Americana

The subject of our course, like its musical namesake, is diverse and sprawling. It's an occasion to philosophize, and to sing along with John and other masters of the Big Tent genre.


http://dlvr.it/T8sMqj

Experience

"I think that everything you do helps you to write if you're a writer. Adversity and success both contribute largely to making you what you are. If you don't experience either one of those, you're being deprived of something."
Shelby Foote, who died on this day in 2005

The joy of morning/"Live because of the sun"

I don't call it god, but dawn is sacred. Or can be. It was for her, until it wasn't. She took her own life at age 45, in 1974. Her obit

Welcome Morning

by Anne Sexton

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.

"Welcome Morning" by Anne Sexton, from The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton. © Mariner Books, 1999. Reprinted with permission. 

WA

 Her nyt obit concludes:

The poet, whose work was so largely devoted to the theme of death, gave to the last poem in “Live or Die” the title “Live.” It begins:

Well, death's been here for a long time . . .

And it ends: I say Live, Live because of the sun, the dream, the excitable gift.

The epitome of grace…what makes sports matter

What Willie Mays Meant

"… The value of sports, as the philosopher C. Thi Nguyen writes, is that, although the activities themselves may seem arbitrary or trivial—hit this ball into a pasture so far that it can't be caught, or then try to catch it—chasing such goals creates new paths of agency and aspiration for us to mimic inside ourselves. "Oh, the unruffled nonchalance of that game," was Roth's concluding remark about New York baseball in the forties and fifties. If we feel that nonchalance today when we watch Mays, it's because it models the possibility of being at once urgent and at ease, racing as hard as humanly possible to make the play, with the secret knowledge that you will, indeed, make it. That double pursuit, outwardly hard-charging and inwardly serene, is the epitome of grace in every human endeavor. (Just the other night, Connor McDavid showed, again, how it is done in hockey.) This is what makes sports matter. To borrow an image from Angell: all the rest of us do in life is run down uncatchable balls, drop them, and then pretend we haven't. That's why seeing one perfectly caught is so satisfying that we'll never stop watching it, even after the catcher has left center field for good."

 —Adam Gopnik

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/what-willie-mays-meant?utm_source=threads&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=tny&utm_social-type=owned

Space nerd

Kirk was right, we can fight our instinct for violence a day at a time. We can keep our feet on the ground as we reach for the stars. I was a kid when I first heard that--like Dani Poole.


http://dlvr.it/T8Yb41

Starry socks

 The socks tell the tale, with Younger Daughter's latest gift addition to my collection of stellar hosiery. Sock it to me?

I'll own it. I am a "big space nerd" (I prefer enthusiast) and have turned my wife into one too. We've been binge-watching Apple TV's "For All Mankind," with its alternative history premise that the Soviets got to the moon first. 

Commander Poole was just a few words into her soliloquy last night (Season 2,episode 9) when I cottoned  to its source: Star Trek, the original series. Season 1, episode 23. Kirk's concession, we're killers "but we're not going to kill today." I was watching the first time, back in '66. The message still seems right. Lots of humanoids still need to hear it.

 

The show has been awfully kind to Ronald Reagan, so far at least, making him out to be more the peace-loving statesman than I think real history will allow. But he had his good days, as actors will.

==

Postscript. Meanwhile, far removed from more serious concerns like violence, war, death-dealing, and resisting our worst instincts, the Times reports that the younger generations are having a stupid public snit on social media about sock styles. These are the people who are supposed to reassure us that humanity is not doomed?

This I believe

I finally found a credo at the Southern Baptist church I could wholeheartedly embrace.


http://dlvr.it/T8SHXr

Just write

He was a graceful writer and stellar reviewer. He was an inspiration in how he dealt so gracefully with catastrophic late-life health crises, too.

"Just write, get better, keep writing, keep getting better. It's the only thing you can control."
Roger Ebert, born on this day in 1942

https://www.threads.net/@reboomer/post/C8WtpQ7udpi/?xmt=AQGzgil-iv9blp74Mjnu3ND3Fp0QBFoFgg7N4AkdaTq7SA

Fathers Day

Younger Daughter again makes it special.


http://dlvr.it/T8PpbX

“a sense of the future… a direction”

Edward Stone, 88, Physicist Who Oversaw Voyager Missions, Is Dead

"…[Space exploration] provides us with a sense of the future. When we stop discovering new things out there, the concept of the future will change. Space reminds us that there is something left to be done, that life will continue to evolve. It gives us direction, an arrow in time."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/14/science/space/edward-stone-physicist-dead.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

John Kaag's A.I. experiment

Now You Can Read the Classics With A.I.-Powered Expert Guides
Margaret Atwood and John Banville are among the authors who have sold their voices and commentary to an app that aims to bring canonical texts to life with the latest tech.

For the past year, two philosophy professors have been calling around to prominent authors and public intellectuals with an unusual, perhaps heretical, proposal. They have been asking these thinkers if, for a handsome fee, they wouldn't mind turning themselves into A.I. chatbots.

John Kaag, one of the academics, is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is known for writing books, such as "Hiking With Nietzsche" and "American Philosophy: A Love Story," that blend philosophy and memoir... (nyt, continues)

“Rage?” No, but...

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light…" Dylan Thomas

The poet wrote that when he was 33, drank himself to death at 39--this is not the perspective of a mature older person who's grasped and accepted the human condition.

--

But, I learned shortly after posting that this morning, the 28-year old daughter of a dear friend who married in April and is the soul of kindness has just discovered that she's hosting an advanced brain tumor. Emergency surgery imminent. 

Rage in such an instance would not be misplaced, if there were any agency to lodge it with or against.

Natural causes

They're coming for us all. Presence, living well today, is the only sure safeguard we can rely on.


http://dlvr.it/T85bks

Ben knew

A large-scale study of sleep behavior finds that regardless of your body's preferred bedtime, everyone benefits from turning in early. 💤

https://www.threads.net/@stanford/post/C70aGyeNHeH/?xmt=AQGzV_VgyqL38_ZuPnnIExeC8l-5861S19EJUcjggNOhnQ

toxic positivity

"Optimism has real health benefits, but the idea that we should always look on the bright side has led to a tidal wave of "toxic positivity". What's to be done?"

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg26234940-200-why-excessive-positivity-is-bad-for-your-health-and-mental-well-being/

Reach for the tonic alternative.

Every day is doomsday

"filled with opportunity"=possibility, chance, ameliorative potential

"All of us might wish at times that we lived in a more tranquil world, but we don't. And if our times are difficult and perplexing, so are they challenging and filled with opportunity."
Robert Kennedy, mortally wounded on this day in 1968 following a victory in the California primary

https://www.threads.net/@reboomer/post/C71O-J2uHlo/?xmt=AQGzGHAd-_fB5wIQztl1zzn96SjkoehRMdrheKOXjSHV4A

A blow to the head

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? . . . A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief."
Franz Kafka, who died on this day in 1924*

My impulse is to say that's the statement of someone with very low self-esteem… but then when I think about it, most of my favorite books ARE knocks upside the head. Most recent example: American Bloods by John Kaag…

* https://www.threads.net/@reboomer/post/C7wF0WUO0w2/?xmt=AQGz2ptWoc-E5dYl2LH_2BcL-1ZIyy31oHiCUHEPDP-ofg

Decoration

They still do this, out in the rural Tennessee countryside: gather at the family cemetery, first Sunday in June, to place flowers on the graves and remember the ancestors. A pretty spot to spend eternity, "most of it tucked under" as Annie Dillard said.

There's a nice essay by Margaret Renkl this morning in the Times on re-reading Dillard's classic Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, as good a paean to the tonic of wildness and rebuke to"civilization" as Walden.  "The world is wilder than that in all directions, more dangerous and bitter, more extravagant and bright..."

Sweet

 Who brings donuts to her family on her birthday? Only the very most special and considerate people...