Daily Archives: November 17, 2007

Art and Culture

A Magical Mythical Tour

Leave a comment

31  59%  35%  4mph windroseNNE bar steady dewpoint18  First Quarter of the Snow Moon  Holiseason

Cooked a New England Boiled Dinner for supper tonight.  I cook the evening’s Kate works days, which are on weekends.  After my workout, as the corned beef burbled along on its 3 1/2 hours journey to fork done, I prepared four of my objects:  

A bronze boss of Oceanus, God of the World River

A red-figure Greek krater with Dionysus, Satyrs and Maenads cavorting

A bronze sculpture of Icarus

And Mauric Denis’ symbolist work, Orpheus and Eurydice

At 9:30 I came down here and finished the other four:

A painting of Calypso gazing off into the distance as Ulysses finally sets sail for Ithaca

A bronze sculpture of Theseus killing a Centaur

Rembrandt’s Lucretia

A painting of Diana with her two dogs and the hapless Actaeon in the background being eaten by his own dogs.

This is familiar turf for me.  Greek and Roman mythology works on and through us today, as it did all those years ago when Cicero and Caesar, Pericles and Leonidas were alive.  This is a high school group from Visitation High School. Don’t know why they’re going to be at the MIA on Sunday at 11:00 AM.  Maybe they caught the Saturday night folk mass.

Anyhow. I finished.

General

The Fog of Everyday Life

Leave a comment

35  54%  34%  7mph  windroseENE bar rises dewpoint20 First Quarter of the Snow Moon    Holiseason

The great tragedy of Science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

Thomas H. Huxley (1825 – 1895)

Whenever I read something about war, especially from a general staff perspective, this observation comes up:  “A battle plan never survives contact with the enemy.”  This represents several attitudes at once.  Humility, in that no plan can entertain every contingency created by others with free will opposed to it.  CYA, in that it provides cover for even the bad plan, for it too will not survive contact with the enemy.   Hopefulness, in that it apparently assumes that despite this problem, somehow, things will come out ok. 

A paraphrase might be, no plan survives contact with reality.  That is to say, no intellectual effort, a non-dimensional rendering of a complex, 4-D world, can guide us unerringly in the nitty gritty of daily life.

                                     Reality is a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.
                                                       – Lily Tomlin

All this explains why I’m not done with my tour.  The cursed enemy of groceries and filing and e-mails were ugly facts, real obstacles that rose up and overwhelmed my plan.  In days gone by I would become anxious about this, troubled.  Now, I’m merely frantic.  I have all the stuff out, I’ve done most of the objects before, and I’m bound to know more than the high school students.  This all provides me with the long ago experience of college when a report or test was imminent and other ugly facts like beer and women and politics had crossed my path and torn up my plans.

At some point in all this mental milling around, I come back to this, “This is why you’ve not done more with your life.  You bum.”  This occurs especially when I read about someone like Jacque Barzun who, at age 100, just published his 38th book.   If I publish one a year from now till my 100th birthday, I could just catch him.  Well, I guess there is still time. 

Next comes:  Oh, geez.  Come on now.  You love your life and realize how lucky you are.  How grateful you are for what you have and for what you’ve been able to do with your life.  Then, I nod, get up and go work out.  Out, out, damned fact.

Weather +Climate

Skinner and Snow

Leave a comment

34  74%  37%  7mph  windroseNNE  bar steep rise  dewpoint27  First Quarter of the Snow Moon    Holiseason

At 9AM this morning we had snow.  A bit accumulated on the outdoor furniture on our deck, then it was gone.  The season teases us, reminds us how it could be while withholding what we want, a daylong nightlong daylong snow complete with howling winds and drifts as big as cars. 

In years past, back when I was, say, 40, Minnesota would reliably produce such weather, but now it falls in that strange realm of behavioral psychology, intermittent reinforcement.  Any Skinnerian can tell you that that intermittent is the most powerful reinforcer.  It explains gambling’s dark charm and the peculiar frustrations of Viking’s and Cub’s fans.  It also explains why we Minnesotan’s now look so eagerly at each new flake in the sky hoping that this will be the one when the land returns to normal, at least for a day.

Snow seems faraway right now.  Oh, well, I have plenty to do today.  Construct a magic of myth tour, grocery shopping, cooking supper, a workout.  And, if I have time, finish my filing.  Got a lot done yesterday, but not all.