Pithy quotes from our current reading which give us pause to reflect

3 Likes

Unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind.
—John A. Hutchinson

4 Likes

Given the interest in his book Jayber Crow, I thought this article concerning Wendall Berry might be of interest. I have not read the NYT article it referenced, as I am not a subscriber, but would like to do so. Anyway: making a difference – The Homebound Symphony

1 Like

Thanks for the article. I’m about to return that one in. I thought it wondered around like a dog that had lost the scent toward the end. There were more good quotes but I didn’t want to pluck all the best fruit. I’ve started in on another one on that list you shared, Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees before. But I’ve been falling asleep so fast that I’ve stretched the first teeny chapter out for days. Meanwhile after breezing through the thread again I finally put a hold on Khalid Hosseini’s And The Mountains Echoed. I picked that up yesterday and bonus: it’s in large type! If it turns out to be as good as The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns it will be a joy.

2 Likes

Here ya go: Opinion | You Are Now Remotely Controlled - The New York Times

(Non-subscribers have access to 10 articles per month before being asked to pay. The gifted article can be viewed an unlimited number of times during the 14 day period before the link expires. – if anyone wants it after that, give me a yell and I can “regift” it. ; - )

2 Likes

I saw this quote in a book I was working with today at the library. It reminded me of @Paraleptopecten, but I’m sure there are other “amateur naturalists” hanging out here. It’s for all of you. What you do is valuable.

From The Boletes of Michigan by Alexander H. Smith and Harry D. Thiers

DEDICATION
This work is dedicated to Victor Clare Potter, of Ithaca, Michigan; born May 14, 1920, died January 11, 1964. Victor Potter was a victim of arthritis, but this did not dampen his enthusiasm for natural history. He had special crutches made so that he could carry a collecting basket on one of them, and, so equipped, he made, in the short period of less than fifteen years, a collection of fleshy fungi of appoximately 20,000 specimens, which is the most significant collection in existence from the center part of the Lower Peninsula. Many of them were boletes, including one of the most peculiar species of Leccinum yet described, which now bears his name.
   He clearly showed by his own efforts that the amateur naturalist can still make significant contributions to biology. Indeed, the project on the boletes of Michigan has profited significantly from the activities of a number of amateurs in the state.

2 Likes

Occasionally, a dear friend texts or mails me a pithy quote from her studies. This one came from her the other day. I think we could all use it now and again:

Always add, always walk, always proceed;

Neither stand still, nor go back, nor deviate;

He that standeth still proceedeth not;

He goeth back that continueth not;

He deviateth that revolteth;

He goeth better that creepeth in his way than he that moveth out of his way.

[Attributed to Augustine]

1 Like

Nice. Somewhere there is a snippet from ee cummings about an artist’s purpose being to proceed. Couldn’t find that but here is another that wants to be shared.

“We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”

― E.E. Cummings

2 Likes

The heart of parenting and teaching, any form of mentorship or loving relatinship.
Isn’t it huge to find out an artist, whose work one so admires, thinks in such a nurturing way? And one can wonder, if by engaging with that artist’s work, one is receiving from that artist exactly what was intended in the statement you quoted.

2 Likes

This artical starts off with one of my favorite Cummings poems. He goes on to discuss Cummings’ equal involvement in painting and his religiosity in discussing the first poem he says.

Birth is a major theme in this poem. “i who have died am alive again,” writes Cummings as himself. He experiences a spiritual awakening, “the birth / day of life and of love and wings.” To me, this line is the most evocative one in the poem. I read into it my own experience of awakening—that is, my conversion to Christianity, my being raised with Christ into new life. This isn’t the same kind of awakening that Cummings is talking about, who, being Unitarian, rejected the divinity of Christ and the literalness of the Resurrection.5 His born-again experience seems to refer more generally to a sudden, sweeping awareness of the glory of God, a wonder that lifts him up out of either ignorance or depression, as if on wings

That is a favorite poem of mine as well as is this one. From same collection titled Xaipe.

life is more true than reason will deceive
(more secret or than madness did reveal)
deeper is life than lose:higher than have
–but beauty is more each than living’s all

multiplied with infinity sans if
the mightiest meditations of mankind
canceled are by one merely opening leaf
(beyond whose nearness there is no beyond)

or does some littler bird than eyes can learn
look up to silence and completely sing?
futures are obsolete:pasts are unborn
(here less than nothing’s more than everything)

death,as men call him, ends what they call men
-but beauty is more now than dying’s when.

My favorite line in this one is:

“deeper is life than lose:higher than have“

… which says to me there is more to life than what we can (and will) lose, but what that is is something much higher than what we can hang on to as a possession.

3 Likes

Thank you, Mark. My head is just swimming with the poems, the paintings, the SONG (Did you listen to the song?!). Anything else I could say right now would ruin it.
Thank you.

Thank you for alerting me to the song. I found the article while looking for the that second poem to share and liked it and the paintings too. But it was pre dawn so I didn’t get as far as the song. The author - she, not he- put it together nicely. I’ve got to confess though that I have a hard time hearing the words sung in that way. We have a friend who came to the party in our garden today who sings in a chorus that goes by “Sacred and Profane” whose concerts we usually attend. I can usually make out the words live.

1 Like

I hope your party was at least as wonderful as your post. With such an fun and fascinating group of people, I’m sure it was.
I’m glad I mentioned the song. Like you, I can nearly never understand the words ( sacred or profane) of music sung on stage. I have had to learn to accept the sound of the lyrics as part of the sound of the instrument, rather than something that carries meaning in itself. To really prepare for hearing a concert or opera requires real study on my part. So it’s rare that I understand more than a few words.
I know I have heard this sung version before. It’s absolutely exquisit. And since I had just read the poem and had it in front of me, the words were accessible…if I opened my eyes. Afterward.
I have encountered this type of contemporary polyphonic music a few times before, and find it amazing. Like cummings overlapping use of visual layout (including the physical arrangement of words and punctuation) and the sound of the poem, the musical interpretation uses choral music very differently, not relying on meter or traditional harmonies, but on different ways of blending voices and shifting tones for effects. It seems an appropriate musical form for cumming’s work.
Like cummings’ use of language and form, These composers are using physics differently. They sometimes seem to be deliberately exploiting the math of sound waves, allowing the different frequencies to interact (rub) and create the effect of rhythm, and other times allowing the voices to. There are different types of pulsing going on. I don’t have the vocabulary to describe what I recognize here, but if you’ve ever tuned a guitar using harmonics, you have experienced the same thing.

1 Like

Sadly no guitars in my background except in my collected music. I used to say the p ly mysic I can play is on my iPod (now it is in clouds, apparently). Campfire songs is my only real brush with producing any music.

1 Like

It’s been decades since I played anything. It’s a shock I can still tune the thing. I felt enormous success last week, when I managed to plunk out a “new” hymn we sang at church that I really liked. I also played string bass in school and really loved it. Nostalgic Kendel keeps thinking, “sure, I’ll play it again.” Reality Kendel is quite certain the bass needs a better home. I do imagine playing guitar again. It’s a really versatile instrument. But I’ll be starting nearly at 0.
My dad was awesome at radio, too. ; )

1 Like

Incomplete post erased.

 


*Objective outward experience is also possible and to be desired!

1 Like

This is not a formal quote. It’s a great article that shows the enormous value of mentorship in the development of scientists (and really any area of enquiry). A mentor who takes the time to share with rank beginners his or her enthusiasm for and fascination with a subject makes powerful change for good in the lives of young people:
If you don’t have a Washington Post subscription, use this link:

https://wapo.st/3ajRcD4

For this article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/05/21/bugs-rebecca-varney-vernard-lewis/

(I updated the link to a gift article that should work for a few weeks).

1 Like

I hit a paywall, but here’s the Apple News link for anyone in that ecosystem:

 


(It looks like WaPo has an article gifting setup similar to NYT):

1 Like

Not a pithy quote, but a sense of wonder I felt today which reminded me of a feeling I had finishing Arthur C. Clark’s The Fountains of Paradise back around 1995.

Brian Fagan’s lectures on human prehistory are utterly fascinating, and I’m pretty sure his oration would make Shakespeare proud.

It also pairs nicely with John Oswalt teaching on Isaiah :grin:

“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for the LORD has spoken: ‘Children have I reared and brought up, but they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master’s crib, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.’”

2 Likes