Sunday, November 28, 2010

Basho: 1644-Nov. 28, 1694

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In Memoriam This is not Basho's "official" Death Song, but it was "[d]ictated to approximately 60 disciples surrounding...
6 comments:
Thursday, November 25, 2010

Joseph Wood Krutch: Nov. 25, 1893--May 22, 1970

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The following is taken from the "Preface" to Joseph Wood Krutch's The Great Chain of Life . The "Preface" is writt...
Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Thanksgiving Day Proclamation

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According to an April 1, 1864, letter from John Nicolay, one of President Lincoln's secretaries, this document was written by Secretar...
2 comments:
Friday, November 19, 2010

Something to think about

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For all we know, the wholly harmonious individual might be without the impulse to push on, and without the compulsion to strive for perfecti...
11 comments:
Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The Malevolent Willows

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I'm not exactly one of the speediest readers around, and I suspect the reason is that I'm easily distracted. I would be reading a s...
5 comments:
Sunday, November 14, 2010

Something to think about

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Responsibility "One of the great lessons of Zen is to take total responsibility for your own life. Unfortunately, many of us have been...
4 comments:
Friday, November 12, 2010

Alfred, Lord Tennyson: "Ulysses" (excerpts)

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This is for those of us upon whom at times the years seem to settle down too heavily and discourage us from trying something new and perhaps...
Wednesday, November 10, 2010

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XXXIV

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This quatrain has puzzled me, mainly because of the phrase "secret Well of Life" which appears in the first and second editions. ...
3 comments:
Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Loren Eiseley: "Another Kind of Autumn," a poem

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I was surprised when I discovered that Loren Eiseley was a poet, as well as an essayist. However, the style of his prose writings should ha...
2 comments:
Friday, November 5, 2010

Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker, 30th Anniversary

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Russell Hoban is one of my favorite authors, and Riddley Walker, his post holocaust novel, is one of my favorite works. I've read it se...
4 comments:
Thursday, November 4, 2010

A Quotation

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Nature attains perfection, but man never does. There is a perfect ant, a perfect bee, but man is perpetually unfinished. He is both an unf...
5 comments:
Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Natural City: an SF film from Korea

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A Korean SF film-- That was what intrigued me most about this film when I first read about it. I don't think I have ever watched a K...
4 comments:
Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

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Nietzsche on Deities. For the highest images in every religion there is an analogue in a state of the soul. The God of Mohammed--the soli...
4 comments:
Sunday, October 31, 2010

Shirley Jackson: The Haunting of Hill House, novel and film

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Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is the best "haunted house" novel I have read. I realize there may be those who...
10 comments:
Saturday, October 30, 2010

The parable of pilgrims

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"Two monks on pilgrimage came to a river bank. There they saw a girl dressed in fine clothes and at a loss to know how to proceed, for ...
Saturday, October 23, 2010

What good are books?

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Books delight us when prosperity smiles upon us; they comfort us inseparably when stormy fortune frowns on us. They lend validity to human ...
6 comments:
Friday, October 22, 2010

Robert Frost: October

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Since this is October, it seems apt to post this poem by Robert Frost. October O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened ...
Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Mishima: A LIfe in Four Chapters, a film

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Yukio Mishima has been a favorite writer of mine for some time now. I've read a number of his novels, including "The Sea of Fertil...
2 comments:
Friday, October 15, 2010

The Rubaiyat: Quatrain XXXIII

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This is one quatrain that FitzGerald apparently was not too happy about, for he made several extensive changes over the five editions--and ...
Sunday, October 10, 2010

Lin Yutang: October 10, 1895--March 3, 1976

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I can no longer remember how I was first introduced to Lin Yutang, but it just might have been simply seeing one of his books and getting in...