An online commonplace book
“New times?” Ealstan’s wife said. “Those come whether we want them to or not. And we shall bear them as we bear the changing of seasons — which bring friends and foes, men and spirits.”
pp 46
Some stoic goodness from the Frugal Wizards Handbook? A reminder that change is continual, and as seasons change we are to bear it.
Sanderson, Brandon. The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England. United States, Dragonsteel Entertainment, LLC.
Glory be to God for dappled things -
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches' wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced -- fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.
Keeping with the thankfulness theme. This time from Gerard Manley Hopkins.
The two lines that hang in my mind are:
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings
and
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
The first is a picture of fall changing into winter. Chestnuts and finches wings, the colors of both depict fall. While the firecoal indicates that the temperature is dropping.
The second is, and I don’t think it’s what Hopkins intended, but I picture a tackle box and fishing gear sitting on the floor of a boat.
Hopkins, Gerard Manley. Poems and Prose (Everyman’s Library Pocket Poets). United Kingdom, Everyman, 1995. pp15
Thanks in old age - thanks ere I go,
For health, the midday sun, the impalpable air - for life,
mere life,
For precious ever-lingering memories, (of you my mother
dear - you, father - you, brothers, sisters, friends,)
For all my days - not those of peace alone - the days of war
the same,
For gentle words, caresses, gifts from foreign lands,
For shelter, wine and meat - for sweet appreciation,
(You distant, dim unknown - or young or old - countless,
unspecified, readers belov'd,
We never met, and ne'er shall meet - and yet our souls embrace, long, close and long;)
For beings, groups, love, deeds, words, books - for colors,
forms,
For all the brave strong men - devoted, hardy men -
who've forward sprung in freedom's help, all years, all
lands,
For braver, stronger, more devoted men - (a special laurel
ere I go, to life's war's chosen ones,
The cannoneers of song and thought - the great artillerists -
the foremost leaders, captains of the soul 🙂
As soldier from an ended war return'd - As traveler out of
myriads, to the long procession retrospective,
Thanks - joyful thanks! - a soldier's, traveler's thanks.
Mr. Whitman covers it all. He’s even thankful for his unknown readers – love that.
The title of the poem is Thanks in Old Age, but these are things we could all be thankful for at any age.
Happy Thanksgiving gentle readers. I’m thankful for you.
Whitman, Walt. The Complete Poems. United Kingdom, Penguin Books Limited, 2004.
Musk started doing some work on his cousin’s farm. He grew vegetables and shoveled out grain bins. Musk celebrated his eighteenth birthday there, sharing a cake with the family. Throughout the rest of the year, Musk hopped from city to city, working odd jobs. At one point, for example, he learned to cut logs with a chainsaw in Vancouver, British Columbia.
pp44
Musk also took on hazardous jobs for better pay. Reminds me of Richard Linklater’s years on oil rigs off the Texas coast…
Musk found some of his jobs by going to the local employment offices where companies posted requests for work. He was told that the best-paying job–because of the hazards involved–was cleaning boilers at a lumber mill, so he decided to try that. “You have to put on this hazmat suit and then shimmy through this little tunnel that you can barely fit in,” Musk said. “Then you have a shovel and you take the sand and goop and other residue, which is still steaming hot, and you have to shovel it through the same hole you came through. There is no escape. Someone else on the other side has to shovel it into a wheelbarrow. If you stay in there for more than thirty minutes, you get too hot and die.” Thirty people started out at the beginning of the week to give the job a try. By the end of the week, it was just Musk and two other men doing the work.
pp44, 45
This is not TIME Person of the Year Elon Musk, and yet somehow it still is.
Picture books are underrated, but I’m learning children’s books are underrated. This adapted version of Ashlee’s Vance Elon Musk biography has been inspiring so far.
Blazing through it.
Also see John Meacham’s adapted version of his Thomas Jefferson biography: Thomas Jefferson President and Philosopher
Vance, Ashlee. Elon Musk and the Quest for a Fantastic Future Young Readers’ Edition. United States, HarperCollins, 2017.
Michael Chabon’s Summerland is a wrap. 500 pages of weird, muddle, and baseball. Zero boredom though.
The final few chapters had some wonderful bits. The following is one of the most insightful thoughts on parenting and promises I’ve read:
It was the kind of promise a father makes easily and sincerely, knowing at the same time that it will be impossible to keep. The truth of some promises is not as important as whether or not you can believe in them, with all your heart. A game of baseball can’t really make a summer day last forever. A home run can’t really heal all the broken places in our world, or in a single human heart. And there was no way Mr. Feld could keep his promise never to leave Ethan again. All parents leave their children one day, Ethan knew that better now than he had ever known before. But he was glad to have the promise nevertheless.
pp 480
Last year’s Mets should’ve had this hung in the clubhouse…
One lover of baseball cannot get a team out of the cellar, but two can turn a season around.
pp 496
And a concise compilation of all the beauties of playing small ball:
They noticed that there was more to baseball than hitting the ball as hard as you could, than waving your glove in the general direction of the ball and hoping for the best. They took pitches, turned double plays, and hit the cutoff man, and instead of trying to cream it every time they got up, they just did their best to advance the runner. They played like ferishers, with careful abandon.
pp 497
A few ideas to ponder if you’re deciding to read Summerland.
One – have a basic grounding of folklore and myth. In particular the meanings of the coyote, faeries, and Sasquatches. Quick Perplexity.ai refresh is all you need. Dive into deeper texts if compelled.
Two – Begin reading it during late summer and carry on through early fall. You may also finish all 500 pgs in a weekend, but bringing the fall classic vibes heightens the reading experience.
Three – Embrace the weird. Characters fly in and fly out of the story. Creatures appear, vanish, and reappear. The story jabs and cracks unexpectedly. Embrace it.
Four – Love baseball. Not a requirement. Ok, it’s a requirement.
Chabon, Michael. Summerland. United States, Thorndike Press, 2003. pp480
Kurosawa’s private interests were no less varied than his professional skills–a painter, a mountaineer, a knowledgeable amateur of classical music, a passionate drinker of whiskey, a devourer of cultural experience. He was an ardent student of Japan’s traditional art forms–Noh, kendo, haiku, ceramics–and a thorough scholar of Japan’s history
One can see with Kurosawa how his side-interests would feed into his cinematic work. Artists have to absorb, absorb, absorb.
Reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson…
Wilford, Lauren, and Stevenson, Ryan. The Wes Anderson Collection: Isle of Dogs. United States, ABRAMS, 2018. pp26
It was Rodrigo Buendía. He had been quiet all morning, puffing away at a succession of cigars, walking back and forth across Diamond Green as if taking the measure of it. The confinement he and the others had undergone, in a lightless cell in the wagon sledge, had been hardest on him; Cinquefoil had told Ethan that the slugger even wept in his sleep. “Waste of time, dude. We should be out there warming up. Sprints. Bunt work–fielding and laying them down. And then a couple of hours of BP. You, little fox dude, you going to be in center today. When the last time you played ball?”
“Fifteen sixy-nine,” Cutbelly said at once. “I hit into three double plays.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Buendía said.
Chabon, Michael. Summerland. United States, Thorndike Press, 2003. pp460
In this, Kurosawa-tenno was really something of an emperor among directors, seemingly born for the role. A single defining trait as a great film craftsman would be impossible to pinpoint — Kurosawa was one of the all-time greats at blocking, one of the all time greats at pulling powerful performances from actors. At shooting in color, at shooting in black and white; at vertical compositions in Academy ratio and at perfectly balanced framings in anamorphic widescreen. At quick cutting, at holding a long take, at movement, at stillness. At using score, at sourcing music, at choosing and mixing sound. At deeply researched period pieces, at portraits of modern life; at using complex sets, at finding stunning locations. At wrangling even the weather itself, his constant bane and frequent boon — his scenes are set by wind-whipping grass, muddy cloudbursts, volcanic steam and eldritch ice-mists, heatstruck streets and frostbitten hinterlands, lung-spasmingly brisk autumn air. What he couldn’t find, he made. What he couldn’t make, he waited for.
Not to mention he wrote or cowrote every one of his movie’s screenplays. The list of required skills for a director is endless, but Kurosawa is maybe the closest to filling every bubble.
Wilford, Lauren, and Stevenson, Ryan. The Wes Anderson Collection: Isle of Dogs. United States, ABRAMS, 2018. pp26
THE BOY
I like printing. I get a real kick out of it. I mean sometimes when I’m feeding the press, I forget that’s nothing but an old broken-down machine. I think to myself, that’s a black monster who’s going to snap off my fingers if I don’t keep him tame. You know what I mean?
MR. HEALY
I often have the same image myself.
THE BOY
When I go out on deliveries, I always wear my apron because I want everybody in the street to know I’m a printer.
MR. HEALY
Boy, I never met a linotyper who liked his job.
THE BOY
They like their job on payday, I bet you.
MR. HEALY
They sit all day, plunking keys. There’s no craft to it. There’s no pride.
THE BOY
Nowadays, I don’t know you have to be so proud. Mister Healy, I just figure there ain’t much future in being a compositor. I mean, what’s wrong with linotyping? If the didn’t have linotype machines, how would they print all the books in the thousands and thousands of copies?
MR. HEALY
Are there so many good books around? Are the authors any more clever?
THE BOY
How are you going to set up daily newspapers? You can’t supply the public demand for printed matter by hand setting.
MR. HEALY
Are the people any wiser than they were a hundred years ago? Are they happier? This is the great American disease, boy! This passion for machines. Everybody is always inventing labor-saving devices. What’s wrong with labor? A man’s work is the sweetest thing he owns. It would do us a lot better to invent some labor-making devices. We’ve gone mad, boy, with this mad chase for comfort, and it’s sure we’re losing the very juice of living. It’s a sad business, boy, when they sit a row of printers down in a line, and the machine clacks, and the mats flip, and when it comes out, the printer has about as much joy of creation as the delivery boy. There’s no joy in this kind of life, boy–no joy. It’s a very hard hundred dollars a week, I’ll tell you that!
(THE BOY stares down at his feet.)
Chayefsky, Paddy. The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky: The television plays. United States, Applause, 1994.
Intriguing contrast in this scene. Mr. Healy doesn’t view The Boy’s work as craft, but the boy does. He take genuine pride in his work.
In a way both Mr. Healy and The Boy are both right. Reminds me of when Spike Lee mentioned drama is created when two opposing perspectives are right (paraphrasing).
I disagree with Mr. Healy though. We’re not inventing enough laborsaving devices…
