So we don’t have to?So we don’t have to?
“We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.” – Douglas Adams, “The Salmon of Doubt”
Category: Verandah
It’s all the sameIt’s all the same
“What is true and beautiful must not be imitated but experienced according to its own individual and superior laws.” – Józef Elsner, composition teacher to Frédéric Chopin (quoted by David Dubal in The Essential Canon of Classical Music)
Take me to the riverTake me to the river
“Our lives are completed at the moment of death: until then we are incessantly becoming, our potential outstanding like a debt. But as soon as we are all that we are ever going to be, we vanish, and it is left up to the living to process the meaning of a life—or, rather, to give it meaning by transmuting being into something that was. . . . It’s our job to finish the dead’s unfinished business, take the whole of a life and house it in our memory, turn present into past. What the body can no longer do, we do for it: we bathe it, dress it, keep it safe.” – C. Morgan Babst, “Death Is a Way to Be”
The best lack all convictionThe best lack all conviction
“We’ve sold people on sure. And we’ve sold people on omniscience, and on the loudest, most declarative voice. That has been damaging just in terms of human civilization. The people who are the most certain are often the ones who lead us in the wrong directions.” – Eric Asimov (interview by Meara Sharma in Guernica)
You never stood a chanceYou never stood a chance
“We don’t think backgrounds mean anything. We don’t want to think that who your parents are should control your chances for success in life, but they do.” – Eric Asimov (interview by Meara Sharma in Guernica)
YepYep
“If you’re twenty years old and you’re not angry there’s something the matter with you, and if you’re angry and you’re seventy you’re an asshole.” – John Waters (interview by Meakin Armstrong in Guernica)
Opera as a major-league sportOpera as a major-league sport
“No one who did not live in Italy before 1848 can imagine what the opera house meant in those days. It was the only outlet for public life, and everyone took part. The success of a new opera was a capital event that stirred to its depths the town lucky enough to have witnessed it, and word of it ran all over Italy.” – John Roselli, Music and Musicians in Nineteenth Century Italy
The second fireThe second fire
“Safe wiring is not something to be learned after the fire trucks have left.” – ray2047, Forum Topic Moderator, “Extension cords – why do they need to be unplugged after each use?”
Riots in the aisles, chaos in the cheap seatsRiots in the aisles, chaos in the cheap seats
“Composers of [the early Nineteenth century] seldom saw their work published, royalties were rare, and copyright laws were nonexistent. Various middlemen prevented composers from knowing what their real box-office receipts were. What money they did earn had to be divided with hack librettists. Most impresarios viewed composers and librettists as quickly replaceable commodities—they were far more concerned with the digestion of the prima donna and the mood of the tenor than the quality of the opera. Audiences were usually unruly if not outrageous. Talking, eating, smoking, and screaming over high notes were all good sport. A night at the opera could be pandemonium.” – David Dubal, The Essential Canon of Classical Music
Pushmi-PullyuPushmi-Pullyu
“As an editor confronting the day’s abundance, I want to find a reason to stop reading as soon as I can. As an editor in love with good writing, I want to find that I cannot stop.“ – Sven Birkerts, “Five Things the Submitting Writer Should Know”
And tell your momma you love herAnd tell your momma you love her
“Write thank you notes. Tip well. Sing. Drink responsibly. Remember that good manners cost nothing, and open doors. Reach out to someone who is lonely. Make them laugh. Help people smile.” – Scott Simon, Unforgettable
In the easy-open packIn the easy-open pack
“Today is a gift. You
know how you can tell?
It’s got your name written on it
in your handwriting. It reads, ‘Equipment.’ “
– Lawrence Giffin, “Ease of Mobility”
Though it will be a bloody struggleThough it will be a bloody struggle
“Science and skill will always win over luck and superstition.” – Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (quoted by Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton in And I Was There)
Wait, wait, don’t tell meWait, wait, don’t tell me
“ ‘Information,’ writes Walter Benjamin, is ‘incompatible with the spirit of storytelling.’ For Benjamin, ‘half the art’ of telling a story lies in learning not to tell the news; narrative should suppress reportage, achieving instead ‘an amplitude that information lacks.’ Another name for this ‘amplitude’ might be what Flannery O’Connor calls ‘mystery’— fiction’s capacity, as she puts it, ‘to penetrate the concrete world’ of everyday facts, revealing ‘the image of ultimate reality.’ What she means is that reading allows us to face away from the world, and, in so doing, see through it. We read because we want to be somewhere else, but the best books make us realize that ‘elsewhere’ is where we already are. So, writing can turn toward or away from the known and the knowable, aiming at either information or mystery. One direction reports, reproduces, represents; the other points elsewhere, bringing the unprecedented into presence.” – David Winters, “Patterns of Anticipation”
Such as create a universeSuch as create a universe
“You can do anything if you’re not in a hurry.” – Fani Papageorgiou, “Bergmann’s Rule”
Pressed down and running overPressed down and running over
“All stories begin in the middle
and likewise end there, pressed
for time, again, as we all are.”
– Bruce Bond, “Once”
Vigilantes please exit to the rightVigilantes please exit to the right
“Crisis is not an excuse to abandon the rule of law. It is a summons to defend it. How we respond is the measure of our commitment to the principles of justice we are sworn to uphold.” – Justice Lloyd Karmeier, Heaton v. Quinn
It seems the sensible thingIt seems the sensible thing
“anyone with
sense wants
madness to end wants
Canada to invade the
United States of
the Americas
bring us to our knees
dissolve our military
imprison our leaders
distribute our wealth
insist we live in peace”
– Caconrad, “the nerve for honey must prevail”
Fighting through the time-warpFighting through the time-warp
“Consider the battles of Magdhaba and Rafa, in which the British defeated the Turks. In each case the British commander made the decision to break off the fight. In each case before the order could reach the front line the victory was won. At Magdhaba it appears that a large portion of the credit should go to General Cox, who commanded the 1st Australian Light Horse. When he received the order to retire he turned on the staff officer who brought it and shouted, ‘Take that damned thing away and let me see it for the first time in half an hour.’ Half an hour later victory was assured.” – George C. Marshall, Infantry in Battle
Play him like a violinPlay him like a violin
“In war, the soldier is the instrument with which leaders must work. They must learn to play on his emotions—his loyalty, his courage, his vanity, his sense of humor, his esprit de corps, his weakness, his strength, his confidence, his trust. Although in the heat of battle there is no longer time to prepare soldiers for the violent impressions of war, there are, however, two simple means by which a leader may lessen tension: He can do something himself that will give the men a feeling of security; or he can order his men to do something that requires activity and attention.” – George C. Marshall, Infantry in Battle
Thar goes yer militiaThar goes yer militia
“The first essential in war is an army that will not run away, which can only be assured by training. Without training, a soldier is not worth what it takes to put him in position, an officer is useless, an army is a rabble.” – Barbara Tuchman, Stillwell and the American Experience in China
An extraordinary thing that happenedAn extraordinary thing that happened
UsuallyUsually
“In art, ambiguity is not a fault.” – David Manier, “Sex and Lots of It”
It’s not cricketIt’s not cricket
“When you are up against the enemy in close combat, you want smoking boots on the other end. You don’t want a fair fight.” – Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster Jr., U.S. Army Capabilities Integration Center
A boxing of chocolatesA boxing of chocolates
“Life is a lot like boxing. You’ve got to do your roadwork, and when you get knocked down, you’ve got to get back up.” – Sugar Ray Leonard
We’re all queerWe’re all queer
“I believe in aristocracy, though—if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.” – E. M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy
Call me luckyCall me lucky
“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.” – Ecclesiastes 9:11
Start with having oneStart with having one
“Learning is a precious thing and knowing one’s mind is even more so.” – Virgil Thomson, Taste in Music
Coincidental that it is Good FridayCoincidental that it is Good Friday
“Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.” – Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls
We don’t die until we’re deadWe don’t die until we’re dead
“Getting old is the second-biggest surprise of my life, but the first, by a mile, is our unceasing need for deep attachment and intimate love. We oldies yearn daily and hourly for conversation and a renewed domesticity, for company at the movies or while visiting a museum, for someone close by in the car when coming home at night. This is why we throng Match.com and OkCupid in such numbers—but not just for this, surely. Rowing in Eden (in Emily Dickinson’s words: ‘Rowing in Eden— / Ah—the sea’) isn’t reserved for the lithe and young, the dating or the hooked-up or the just lavishly married, or even for couples in the middle-aged mixed-doubles semifinals, thank God. No personal confession or revelation impends here, but these feelings in old folks are widely treated like a raunchy secret. The invisibility factor—you’ve had your turn—is back at it again. But I believe that everyone in the world wants to be with someone else tonight, together in the dark, with the sweet warmth of a hip or a foot or a bare expanse of shoulder within reach. Those of us who have lost that, whatever our age, never lose the longing: just look at our faces. If it returns, we seize upon it avidly, stunned and altered again.” – Roger Angell, “This Old Man”