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editor
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 Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2007 9:55 am Post subject: |
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Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack
Hardcover
By Frostback Robertson Davies, alter ego of humorist Marchbanks
| Quote: | TELLING FORTUNES BY MOLES
(a bonus for readers of the Almanack)
There are many ways of telling fortunes, and no Almanack is complete without some allusion to a least one of them: Palmistry is the favorite, but it has been done to death; anyhow, it is hard to learn and there are too many people whose hand-lines do not conform to any known pattern. Therefore Wizard Marchbanks will confine himself to Fortune Telling By Moles, which is easy and rather dashing. Of course, there are people who are sensitive about their moles, and you had better avoid them. Here are the five easily memorized rules which will enable you to practise this fascinating branch of White Magic.
Moles on the Face: if extremely numerous and whimsically placed, the subject is likely to be unlucky in love.
Moles on the Arms: do not really count.
Moles on the Legs: should not alluded to if the fortune-teller is desirous of the continued acquaintance of his subject.
Moles on the Back: are usually visible only when evening dress is worn and should not be mentioned.
Moles Elsewhere: are rarely disclosed until the immediate future of both subject and fortune-teller is easily predictable anyhow. (From the chapter, Virgo, pgs. 111-112) |
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| Posted: Tue Dec 11, 2007 3:43 pm Post subject: |
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Beyond the Outer Shores
The Untold Story of Ed Ricketts, the
pioneering ecologist who inspired John
Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell
Hardcover
By non-'Billy Frostback Eric Enno Tamm
| Quote: | Ricketts has been called Steinbeck's alter ego, his persona in art, his fictional voice. However lionized, exaggerated or sentimentalized Ricketts may be in Cannery Row's Doc, there is no doubt that the character contains all the energy, spirit and philosophy of the friend whom Steinbeck loved. Taken as a whole, the novel is fiction, but many passages and details contain a ring of truth. One anecdote from Cannery Row, for instance, is taken directly from Ricketts' life:
Cannery Row
Paperback
By John Steinbeck
Once when Doc was at the University of chicago he had love trouble and he had worked too hard. He thought it would be nice to take a very long walk. He put on a little knapsack and he walked through Inidana and Kentucky and North Carolina and Georgia clear to Florida. He walked among farmers and mountain people, among the swamp people and fishermen. And everywhere people asked him why he was walking through the country.
Because he loved true things he tried to explain. He said he was nervous and besides he wanted to see the country, smell the ground and look at grass and birds and trees, to savor the country, and there was no other way to do it save on foot. And people didn't like him for telling the truth. They scowled, or shook and tapped their heads, they laughed as though they knew it was a lie and they appreciated a liar. And some, afraid for their daughters or their pigs, told him to move on, to get going, just not to stop near their place if he knew what was good for him.
And so he stopped trying to tell the truth. He said he was doing it on a bet - that he stood to win a hundred dollars. Everyone liked him then and believed him. They asked him in to dinner and gave him a bed and they put lunches up for him and wished him good luck and thought he was a hell of a fine fellow. Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.
However strange, the facts of this account are essentially true. Ricketts was a student at the University of Chicago and did go on such a walk. He even wrote about the experience in an article titled "Vagabonding Through Dixie" for the June 1925 issue of Travel magazine. (From Stories to Tell, p. 128) |
| Quote: | Cannery Row
VHS
Another John Huston classic,
featuring Nick Nolte and Debra Winger,
who jitterbug with reckless abandon on
the hardwood floor of FAuna's infamous
home for wayward girls.
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editor
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| Posted: Sat Dec 22, 2007 3:24 pm Post subject: |
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Samuel Marchbanks' Almanack
Hardcover
By deceased Frostback literary noise,
Robertson Davies
| Quote: | To Waghorn Wittol, ESQ.
Dear Mr. Wittol:
It was a pleasure to encounter you at the theatre, but where was Mrs. Wittol? I thought I saw her with another gentleman, but very likely I was mistaken. I was much impressed by the melodrama in which a man shared with his wife the secret of a murder, and in which his wife contrived his death by a clever device. But you know, Wittol, I think that there is an even more exciting melodrama to be written about married life. What about a play in which a man and his wife, discovering that they are boring each other, set out on a race as to which can bore the other to death first?
Think of the scenes which such a drama could contain! The great scene in which the wife tells her husband the plot of a movie she has seen: he falls asleep, coma seems about to supervene until, with a tremendous effort, he rouses himself and retorts with a description of his bridge game at the club, recalling each hand in detail; she tumbles forward in her chair, and is seen to reach for the cyanide bottle. But no! She still has some fight left in her, and begins to read a letter from her mother, who is shuffle-board champion of St. Petersburg, Fla. You see the plan? A tournament of boredom! Hollywood would jump at it, but I think the Little Theatres ought to have it first.
My regards to Mrs. Wittol, when next you see her.
Samuel Marchbanks. (-- p. 199) |
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| Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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Distant Relations
Hardcover
By Carlos Fuentes
Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden
| Quote: | My friend's pallor was not unusual. With the passing of the years his skin had become fused to his facial bones and his gesturing, slender hands had become translucent.
I had seen him shortly after his return from Mexico, which seemed to have somewhat dissipated his resemblance to a civilized phantom. Sun had given him density, fleshly presence. I almost didn't recognize him.
The return of his habitual pallor should have made him look entirely familiar, but there was something different about his manner. When I saw him alone at his table in the club dining room, I walked over to greet him and to suggest we have lunch together.
"Only if you join me here," he said, glancing toward the other tables, some distance from his.
His eyes were lost in depths far more profound than that of the vast shadowy dining room. The preferred tables, placed beside a large balcony overlooking the Place de la Concorde, escape the gloom. As these are the best in the club, it is only natural that they be allotted to the senior members. I accepted his invitation for what it was a courtesy to a younger friend.
"I haven't seen you since you returned from your trip," I said.
He continued studying his menu as if he hadn't heard me. He was leaning forward slightly, his back to the windows. The bluish light of that early afternoon in November illuminated his bald head and fringe of gray hair. Abruptly, he looked up, but not toward me. He turned and stared into the distance beyond the square, toward the bank of the river.
"Order for me," he asked me as the waiter approached. He spoke with the sense of urgency that now seemed characteristic of all his actions. I wondered if he had always behaved this way, and I had simply not noticed it before. His small, darting eyes measured the square, focusing for a long moment on the tree-lined promenade of the Tuileries.
"Well," he said finally, after we had been served our wine and his restless eyes had found repose in its depths. "I had made a wager with myself, wondering if anyone would come over to speak to me, if I would find anyone to tell my story to." (Opening paragraphs, pgs. 3-4) |
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| Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2007 2:59 pm Post subject: |
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The Immortal Game
A History of Chess
or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated
Our Understanding of War, Art, Science, and the
Human Brain
Hardcover
By David Shenk
| Quote: | Гарри Кимович Каспаров (Garry Kasparov) v. Deep Junior
January 26, 2003
New York
Game I
7. g4
(White Pawn to g4)
This was a terrific gamble and could have backfired. "In order to expose [the computer's weak spot]," said Kasparov after the game, "you have to have a lot of courage. All morning I was saying, 'Should I play g4 or should I not play g4?'" The strength - and weakness - of this move was in its unpredictability and counterintuitiveness. It left his entrire position surprisingly vulnerable on both the Kingside and the Queenside. (Notice how disconnected the White Pawns are across the entire board; disconnected Pawns cannot defend one another.) But that was also precisely the advantage of the move as well. From his practice experience with the Deep Junior program, Kasparov knew that this unusual move, 7. g4, was not included in Junior's opening database (its "opening book"), and would thus force the computer to start thinking on its own earlier than expected. Every computer has to come "out of book" at some point during the opening. Kasparov knew that it was advantageous to trigger this early, and in an unexpected way.
... Against Deep Junior, Kasparov was signaling something new. He was not employing classic anticomputer chess. Rather, he played it as he would play another human grandmaster. It was the highest compliment he could pay to Junior's programmers: they had developed a machine with true strategic ability. They had developed a machine that appeared to be thinking. (From We Are Sharing Our World with Another Species, pgs. 203-204) |
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| Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2008 4:17 pm Post subject: |
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Something Fresh
Paperback
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | 'Scarabs are Egyptian symbols in the form of beetles,' the specialist hurried on. 'The most common form of scarab is in the shape of a ring. Scarabs were used for seals. They were also employed as beads or ornaments. Some scarabei bear inscriptions having references to places, as, for instance, "Memphis is mighty for ever."'
Mr. Peters' scorn changed suddenly to active interest.
'Have you got one like that?'
'Like - ?'
'A scarab boosting Memphis. It's my home town.'
'I think it possible that some other Memphis was alluded to.'
'There isn't any other except the one in Tennessee,' said Mr Peters patriotically.
The specialist owed the fact that he was a nerve doctor instead of a nerve patient to his habit of never arguing with his visitors.
'Perhaps,' he said, ' you would care to glance at my collection? It's in the next room.'
That was the beginning of Mr Peters' devotion to scarabs. At first he did his collecting without any love for it, partly because he had to collect something or suffer, but principally because of a remark the specialist made as he was leaving the room.
'How long would it take me to get together that number of the things?' he inquired, when, having looked his fill upon the dullest assortment of objects which he remembered ever to have seen, he was preparing to take his leave.
The specialist was proud of his collection.
'How long to make a collection as large as mine? Many years, Mr Peters. Oh, many, many years.'
'I'll bet you a hundred dollars I do it in six months.'
(-- p. 46) |
| Quote: | Something Fresh
By P.G. Wodehouse
Audio Cassette
Narrated by Frederick Davidson (aka David Case)
Not our favorite Wodehouse narrator by any means but Davidson does enunciate quite clearly and achieve an inflection of the bemused British aristocrat. Fails to evoke the innocence and gullibility so necessary to Wodehouse protagonists, the poor well-meaning sods who are so easily undone by even the most perfunctory of visits to the country. |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 9:48 am Post subject: |
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From Losing Streak:
Harrowsmith Country Life
Canadian Edition
Magazine Subscription
The Canola Capers
Manitoba farmers try to nab crop rustlers
By Jason Santerre
October, 2005
| Quote: | WINNIPEG - Farmers in southern Manitoba have a mystery on their hands - and they're keeping a close eye on their fields until they find the answer, name, who's been stealing their canola? Indeed, entire crops have vanished.
It sounds unbelievable but for canola farmer Raymond Martel, the heists are no joke. He is the latest victim in a series of thefts that involve harvesting the crop while the legitimate owner is out of town. The brazen bandits made off with $50,000 worth of Martel's crop on his farm near Somerset. "They used my own trucks, broke the lock to my machine shed and got away with over 5,000 bushels," he says. Martel had just returned home from holidays to find his empty field. (From The Gazette at p. 98) |
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| Posted: Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:14 am Post subject: |
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Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Hardcover
Cruel, offensive story by Gabriel García Márquez
in his usual elegant style due, no doubt, in large
measure to Spanish translator Edith Grossman
| Quote: | The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin. I thought of Rosa Cabarcas, the owner of an illicit house who would inform her good clients when she had a new girl available. I never succumbed to that or to any of her many other lewd temptations, but she did not believe in the purity of my principles. Morality, too, is a question of time, she would say with a malevolent smile, you'll see. She was a little younger than I, and I hadn't heard anything about her for so many years that she very well might have died. But after the first ring I recognized the voice on the phone, and with no preambles I fired at her:
"Today's the day."
... And so, on the eve of my ninetieth birthday, I had no lunch and could not concentrate on reading as I waited to hear from Rosa Cabarcas. The cicadas were chirruping as loud as they could in the two o'clock heat, and the sun's journey past the open windows forced me to move the hammock three times. It always seemed to me that my birthday fell at the hottest time of the year, and I had learned to tolerate it, but my mood that day made this difficult. At four o'clock I tried to calm my spirit with Johann Sebastian Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello in the definitive performance by Don Pablo Casals. I consider them the most accomplished pieces in all of music, but instead of soothing me as usual they left me in an even worse state of prostration. I fell aslepp during the second, which I think lags somewhat, and in my sleep I confused the cello's lament with that of a melancholy ship that was leaving. At almost the same time the telephone woke me, and the rusted voice of Rosa Cabarcas brought me back to life. You have a fool's luck, she said. I found a little thing even better than what you wanted, but there's one drawback: she just turned fourteen. I don't mind changing diapers, I said as a joke, not understanding her motives. I'm not worried about you, she said, but who's going to pay me for three years in jail? (Opening paragraph and pgs. 16-17) |
J.S. Bach
Solo Cello Suites
Audio CD
Featuring the legendary Pablo Casals
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| Posted: Thu Apr 03, 2008 12:28 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, Minister
A Question of Loyalty
British comedy classic
DVD
| Quote: | Sir Humphrey: Do you know, Bernard, I sometimes think our Minister doesn't believe that he exists unless he's reading about himself in the papers. I'll bet you the first thing he says when he gets into the office is, 'Any press reports on my Washington speech?'
Bernard: How much do you bet?
Sir Humphrey: A pound.
Bernard: Done.
(After shaking hands to seal the bet...)
Bernard: But he won't because he's already asked. ... In the car, on the way back from Heathrow.
Sir Humphrey (reluctantly parting with a pound): You're learning, Bernard.
Later on ...
Sir H: Welcome home, Minister.
Minister Jim Hacker: Bernard, didn't you say there were some press cuttings on my Washington speech? Somewhere?
B: (returning the pound note to Sir Humphrey) Yes, yes. I put them in the box. |
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| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2008 5:35 pm Post subject: |
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Young Stalin
Hardcover
By Simon Sebag Montefiore
| Quote: | Stalin's pre-Revolutionary achievements and crimes were much greater than we knew. For the first time, we can document his role in the bank-robberies, protection-rackets, extortion, arson, piracy murder - the political gangsterism - that impressed Lenin and trained Stalin the very skills that would prove invaluable in the political jungle of the Soviet Union. But we can also show that he was much more than a gangster godfather: he was also a political organizer, enforcer, and master at infiltrating the Tsarist security services. In contrast to Zinoviev, Kamenev or Bukharin, whose reputations as great politicans are ironically founded on their destruction in the Terror, he was not afraid to take physical risks. But he also impressed Lenin as an independent and thoughtful politician, and as a vigorous editor and journalist, who was never afraid to confront and contradict the older man. Stalin's success was at least partly due to his unusal combination of education (thanks to the Seminary) and stree violence; he was that rare combination: both 'intellectual' and killer. No wonder in 1917 Lenin turned to Stalin as the ideal lieutenant for his violent, beleaguered Revolution.
This book is the result of almost ten years of research on Stalin in twenty-three cities and nine countries, mainly in the newly opened archives of Moscow, Tbilisi and Batumi, but also in St Petersburg, Baku, Vologda, Siberia, Berlin, Stockholm, London, Paris, Tampere, Helsinki, Cracaw, Vienna and Stanford, California. (From the Introduction, pgs. xix-xx) |
| Quote: | 'Little Stalin boxed and wrestled with a certain success, agrees Davrichewy. (footnote omitted) His singing teacher observed him setting up wrestling matches, but once he hurt *his already fragile arm. 'It started as a wrestling match then turned into real boxing,' recounts the master, 'and they beat each other up.' ...
The boys' real energies were reserved for gang-warfare. 'The girls of our hometown were organized into gangs based on the streets or quarter where they lived,. These bands were in constant warfare' - though they were melting-pots too. 'Gori's kids were educated together in the street without distinction of religion, nationality or fortune.' A ragamuffin like Stalin played in the streets with the son of Prince Amilakhvari - a famous general - who tried to teach him to swim. The children, armed with knives, bows and arrows, or catapults, led a blissfully free if wild existence: they swam in the river, they sang their favourite songs, pillaged apples from Prince Amilakhvari's orchard, mischevously ranging across the countryside. Once Stalin set the Prince's orchards alight. ...
The streetfighting was legitimate not just because Goreli parents joined in the annual brawls and bet on the wrestling-bouts but because the boys were playing the Georgian bandit-heroes who fought the Russians in the nearby mountains. But now the schoolboys found themselves persecuted by the Russian Empire even at school. (From Brawlers, Wrestlers and Choirboys, pgs. 32-34) |
| Quote: | | *Note: This damaged left arm is variously blamed on a sledge accident, a birth defect, a childhood infection, a restling injury, a fight over a woman in Chiatura, a carriage accident and a beating from his father, all (except for the birth defect) suggested by Stalin himself. There is much confusion about Stalin's probably because there were in fact two accidents: there was this, less serious accident when he had just started school (according to Keke)(hit by a phaeton maybe while playing a popular game of 'chicken,' in which boys would grab the axle of galloping carriages) or aged six (according to later health reports) which probably damaged the arm, an injury that became more noticeable in old age. Then, not long afterwards, there was a much graver accident in which he was seriously hurt and for which he needed treatment in Tiflis: this dmaged his legs. In her memoirs Keke, aged eithy, seems to merge them together. (From Crazy Beso, p. 28) |
| Quote: | When the new prisoner arrived in Baku's Bailov Prison wearing a blue-satin smock and a dashing Caucasian hood, the other political prisoners passed the word to be careful. 'This is secret,' they whispered. 'That is Koba!' They feared Stalin 'more than the police.'
The bogeyman did not disappoint. He had the 'ability quietly to incite others while he himself remained on the sidelines. The sly schemer did not spurn any means necessary but managed to avoid public responsibility.' In his seven months at the famous Bailovka, set amid the oilfields, Stalin dominated its power structures. He read, studied Esperanto, which he regarded as the language of the future,' and stirred up a series of witchhunts for traitors that often ended in death. His reign at the Bailovka was a microcosm of his dictatorship of Russia. ...
Stalin still preferred rogues to revolutionaries. He was 'always seen in the company of cutthroats, blackmailers, robbers and the gunslingers - the Mauserists.' Sometimes the criminal prisoners raided the politicals, but the Georgian criminals, probably organized by Stalin, served as their bodyguards. In power, he shocked his comrades by promoting criminals in the NKVD, but he had used criminals all his life.
These two species came together to bet on prison games such as wrestling competitions and louse-racing. Stalin did not like chess but 'He and Sergo Ordzhonikidze often played backgammon all night.' The cruellest game was 'Madness' in which a young prisoner was placed in the criminals' cell to be driven mad. Bets were taken on how long it would take for the youngster to crack up. Sometimes the victim really did go crazy. (From Louse-Racing, Murder and Madness - Prison Games, pgs. 173-175) |
| Quote: | On 24 September, Kamo and Tsintsadze, with Kupriashvili and about eighteen gunmen, ambushed the mail coach three miles outside Tiflis. The highwaymen tossed bombs at the poolice and Cossacks: three policemen and a postilion were killed. A fourth policeman was wounded but opened fire on the bank-robbers. The hold-up escalated into a brutal firefight. The gunmen failed to grab the money; the Cossacks rallied. When the Outfit eventually retreated, the Cossacks gave chase but Tsintsadze and Kupriashvili, both crack shots, covered their retreat, picking off seven Cossacks in a galloping battle down the Kadzhorskoe Highway.
It was the last bow of the Outfit. Kamo was tracked down to his hideout with eighteen of his gangsters. They were arrested. Kamo received four death sentences.
'I'm resigned to death," Kamo wrote to Tsintsadze, 'I'm absolutely calm. On my grave there should already be grass growing six feet high. One can't escape death for ever. One must die one day. But I'll try my luck once more and perhaps one day, we'll laugh at our enemies again... This seemed highly unlikely. ...
Once again, Kamo cheated the noose, benefiting from the brad amnesty of Nicholas II on the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty in 1913. Kamo remained in jail for five years but lived to meet up again with Stalin and play out the ultimate insane violence after the Revolution. ... (From The Escapist: Kamo's Leap and the Last Bank-Robbery, pgs. 216-217) |
| Quote: | | Petrograd in October 1917 seemed calm, but beneath the glossy surface the city danced in a trance of last pleasures. 'Gambling clubs functioned hectically from dusk till dawn,' reported John Reed, 'with champagne flowing and stakes of 20,000 roubles. In the centre of the city at night, prostitutes in jewels and expensive furs walked up and down and crowded the cafes...Hold-ups increased to such an extent that it was dangerous to walk the streets.' Russia wrote Ilya Ehrenburg, later one of Stalin's favoured writers, 'lived as if on a railway platform, waiting for the guard's whistle.' Aristocrats sold priceless treasures on the streets, the food shortages worsened, queues lengthened, while the rich still dined at Donon's and Constant's, the two smartest restaurants, and the bourgeois vied for tickets to hear Chaliapin sing. (From 1917 Winter: The Countdown, p. 288) |
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| Posted: Thu Jan 08, 2009 11:47 am Post subject: |
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Cousin Bette
BBC Miniseries
Based on the novel by Honoré de Balzac
DVD
| Quote: | Hortense: You exaggerate. He's attracted by the Hulot name and influence, but he's not a fool. He'll assess my beauty very much upon the value of my dowry.
Adeline: ... dear ....
Hortense: Come, maman, it's natural enough. The man's ambitious. I don't mind if you and papa can arrange the match. I'll take the councillor quite willingly. After all, it's hardly likely that I shall ever find myself a handsome, young man with a title and a genius for sculpture.
Bette: Ah, now, that I must admit! Such a character is very rare indeed.
Hortense: If he exsts at all, in fact.
Adeline: Hortense!
Hortense: No, no, Bette has rallied me about the councillor. Now it's my turn. Let me put you to the test. Better still, I'll make a wager with you. Give me proof that your young man is what you say and you shall have this yellow shawl of mine. You know you've always liked it. It's your color. And the quality. Feel it!
Bette: You don't ask that I bring him here to visit? Only ...
Hortense: Only that you prove that there is a young Count (Wenceslas) Steinbock, that he is a sculptor and a protegee of yours.
Bette: Done! |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 23, 2009 1:34 pm Post subject: |
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From Welshers:
British Heritage
Magazine Subscription
The National Eisteddfod of Wales
With its roots in the bardic tournaments of the 12th century, scores of thousands gather every August for the rites, competitions and festivities of this fanciful clebration of Welsh identity
By Siân Ellis
July, 2007
| Quote: | ... The National Eisteddfod of Wales, alternating location each year betweent the north and south part of the country and lasting up to nine days, is Europe's largest popular festival of competitive music, poetry, literature and performances. Bolstered by 800 years of traditiion, it remains (pace erstwhile doubters) a flourishing icon and bastion of Welsh arts, language and culture. ...
On average some 8,000 adults and children pit their skills, with passion and excellence, in contests as varied as folk singing and step dancing, choral performances and monologues. Months before the eisteddfod at Swansea, I spoke to Layton Watkins, top tenor with Morriston Rugby Football Club Male Choir ... and he had confided that "the boys" had begun practising their pieces as early as the previous November. "It's not the prize (£750), it's the honor of winning a National Eisteddfod that is the motivation," he said. ...
To get an idea of just what special place the eisteddfod occupies in Welsh hearts, you need to dip into its evolution. Eistedd is Welsh for "sit" and the term "eisteddfod" originally denoted a meeting of bards, either in poetic contest or to discuss professional matters. The earliest known Welsh bards worked in the courts of princes in the 6th century, competing to win a seat of honor at the lord's table that would bring patronage and a livelihood.
The first recorded bardic tournament, however, was not until 1176, held at Cardigan Castle by Rhys ap Gruffydd. Called a gwledd arbennig (special feast) rather than eisteddfod, it offered two miniature silver chairs as prizes for poetry and music, and attracted competitors from England and Scotland as well as Wales. The term eisteddfod was used for the first time at Carmarthen in the middle of the 15th century, an occasion that was significant also for tightening the rules governing strict Welsh poetry. You need to be a mental gymnast to understand the intricacies of cynghanedd - poetry that involves patterns of consonance, alliteration and internal rhyming in prescribed meter. Further eisteddfods at Caerwys in 1523 and 1567, sought to safeguard professional standards by licensing three classes of bard: anyone who didn't make the grade had to find alternative labor or be treated as a vagbond. ...
... To be admitted to the ranks of the bards amid the Gorsedd circle of stones is considered a great honor and is bestowed on those who have made a distinguished contribution to the Welsh nation, language and culture. Members range from world-famous opera singer Bryn Terfel to former rugby star Gareth Edwards and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams (coincidentally a native of Swansea). (-- pgs. 18-21) |
Renee Fleming and Bryn Terfel
Under the Stars
DVD
(Way, way better than Terfel's tired performances with an otherwise enchanting Cecilia Bartoli. The magic
of the home crowd, perhaps, or the soft summer night by a lake).
Watch the Youtube video of Renee singing Dvořák's Song to the Moon from Rusalka at the 2003 festival - in Czech.
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editor
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| Posted: Fri May 22, 2009 1:10 pm Post subject: |
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The Mystery of Capital
Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
Paperback
By Hernando De Soto
| Quote: | Think of Bill Gates, the world's most successful and wealthiest entrepreneur. Apart from his personal genius, how much of his success is due to his cultural background and his "Protestant ethic"? And how much is due to the legal property system of the United States?
How many software innovations could he have made without patents to protect them? How many deals and long-term projects could he have carried out without enforceable contracts? How many risks could he have taken at the beginning without limited liability systems and insurance policies? How much capital could he have accumulated without property records in which to fix and store that capital? How many resources could he have pooled without fungible property representations? How many other people would he have made millionaires without being able to distribute stock options? How many economies of scale could he have benefited from if he had to operate on the basis of dispersed cottage industries that could not be combined? How would he pass on the rights to his empire to his children and colleagues without hereditary succession?
I do not think Bill Gates or any entrepreneur in the West could be successful without property rights systems based on a strong, well-integrated social contract. I humbly suggest that before any brahmin who lives in a bell jar tries to convince us that succeeding at capitalism requires certain cultural traits, we should first try to see what happens when developing and former communist countries establish property rights systems that can create capital for everyone.
Throughout history people have confused the efficiency of the representational tools they have inherited to create surplus value with the inherent values of their culture. They forget that often what gives an edge to a particular group of people is the innovative use they make of a representational system developed by another culture. For example, Northerners had to copy the legal institutions of ancient Rome to organize themselves and learn the Greek alphabet and the Arabic number symbols and systems to convey information and calculate. And so, today, few are aware of the tremendous edge that formal property systems have given Western societies. As a result, many Westerners have been led to believe that what underpins their successful capitalism is the work ethic they have inherited or the existential anguish created by their religions - in spite of the fact that people all over the world all work had when they can and that existential angst or overbearing mothers are not Calvinist or Jewish monipolies. (I am as anxious as any Calvinist in history, espeically on Sunday evenings, and in the overbrearing mother sweepstakes, I would put mine in Peru up against any woman in New York.) Therefore, a a great part of the research agenda needed to explain why capitalism fails outside the West remains mired in a mass of unexamined and largely untestable assumptions labeled "culture", whose main effect is to allow too many of those who live in the privileged enclaves of this world to enjoy feeling superior.
One day these cultural arguments will peel away as the hard evidence of the effects of good political institutions and property law sink in. ... (From By Way of Conclusion, pgs. 223-225) |
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Jun 05, 2009 11:47 am Post subject: |
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Gentlemen, Scholars and Scoundrels
A Treasury of the Best of Harper's Magazine 1850 to 1972
Hardcover
Edited by Horace Knowles
| Quote: | The famous jester, Joe Miller, probably under the influence of a Restoration banquet, once boasted that, at a moment's notice, he could make a joke on any subject. He was immediately challenged to make a joke about the King. As in those days jests about the monarchy were an unhealthy amusement, Mr. Miller had to think fast.
"The King, gentlemen," he said, "is no subject."
And thereby won his bet and withdrew his neck into safety. (From the opening lines of The Little Woman by I.A. R. Wylie, November, 1945, p. 206) |
Here's what the book has to say about author Wylie:
| Quote: | | Woman must get "down into the dusty arena with her sleeves rolled up," says one who has done just that, or Man is going to blow up the world. Ida Alexa Ross Wylie has been swinging verbal (and real, she reveals here) haymakers all her life - and writing novels and stories for many magazines. She was born in Australia in 1885, and enjoyed a self-regulated childhood in England, becoming an experienced traveler, alone, over her own country and the Continent before she was in her teens. Miss Wylie is *unmarried and lives on a farm at Belle Mead, New Jersey. |
| Quote: | | * Note: Wylie's partner was none other than Sara Josephine Baker, a celebrated doctor who was also the first woman to receive a position in the U.S. federal government. |
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editor
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| Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2009 11:14 am Post subject: |
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From the American South:
To Kill a Mockingbird
Hardcover
By Truman Capote's pal, Harper Lee
| Quote: | Early one morning as we were beginning our day's play in the back yard, Jem and I heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford's collard patch. We went to the wire fence to see if there was a puppy - Miss Rachel's rat terrier was expecting - instead we found someone sitting looking at us. Sitting down, he wasn't much higher than the collards. We stared at him until he spoke:
"Hey."
"Hey yourself," said Jem pleasantly.
"I'm Charles Baker Harris," he said. "I can read."
"So what?" I said.
"I just thought you'd like to know I can read. You got anything needs readin' I can do it..."
"How old are you," asked Jem, "four-and-a-half?"
"Goin' on seven."
"Shoot no wonder, then," said Jem, jerking his thumb at me. "Scout yonder's been readin' ever since she was born, and she ain't even started to school yet. You look right puny for goin' on seven."
"I'm little but I'm old," he said.
Jem brushed his hair back to get a better look. "Why don't you come over, Charles Baker Harris?" "Lord, what a name."
"'s not any funnier 'n yours. Aunt Rachel says your name's Jeremy Atticus Finch."
Jem scowled. "I'm big enough to fit mine," he said. "Your name's longer 'n you are. Bet it's a foot longer." (-- pgs. 6-7) |
Yes, apparently humorist P.G. Wodehouse wasn't just whistlin' Dixie:
| Quote: | | Dill was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending the summer with his aunt, Miss Rachel, and would be spending every summer in Maycomb from now on. His family was from Maycomb County originally, his mother worked for a photographer in Meridian, had entered his picture in a Beautiful Child contest and won five dollars. She gave the money to Dill, who went to the picture show twenty times on it. (-- p. 8) |
Listen:
| Quote: | To Kill a Mockingbird
Audio CD
Narrated by U.S. actor Sissy Spacek, a Southerner herself
There are others but this would be our version of choice. |
View:
| Quote: | To Kill a Mockingbird
DVD
Featuring Robert Duvall in his break-out role and Gregory Peck, reminding us of a time when Hollywood still had leading men - so long.
ESL students need have no fear of the mild southern colloquy in this film classic. It was made at a time when elocution was still an important asset in the acting trade. As Robert Graves so neatly put it, goodbye to all that. |
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