When reading a book for the first time, skip the introduction.
Author: Don
Why is the sea boiling hot?
I had planned to post a selection of epigrams for this year’s post-a-favorite-poem entry today, but Maureen Mullarkey’s commentary yesterday on Chicago finger food as served by Cardinal Cupich calls for more Lewis Carroll. So, here’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright —
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done —
‘It’s very rude of him,’ she said,
‘To come and spoil the fun.’
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud, because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead —
There were no birds to fly.
Rusting away
I gather that youngsters have not heard of Neil Young. He was a musician popular about fifty years ago, noted for having the thinnest tenor of any professional singer. He ranks third on the list of the most whiny vocalists in rock, surpassed only by Kurt Cobain and Thom “Creep” Yorke. He wrote one listenable song, but Petrus Ratajczyk did it better.
Just wondering
When was the last time you saw a “question authority” bumper sticker (t-shirt, poster, etc.)?
Catalogued
I recently received the White Flower Farm Spring 2022 Garden Book. As gardening catalogs go, it’s relatively dignified, with a University Roman flag, text that emphasizes accuracy over hyperbole, and no exclamation points. WFF prices are at the high end of the range, but in the past the plants they shipped were of consistently good quality. I might order a few items from them.
Nevertheless, the catalog was disappointing. Years ago the “garden book” was valued as much for the text as for the selections. Written by one Amos Pettingill, it had a degree of personality missing from other catalogs. Although the bulk of the text was devoted to describing the merchandise, he often digressed, as in his discussion of Exbury azaleas.
Lord Lionel Rothschild, a member of the famous banking clan and extremely rich in the days before the Great Depression and World War II, was not only a great banker but a great gardener. He was no dilletante; Lord Rothschild not only worked over every detail in the development of his lovely estate in Exbury, but he also worked diligently on breeding Rhododendron — and Azalea, a very close branch of the Rhododendron family. He spared no money in this huge breeding program, for he had started it late in life and knew it could be successful quickly only through massive expenditures. He once employed 225 men, 75 of them professional gardeners, to care for this estate of 250 acres. By working with tens of thousands of crosses, instead of thousands, Lord Rothschild used his wealth to telescope time…. Money, people are inclined to forget, is a very useful thing — whether we go to the moon or piggy-back a fine strain of plants with it.
Mushroom terrorism
Thought for the day
If you ever wondered what you would have done in 1930s Germany, you’re doing it right now.
Boom
Things are a bit noisy in Tonga. (There should be a round-up of information about the Hunga Tonga Hunga Ha’apai eruption soon at Volcano Café. Update: here you go.)
Great moments in civilization
From the comments at Isegoria:
Years ago, I drove a visitor from the Middle East around the suburbs and countryside of my beautiful Rust Belt city. He observed, that in his country, one felt safe in the cities, but you feared going into the exurbs, as you would be at the mercy of bandits and other lawless types. He admired the fact that we had managed to reverse that order, which has held for most of human history.
Coming soon
The voice-over in one episode preview in Galaxy Angel AA from twenty years ago has nothing to do with the episode it is presumably describing, yet it seems strangely prescient.
Temperature inversion
The weather today is going to be topsy-turvy.
Feathery view
The front door a few minutes ago.
Not exactly what I was looking for
Earlier today I looked for a copy of Sir John Bagot Glubb’s The Fate of Empires on a certain well-known website. I did not see a listing for it in three pages of search results. However, I did spot the above, which I will not be buying.
(Some years back Isegoria did a series of posts on Glubb’s book, which you can find here.)
Note on recycling
If you save old calendars, those from 2011, 2005, 1994 and 1983 will all work for 2022. Calendars from 2016 and 1988 will also be valid from March on. Calendars from 2000 will work in January and February, but those are probably not worth the effort of digging out.
Two weeks early
Here’s an old shape-note hymn, “Star in the East” or “Brightest and Best,” from William Walker’s The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion. It’s actually an Epiphany hymn, but since “We Three Kings” is inescapable at this time of year, I figured I can post it for the Christmas season.
Southern Harmony is an interesting historical document, by the way. While it contains much worthwhile music, it also has such curiosities as “The Romish Lady.”
There was a Romish Lady brought up in Popery,
Her mother always taught her the priest she must obey;
O pardon me, dear mother, I humbly pray thee now
For unto these false idols I can no longer bow.Assisted by her handmaid, a Bible she conceal’d,
And there she gain’d instructions, till God his love reveal’d;
No more she prostrates herself to pictures deck’d with gold.
But soon she was betray’d….
Betrayed by her mother, she is thrown into a dungeon by priests, brought before the Pope and condemned to be burnt to death. Such was the state of ecumenism in the 19th-century United States.
Winter yellows
The unusually mild weather this fall fooled some of the bulbs I planted back in October into sprouting leaves. Some daffodils apparently don’t need winter chilling to bloom. I found the above in my garden this afternoon. There is no such thing as normal Kansas weather, and out-of-season flowers are not unprecedented here. I’ve picked roses as late as a week before Christmas. After the February freeze, we can use a mild winter. Still, it’s odd.