Cultural notes

For those who remember Leonard Pinth-Garnell.

*****

Norman Lebrecht says that The Rite of Spring was “a glorification of primitivism that challenged the values of modern society. Its response was reciprocal violence.” My own theory is that the riot at its premiere was caused by time-traveling aesthetes happy for an opportunity to get rowdy.

*****

The Locus Science Fiction Foundation bought the rights to R.A. Lafferty‘s writing a couple years ago and is planning to reprint his complete short stories. The first volume is due out early next year, in time for the centenary of his birth. Twenty or so years ago I tried to collect every book by Lafferty in print. Although I found numerous chapbooks and small-press editions, most of his writing was out of reach. The new edition is very welcome, even though the first volume costs $66.

If you’ve never read Lafferty, there are a handful of his stories online:

Slow Tuesday Night

Narrow Valley

The Transcendent Tigers

Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas

The Six Fingers of Time

Nine Hundred Grandmothers

I’m pleased to observe that I am not the only R.A. Lafferty obsessive around. Andrew Ferguson is reading his way though Lafferty’s stories in order and commenting on them at Continued on Next Rock. See also The Ants of God Are Queer Fish.

Readers of Lafferty are often readers of Gene Wolfe as well. I recently found a couple of weblogs devoted to Wolfe, Silk for Caldé and The Silk and Horn Heresy.

Notes from Nineveh

The bishop administered Confirmation this Pentecost Sunday at the Cathedral this morning. While he was annointing the confirmandi, a string quartet in the choir loft played the “nocturne” from Borodin’s quartet. I would have enjoyed it under other circumstances, but this was the wrong place and time for the music. I suppose I should grateful that it wasn’t Marty Haugen or the St. Louis Jesuits.

Continue reading “Notes from Nineveh”

Chicken emergency

Miscellaneous notes:

• I’m mostly taking pictures these days in my available time. Wichita, perhaps the least interesting place visually in North America — it’s not even ugly — is as photogenic as it ever gets right now. Although it’s already summer (spring lasted most of one morning last week), temperatures haven’t yet hit 100°, and I can ride around town without risking heatstroke.

Roadblock

• My route home from work yesterday was more circuitous than usual, with one intersection closed off by the police. I missed the excitement, but that may be just as well.

• I watched several more episodes of some current series but ended up dropping them all. I probably will eventually watch the rest of Suisei no Gargantia on the Verdurous Planet. The first three episodes showed more thought than any of the other shows I sampled, and the art looked good, too. The Brickmuppet and Steven both praise what they’ve seen so far. Valvrave the Liberator features not just mecha, but vampires, too (and in recent episodes, I gather, boys and girls trading bodies). It might be of interest to Wonderduck when he’s recovered from the horrors of Vividred, but I’ve had enough.

Chiaki

Instead, I’ve been rewatching some older favorites, Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita, Mouretsu Pirates (for the third time) and Shingu (I’ve lost count).

Bunny warrior

• You can download the materials to make a paper model of a tank at the Girls und Panzer website here. Also, Brave Combo has worked its magic, or whatever it is, on “Katyusha.”

• It’s been a while since I mentioned ponies. Here’s a list of several with their Civil War general counterparts. (Via Dusty Sage.)

• The title of this post is from Looking for Bobowicz, which I listened to earlier this evening. You can download it here.

This is not going to end well

Rhododendron

Some years back, one of the local Walmarts stocked rhododendrons in their gardening department, and I saw a number prominently planted in yards around town. Every single one was dead by midsummer. I spotted these for sale this past weekend. (It is possible to keep some species of rhododendron alive in Kansas in the right spot, but it’s not easy, and they don’t flourish.)

Continue reading “This is not going to end well”

Is it really spring now?

Peony

I suppose I should explain why I’ve dropped every show of the spring season and have instead been re-watching Shingu and reading Alan Coren, but I think I’ll just post a few more pictures instead.

Update: A climatological footnote from this morning’s forecast.

… Coldest April since 1997 across the area…

Wichita… the average April temperature was 51.3 degrees… which was
the 7th coolest April on record since 1889. The normal April average
is 56.1 degrees.

It might snow tomorrow.

Continue reading “Is it really spring now?”

Hmmm

Discovered while browsing in Wikipedia:

[Graham] Greene’s film review of Wee Willie Winkie, featuring nine-year-old Shirley Temple, cost the [Night and Day] magazine a lost libel lawsuit. Greene’s review stated that Temple displayed “a dubious coquetry” which appealed to “middle-aged men and clergymen”.[16] It is now considered one of the first criticisms of the sexualisation of children for entertainment.

It may be just as well that he didn’t live to see moe-licious anime.