of which he is accused), about to be condemned by the unanimous vote of his judges to capital punishment. MORE HERE
rationality OR reason OR logic subversion OR overturned OR antithesis OR dilemma rebellion OR revolution OR resistance necessity OR "sine qua non" OR requirement survival paradox OR contradiction OR "apparent impossibility" OR "seeming implausibility" analysis OR explication marxist OR radical = 684,000 results
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Nearly Naked Links
Hemingway Speech – http://www.nobelprize.org/nobe
Theory of MOral Sentiments – https://en.wikisource.org/wiki
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki
More Hemingway – https://www.archives.gov/publi
Interesting People Places Things of Note
A sobering look at an all=too-probable future: “The document concludes that the world has entered a fundamentally new phase of transformation in which U.S. power is in decline, international order is unravelling, and the authority of governments everywhere is crumbling.”
Writers Tools Issues
Linguistic Curmudgeons on Parade
An interesting Aeon look at the study of language: “Much of linguistic theory is so abstract and dependent on theoretical apparatus that it might be impossible to explain.”
Recent Events
Anniversary of a fatal Prozac murder which speaks to the current day: “On this day in 2012, a 24-year-old gunman goes on a rampage at a movie theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora, killing 12 people—the youngest a 6-year-old girl—and injuring at least 70 others. The shooting took place shortly after the start of a crowded midnight showing of “The Dark Knight Rises,” which opened across the United States that day. It was the deadliest mass shooting in Colorado since the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, in which 12 students and a teacher were murdered before the two teen gunmen killed themselves.”
General Past & Present Issues
An NJ Monthly article that looks at a historical riot that defined a metropolis forever: “Most accounts of the Newark Rebellion—and I call it a rebellion—say the arrest and beating of John Smith, a black cab driver, triggered the outbreak of violence. Hundreds witnessed Smith being dragged into the 4th Precinct police station in front of the Hayes Homes, a high-rise housing project. Rumors spread that Smith had been killed while in custody. Local civil rights leaders tried to form a march downtown in protest. But as the crowd grew in front of the Hayes Homes, someone lit a bottle filled with gasoline and threw it at the police station. Cops poured out of the station in riot gear to drive off the protesters. As the crowd dispersed, looting broke out on nearby streets. The Rebellion was on.”