Finally

I had long avoided reading To Kill a Mockingbird, which is a difficult feat. At the time, the prevalent edition was this one with a bird being annoyed by poky color triangles. I suppose I thought the book was about murderous Graphic Designers. As a child, I couldn't even look at the cover without it upsetting me. I also shunned it because my sister (possibly kindly) warned me if a dog died in anything, a movie, a book or a television show and one, named Tim Johnson, does indeed die- so I deliberately never watched the Gregory Peck film, and may eventually have confused it with Member of the Wedding.
Of course, I loved the novel.

From the bk.....
Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

Revisiting Muriel Spark

Daylight was appearing over London, the great city of bachelors. Half-pint bottles of milk began to be stood at the doorsteps of houses containing single apartments from Hampstead Heath to Greenwich Park, from Wanstead Flats to Putney Heath; but especially in Hampstead, especially in Kensington.
In Queens Gate, Kensington, in Harrington Road, The Boltons.... Chelsea and its backwaters, the bachelors stirred between their sheets, reached for their wound watches, and with waking intelligences noted the time; then remembering it was Saturday morning turned over on their pillows. But soon because it was Saturday, most would be out on the streets shopping for their bacon and eggs.... would set out early, before a quarter past ten, in order to avoid being jostled by the women, the legitimate shoppers.

and

It is all demonology and to do with creatures of the air, and there are others besides ourselves, he thought who lie in their beds like happy countries that have no history. Others ferment in prison; some rot, maimed; some lean over the banisters of presbyteries to see if anyone is going to answer the telephone.

From "Hawkins of the Paris Herald"

Sarah Bernhardt, 1879: "It's curious how many idle stories there are about me. My favorite dishes are supposed to be burnt cats, lizards' tails and peacock brains sauteed in monkey butter, whatever that is..."

I saw La Goulue sometime after her retirement from the Moulin Rouge. True to her soubriquet, meaning the glutton, she had ruined her dancing career by overeating, and my glimpse of her was as a lion tamer in a street fair. She later became a wrestler and just before she died in 1921 she could be seen selling oranges outside the Moulin rouge.

"In the early years of the century, the Folies Bergere competed with the Moulin Rouge by producing revues that featured English dancehall girls, because French girls are incapable of learning the precisions required in a chorus line.

Ladies of pleasure had been known under the Second Empire a les biches and les soupeuses. A biche was a small deer. A soupeuse was a beauty of limited virtue available for supper. By the turn of the century, the appellations had gone out of fashion in favor of the simpler 'demimondaine'.

Worst wedding toast ever

John Donne in 1627, from the NYRB:

Where be all the splinters of that Bone,
which a shot hath shivered and scattered in the Ayre ?
Where be all the Atoms of that flesh, which a Corrasive hath eat away,
or a Consumption hath breath'd,and exhal'd away from our arms, and other Limbs ?
In what wrinkle, in what furrow, in what bowel of the earth,
ly all the graines of the ashes of a body burnta thousand years since ?
 In what corner, in what ventricle of the sea, lies all the jelly of a Body drowned
in the generall flood ? What coherence, what sympathy, what dependence
maintaines any relation, any correspondence, between that arm that was lost in Europe,
and that legge that was lost in Afrique or Asia, scores of yeers between ?
One humour of our dead body produces worms,
and those worms suck and exhaust all other humour, and then all dies, and all dries,
 and molders into dust, and that dust is blowen into the River, &
that puddled water tumbled into the sea, and that ebs and flows in infinite revolutions,
and still, still God knows in what Cabinet every seed-Pearle lies,
in what part of the world every graine of every mans dust lies.

MURTHER somewhat foul

After a marvelous July 4th with work folk, I spent the afternoon with Agatha. "Murder at Hazelmoor" opened, as always, with a terrific premise. An evening party where the hostesses, suggesting diversions, agree to some table turning. The lights are dimmed and the table raps out, letter by letter, that Captain Trevelyan has just been murdered at the Hazelmoor cottage he was renting. His good friend Burnaby sets off in a snowstorm to investigate. Trevelyan is indeed dead- coshed with a sand-filled sock laid against under door draughts. Since the time of death coincides with the spirit occurance, it is obvious that one of the guests must be the murderer, and as only 4 characters are sketched out in the length of the story, it is of course the one most present in that narrative.

Acquisitions

The 3 latest art purchases at auction- unsigned or illegibly signed. "Landscape" pencil signed " N. Mayer", dated '51. Mid to early 20th century- the two lithographs were from the estate of artist Eugene Pizzuto- in a sheaf of art from many different artists. The bridge is a greater mystery- the artist seems to have also created the frame- there is a two letter monogram in the lower left corner, possibly "K.T.".

Agatha

Left: The face of my hangovers.





When, on the morning following a night out I have no desire to move, I'll reread an Agatha Christie cover to cover until the throbbing ceases. After "The Clocks", I read "Mrs. McGinty's Dead" in which an elderly charwoman was murdered by one of any of her five clients as she had discovered that one of them was related to one of four murderesses featured in a newspaper article. The solution, not very thrillingly, had to do with the fact that "Evelyn CAN also be a MAN'S name!"
Next it was "Ordeal by Innocence" in which a woman is murdered by one of any of 4 adopted children, her husband, secretary or housekeeper. The motive was rather implausible.... (housekeeper infatuated with son, hiding theft of slain mother's money). The reaction of the son when convicted of the murder committed by the housekeeper was inexplicable.
I enjoy having all the Christie paperbacks around to remind me of my days spent in paperback swap shops like The Book Rack, situated next to the waterfall in the University Village shopping center, but I never need read them again, so they are being purged, along with Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward, Virginia Kelly (Clinton)'s Autobiography and some Brigid Brophy.

Oh, T.H.R-G!

From Robsjohn-Gibbings' petulant screed against the antique, "Goodbye, Mr. Chippendale":
"Those were the days, so help me, when it was the height of something to sit on a cassapanca upon a tiled floor amid frescoed walls and coffered ceiling- an interior of incredible gloom..."
(A cassapanca is a sort of Italiany hope chest, to which arms and a back could be added).

and on "French Gothic"

This confusion of the ecclesiastical and the secular, the result of too many visits to European churches and cathedrals by the American laity, struck few if any as incongruous. It seemed natural to hang your pants over a prie-dieu, keep the telephone book on a lectern, the cigars in a gutted hymnal, drape the walls with chasubles, put a chalice on the piano, and stand dolorous carved saints in the odd corners.

Somerset Maughham, Agatha Christie, Chanel, William James

The order of completion of the last four books I have read.
This was my second reading of "Cakes and Ale", and I enjoyed it even more than I had previously. It is the only Maugham I've ever attempted (other than a reluctant plunge into "Of Human Bondage"- a novel that should be quietly slid behind file cabinets and into elevator shafts while no one's looking)
I followed this up with Agatha Christie's "The Clocks", which had the irresistible murder of an unknown man who was to be found by a temp hire arriving at the house of an elderly blind woman whose home has been filled with clocks she does not own, all set to the same wrong time.
It became glaringly obvious that these were all red herrings and the murderer was fairly apparent. The motive was unsportingly peripheral to the story, and the eventual identity of the victim was never really a point of interest. It almost seemed an academic problem Agatha was solving, the premise made from words thrown improv style at her. Even if the victim is unsympathetic his death should inspire some sort of empathy in the reader. He was as inert as the clocks. Absurdly, after the murder was solved the blind woman turned out to be some sort of spy which in no way had anything to do with the victim.
Less skillfully, Edmonde Roux's prickly, defensive bio of Chanel largely consisted of extraordinary suppositions, diaphonous sources and a sense that Roux had no interest at all in fashion. So many sentences ended half-way through or trailed clauses into vaporous nothingness that the narrative shuddered to a stop. Additionally its poor translation into stilted English gave one the sensation of falling down a staircase.

From "William James in the Maelstrom of American Modernism"

a race of dogs bred for generations, say in the Vatican, with
characters of visual shape, sculptured in marble, presented to their eyes, in every variety
of form and combination, ought to discriminate before long the finest shades of these
peculiar characters. In a word, they ought to become, if time were given, accomplished
connoisseurs of sculpture.
What this leaves out, of course, is the factor of active interest. The mind must have some interest in a given subject before it even begins to register impressions, let aone form opinions. "My experience is what I agree to attend to" is how James puts it. What the dogs will attend to in the scculpture gallery is "Who peed on this pedestal?"

Conrad

"Mr. Arnold Bennett recently protested against those people who, when Conrad is mentioned, exclaim "Ah, Conrad!" as if that were a different thing altogether, as if you were now talking about something that mattered. It is a form of exclusiveness that is very irritating no doubt, especially if you happen to be a novelist yourself."

_Virginia Woolf, Collected Essays

Hugh Trevor-Roper on Scotland

I suppose that the great crisis caused by the Rape of the Stone has been reported even in Italy. The upper classes (feel) if such things are to be allowed, where will they stop? Are not the halls and castles of the Scots aristocracy stuffed with relics and objets d'art dubiously conveyed thither from distant origins far more recently than the 13th century? If everyone is going to claim his own, there will be scenes like the competition for disputed limbs and organs in the great day of the Resurrection of the Flesh.

Jacobean furniture

From the book "The Practical Book Of Period Furniture", by Harold Donaldson Eberlein And Abbot McClure: For those whose needs embrace Jacobean furniture the authors have endeavoured to offset all difficulties and make its study as easy as possible by treating it in the most practical and systematic manner. They would also cheer the reader by assuring him that the subsequent periods are much simpler and less varied in their characteristics.

Before treating of Jacobean furniture itself it is necessary to say a few words regarding the terms used,when we speak of the Jacobean or Stuart period, with reference to furniture, we ordinarily include everything between 1603, when James I ascended the throne of England, and 1688, when the second James fled before the victorious approach of William of Orange.

The contour and style of the furniture of the Jacobean period, as of every other period for that matter, more or less faithfully reflected the social, intellectual and religious temperament and manners of the times. The furniture was stout and staunch, even to clumsiness and severe in form and line even though bedizened with a superfluity of ornament. It matched the coarse manners, abrupt morals, and vigorous theology of the day with all their grotesquerie, terrible earnestness and redundancy of polemics, brimstone anathema and persecution. Contour and style were both thoroughly in accord with the genius of the people.

The Paris Universal Expo of 1867

From "The Judgment of Paris"
Among the new inventions were: a typewriter, a phonograph, a tire made from rubber, a refined hydrocarbon oil called petroleum, and aluminum. There was also dynamite and a new invention from America, the rocking chair. Displayed as well was a brass horn called the saxophone, invented by the Imperial Instrument maker, Adolphe Sax.

From Louis Seize to Thomas Sheraton

from the book "The Practical Book Of Period Furniture", by Harold Donaldson Eberlein And Abbot McClure.

In the Louis Seize period there was a noticeable return to rectilinear principles in the design of furniture. Vertical and horizontal lines were emphasised and some of the cabinet-work possessed a distinctly perpendicular aspect. While curved surfaces did not altogether disappear from cabinet-work, carcases were in the main rectilinear. Although the amenity of curves in the shapes of chair seats, backs and arms and in the rounding of corners was not disdained, the legs of tables, chairs, sofas, stools and cabinets were almost altogether straight, and the same may be said of stretchers where they occur. Legs and stretchers displaying curves were only the exceptions that proved the rule. Had it not been for the grace of well-placed embellishment, not a little of the furniture might have been open to the charge of angularity. As it was, however, ornament was so adroitly disposed that it enhanced the classic purity of structural lines without the loss of distinction resulting from superfluity.

The representative Sheraton type of furniture, as we are accustomed to understand it, was based entirely on his first book and richly deserves all the distinction and originality he claims for it. In his later books there is a marked and rapid deterioration in the quality of the designs given. Whether it was because Sheraton was failing in inspiration, or because he was trying to accommodate his designs to a popular taste that clamoured loudly for the latest French forms, it would be hard to say. It was probably the latter, for one who had produced types of such artistic excellence a few years before could scarcely sink to such depths of impoverished invention independently of some extraneous cause. This inference is supported by the pathetic laments he utters, as early as 1802, that "a clumsy four-footed stool from France will be admired by our connoisseurs in preference to a first-rate cabinet of English production" or that the British public has brought to pass this deplorable state of affairs by "foolishly staring after French fashions" instead of giving "suitable encouragement to designers and artists" in England. "Instead of this," he says, "when our tradesmen are desirous to draw the best customers to their warerooms, they hasten over to Paris, or otherwise pretend to go there, plainly indicating either our own defects in cabinet-making, or extreme ignorance, that we must be pleased and attracted by the mere sound of French taste."So bad were his later designs, so jejune in character and so impregnated with a debased French feeling that it seems almost unfair, and is certainly prejudicial to a clear understanding of types, to attach Sheraton's name to them. We shall, therefore, pass them by with scant notice.

Sheraton's "Drawing Book," the publication upon which his claims to a distinctive style are wholly based, was a most important and valuable addition to the literature of cabinet-making. Unfortunately a fair-minded reader cannot fail to be annoyed and repelled by the disparaging and acrid attitude he assumes towards the designs and achievements of his predecessors and contemporaries, of whom he speaks uncharitably and contemptuously. Chippendale's designs he brands as "now wholly antiquated and laid aside;" Manwar-ing's book contains nought "but what an apprentice boy may be taught by seven hours' proper instructions;" for some of Shearer's work he did, indeed, express measured admiration and proved the sincerity of his admiration by adopting and really improving some of his designs; but of Hepplewhite, the designer between whose plans and his own there was the closest similarity, a similarity positively perplexing at times, he says, while grudgingly conceding that a few of the designs in his book "are not without merit," "if we compare some of the designs, particularly the chairs, with the newest taste, we shall find that this work has already caught the decline, and perhaps, in a little time will suddenly die in the disorder." This of a volume published but five years before his own

Manet

From: The Judgment of Paris by Ross King

p 52

the viewing public was accustomed to standing close to paintings and studying them minutely and marveling over the delicacy of the handiwork. ... But manet's apparently clumsy brushstrokes and lack of clarity did not lend themselves to this sort of appreciation. The work looked lackadaisical and incomplete because inplaces the undercoat of white primer and the weave of the canvas could clearly be seen. Elsewhere the marks of the paintbrush were visible. Most other painters used thin glazes and fine brushes made of sable to cover their traces, in effect brushing themselves out of their work.

The vast majority of pigments sold in France were no longer mixed with linseed oil which yellowed with age, but rather with poppy oil whose use resulted in more buttery, textured pigments than the smooth ones produced with linseed oil.
Painters using pigments bound in poppy oil therefore needed to work harder to eliminate the bristle marks from their canvases, though a number of them, notably Delacroix and Couture had been leaving behind the visible sign of the brush as a kind of signature of their individuality and workmanship. They were following in the tradition of painters of the Italian Renaissance, such as Leonardo and Tiotian, some of whose works showed how they even smeared paint with their fingertips. But by the nineteenth cetury this seemingly spontaneous approach had disappeared.

On "upstairs gods"

From "South Wind":

You seem to have a quarrel with Moses and his command- 
ments, which we are taught to regard as the keystone of 
ethics. I don't want to discuss things. I want to listen 
to the opinions of a man so different from myself as you 
are. It may do me good. And I think I could stand 
almost anything," he added, with a laugh, " in this 
landscape — in this clear pagan light, as you call it." 

" I used to be interested in such things as a boy. I 
suppose all respectable boys are ; and I was respectable 
even at that tender age. Nowadays, though I still pick 
up an Oriental rug now and then, I have no further use 
for Oriental gods." 

" What is your objection to them ? " 

Mr. Keith paused before replying. Then he said : 

" The drawback of Oriental gods is that they have 
been manufactured by the proletariat for the use of the 
aristocracy. They act accordingly ; that is, they distil 
the morality of their creators which I consider a noxious 
emanation. The classic gods were different. They were 
invented by intellectualists who felt themselves capable 
of maintaining a kind of comradeship with their deities. 
Men and gods were practically on a level. They walked 
hand in hand over the earth. These gods belonged to 
what one might call the horizontal or downstairs 
variety." 

" And those others ? " 

" Oh, they are the upstairs or vertical type. They 
live overhead. Why overhead ? Because they have 
been created by the proletariat. The proletariat loves 
to humiliate itself. Therefore they .manufacture a god
who approves of grovelling, a god who can look down 
upon them. They exalt this deity to an infinite degree 
in point of goodness and distance, and in so doing they 
inevitably abase themselves. Now I disapprove of 
grovelling. 7'hat means I disapprove of upstairs 
gods." 

" Upstairs gods " 

" If you walk into my front door as a distinguished 
visitor I am happy to show you the place. You can 
prowl about the garden, poke your nose into the pantry 
and learn, if it amuses you, all about my private life. 
But if you rent a high attic overlooking my premises and 
stare out of your window all day long, watching my 
movements and noting down everything I do, why, 
damn it, I call that vulgar. Staring is bad form. Vertical 
gods are inquisitive. I don't like to be supervised. I 
don't care about this dossier business. My garden is for 
you and me to walk about in, not for outsiders to stare 
into. Which reminds me that you have not been to see 
me lately. You ought to come and look at my cannas ; 
you really ought ! They are in magnificent bloom just 
now. When shall it be ? " 

Mr. Keith seemed to be already tired of the subject. 
In fact he was as near being bored as ever he allowed 
himself to be. But the other refused to let the conversa- 
tion be side-tracked. He wanted to know. 

" Vertical and horizontal gods. . . . Dear me. Sounds 
rather profane." 

" I have not heard that word for quite a long time." 

" You don't feel the need of any kind of superior 
being to control human affairs ? " 

" Not up to the present. I can find no room in my 
Cosmos for a deity, save as a waste product of human 
weakness, an excrement of the imagination. If you 
gave me the sauciest god that ever sat on a cloud or 
breakfasted with the Village Idiot — 'pon my word, I
shouldn't know what to do with him. I don't collect 
bric-a-brac myself, and the British Museum is dreadfully- 
overstocked. Perhaps the Duchess could make some use 
of him, if he specialized in lace vestments and choral 
mass. By the way, I hear that she is going to be admitted 
into the Roman Church next week ; there is to be a 
luncheon after the ceremony. Are you going ? " 

" Vertical and horizontal gods, ... I never heard 
that distinction made before." 

" It is a difference, my dear Heard. Mankind remains 
in direct contact with the downstairs variety. That 
simplifies matters. But the peculiar position of those 
others — perpendicularly overhead at a vast distance — 
necessitates a cumbersome code of verbal signals, un- 
intelligible to common folk, for the expression of mutual 
desires. You cannot have any god of this kind without 
some such cumbersome contrivance to bridge over the 
gulf and make communication possible. It is called 
theology. It complicates life very considerably. Yes," 
he pursued, " the vertical-god system is not only vulgar ; 
it is perplexing and expensive. Think of the wastage, of 
the myriads of people who have been sacrificed because 
they misinterpreted some enigmatical word in the code. 
Why are you intent on these conundrums ? " 

More from Nepenthe

A directory to the springs of antiquity:

The Fountain of Saint Calogero, described as one of the most famous,
was lukewarm, of ammoniacal and alkaline flavour; a glassful of it
produced the most violent retchings and vomitings. Properly applied,
however, the water had been found to relieve the gout, the discomforts
of child-bearing, leprosy, irritation of the mucous membrane of the
nose, impetigo, strabismus and ophthalmia. If the patient observed care
in his diet, avoiding articles of calorific nature such as fried fish
and boiled lentils, he would find himself greatly benefited by its use
in the case of cornucopic hydrocephalus, flatulence, tympanitis and
varicose veins. It was useful, furthermore, as a cure for the stings of
scorpions and other venomous beasts.

The so-called "Fountain of Paradise," of nitrous ingredients, spurted
forth with a prodigious hissing noise at a temperature of boiling lead,
from so inaccessible a fissure in the rocks that little had been done
to investigate its peculiar properties. It was held none the less to be
efficacious for the distemper known as PLICA POLONICA, and the peasant
folk, mixing its spray with the acorns on which their pigs were
fattened, had observed that these quadrupeds prospered vastly in health
and appearance.

The Fountain of Hercules, laxative and tartaric, had proved its
efficacy in cases of enlarged spleen, hare-lip, vertigo, apoplexy,
cachexia, cacodoria, cacochymia senilis and chilblains. It was also
considered to be a sovereign remedy for that distressing and almost
universal complaint, the piles.

The Fountain known as "La Salina," of arsenical nature, was frequented
chiefly by women who found in its waters an alleviation for troubles
which Monsignor Perrelli does not specify. It was recommended,
moreover, as a sheep-dip.

The Fountain of the Virgin, purgative and blastopeptic, had given
relief to sufferers from the quartan fever, herpes, elephantiasis, and
to all persons of atrobiliary and lunatick temperament.

The so-called "Old Fountain," of sub-acidulate and vitriolique flavour,
chalybeate and cataplastic, was renowned for removing stains from
household linen. Taken in minute doses, under medical advice, it gave
relief to patients afflicted with the wolfe, NOLI ME TANGERE,
crudities, Bablyonian itch, globular pemphlegema, fantastical visions,
koliks, asthma and affections of the heart. It also "fortifies the
stomach, comforts the bowels, reduces the gallstone to sand, the sand
to mud, the mud to water--water which can be passed out of the system by
the usual channels."

The Fountain of Saint Vulcan, anti-blepharous and amygdaloidal, was
charged with such potent minerals that a single spoonful produced a
diarrhoea more distressing to witness than cholera. None the less,
applied externally, it was a wondrous remedy in cases of jaundice,
toothache and open wounds.

The Fountain of the Capon, sedative and scorbutic, was indicated for
rheumatisms of every kind, not excluding sprained limbs, hydrophobia,
lycanthropy, black choler, oppilations and procrastinating catapepsia.

The Fountain known as "Spina Santa" was resorted to by all persons
suffering from maladies of the alimentary canal, such as dysentery,
cloven palate, follicular hepatitis, and trabulated hyperaemia of the
Bivonian passage.

The Fountain of Saint Feto had, by virtue of its smell alone, applied
to her nose as she lay in her coffin, raised from the dead a certain
Anna da Pasto.

The Fountain popularly called "La Pisciarella" was peculiarly adapted
to those ailments which are incidental to childhood and youth--to wit:
chlorosis, St. Vitus' Dance, constipation, ringworm, otootitis and
other perimingeal disturbances, urticaria, moon-sickness, scrofula and
incontinence of urine.

Lastly, the Fountain of Saint Elias, sulphurous and saponaceous, was
renowned for its calming influence upon all who suffered from abuse of
lechery or alcohol, or from ingrowing toe-nails.

This concludes the list.

The Way of All Flesh

by Samuel Butler.

"On the day of the funeral, however, we had a great excitement; old Mr Pontifex sent round a penny loaf to every inhabitant of the village according to a custom still not uncommon at the beginning of the century; the loaf was called a dole. We had never heard of this custom before, besides, though we had often heard of penny loaves, we had never before seen one; moreover, they were presents to us as inhabitants of the village, and we were treated as grown up people, for our father and mother and the servants had each one loaf sent them, but only one. We had never yet suspected that we were inhabitants at all; finally, the little loaves were new, and we were passionately fond of new bread, which we were seldom or never allowed to have, as it was supposed not to be good for us. Our affection, therefore, for our old friend had to stand against the combined attacks of archaeological interest, the rights of citizenship and property, the pleasantness to the eye and goodness for food of the little loaves themselves, and the sense of importance which was given us by our having been intimate with someone who had actually died. It seemed upon further inquiry that there was little reason to anticipate an early death for anyone of ourselves, and this being so, we rather liked the idea of someone else's being put away into the churchyard; we passed, therefore, in a short time from extreme depression to a no less extreme exultation; a new heaven and a new earth had been revealed to us in our perception of the possibility of benefiting by the death of our friends, and I fear that for some time we took an interest in the health of everyone in the village whose position rendered a repetition of the dole in the least likely."

A little less of a fire hazard

Another pile of articles torn from 12-year-old newspapers found in a folder under my bed- archived here and then tossed on the fireplace:

An article on the industry created around viatical settlements for AIDS patients- suggesting that the business would collapse if the lives of AIDS patients could be prolonged.

An obit of Herbert Huncke: "It was through Mr. Burroughs that Mr. Huncke soon met Mr. Ginsberg, then a Columbia undergraduate, and Mr. Kerouac, a recent Columbia dropout who became so enchanted with Mr. Huncke's repeated use of the carny term ''beat,'' meaning tired and beaten down, that he later used it as his famous label for the Beat Generation. (Mr. Kerouac later clouded things by suggesting it was derived from ''beatific.'')

How Perrier water nearly killed everything on Earth:
AROUND 250 million years ago, something so devastating occurred that about 90 percent of Earth's animal species were wiped out. While the cause of this greatest of all mass extinctions remains uncertain, a new study by biologists and geochemists suggests that a huge upwelling of carbonated water from the depths of the oceans may have played a lethal role.
That mass extinction, at the end of the Permian period, reshuffled Earth's genetic deck, making way for the rise of dinosaurs in the subsequent Mesozoic era and widening the niches available for the mammal-like reptiles destined to become ancestors of the human race.

The bizarre practice of Feng-Shui:
The ancient Chinese craft of feng shui (pronounced fung shway) is the practice of arranging surroundings to promote prosperity and harmony. Here are basic guidelines from Tin Sun, a feng shui master, for assessing the feng shui of an urban apartment.
EXTERIOR:
A building should not have its front door facing oncoming traffic. Cars and lights create negative forces that disturb the peace. There should not be any sharp objects or corners facing a doorwya of a building or apartment. The corners are like arrowheads, shooting negative e4nergy toward the building and its tenants. One should avoid facing glass buildings. The buildings would absorb the negative energies of their surroundings and reflect them back. If a building is on a hill, the back of the building should not be on the lower part of the slope. It would be like a chair without back support - the energy would roll down the hill. It is not advisable to have bridges in close proximity. They create tension and negative forces.
INTERIOR:
An apartment should not be next to or facing an elevator, especially if one hears the mechanics of it. The humming of the elevator machinery disrupts the flow of qi, or life force. When one enters an apartment, the stove should not be visible. It can turn happiness into sorrow because of its concentration of fire, which disturbs the peace of the space. This is a common cause of family problems. An apartment should not be next to or facing a garbage disposal chute, which draws away energy from the apartment. Heavy traffic around the chute also disrupts peace.


The text of Justice Scalia's anti-gay dissenting opinion when the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional Colorado's attempt to nullify civil rights protections for gays (Thomas and Rehnquist joined Scalia)


Obit for Arkansas Democratic Senator J. William Fulbright- full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/10/obituaries/j-william-fulbright-senate-giant-is-dead-at-89.html

They asked John Barrymore...

"Did Hamlet sleep with his mother?"
"Only in the Chicago company," he replied

Nepenthe

From South Wind by Norman Douglas
Worldly-wise, indolent, good-natured and, like most
Southerners, a thorough-going pagan, Don Francesco
was deservedly popular as ecclesiastic. Women adored
him ; he adored women. He passed for an unrivalled
preacher ; his golden eloquence made converts every-
where, greatly to the annoyance of the parroco, the
parish priest, who was doubtless sounder on the Trinity
but a shocking bad orator and altogether deficient in
humanity, and who nearly had a fit, they said, when the
other was created Monsignor. Don Francesco was a
fisher of men, and of women. He fished ad maiorem Dei
gloriam, and for the fun of the thing. It was his way of
taking exercise, he once confessed to his friend Keith ;
he was too fat to run about like other people — he could
only talk. He fished among natives, and among foreigners.

Foreigners were hard to catch, on Nepenthe. They
came and went in such breathless succession. Of the
permanent residents only the Duchess, always of High
Church leanings, had of late yielded to his blandish-
ments. She was fairly hooked. Madame Steynlin, a
lady of Dutch extraction whose hats were proverbial,
was uncompromisingly Lutheran. The men were past
redemption, all save the Commissioner who, however,
was under bad influences and an incurable wobbler, any-
how. Eames, the scholar, cared for nothing but his
books. Keith, a rich eccentric who owned one of the
finest villas and gardens on the place, only came to the
island for a few weeks every year. He knew too much,
and had travelled too far, to be anything but a hopeless
unbeliever ; besides, he was a particular friend of his,
with whom he agreed, in his heart of hearts, on every
subject. The frequenters of the Club were mostly
drunkards, derelicts, crooks, or faddists — not worth
catching.

and

"that little place all by itself fascinated her. Bitterly she regrets her choice. She has discovered the drawbacks of a promontory. My Dear Duchess, never live on a promontory! It has fearful inconveniences; you are overlooked by everybody. All the island knows what you do and who visits you and when and why..."

and


Concerning the life and martyrdom of Saint Dodekanus:
He had entered the land of the Crotalophoboi, cannibals and
necromancers who dwelt in a region so hot, and with light so dazzling,
that their eyes grew on the soles of their feet. Here he laboured for
eighty years, redeeming them to Christianity from their magical and
bloodthirsty practices. In recompense whereof they captured him at the
patriarchal age of 132, or thereabouts, and bound him with ropes
between two flat boards of palmwood. Thus they kept the prisoner,
feeding him abundantly, until that old equinoctial feast drew near. On
the evening of that day they sawed the whole, superstitiously, into
twelve separate pieces, one for each month of the year; and devoured of the saint what was to their liking.

Lytton Strachey

I'm loving his "Elizabeth and Essex":
No human creature can ever hope to be truly just; but there are degrees in mortal fallibility, and for countless ages the justice of mankind was the sport of fear, folly, and superstition. In the England of Elizabeth there was a particular influence at work which, in certain crucial cases, turned the administration of justice into a mockery. It was virtually impossible for anyone accused of High Treason—the gravest offence known to the law—to be acquitted. The reason for this was plain; but it was a reason not of justice but expediency. Upon the life of Elizabeth hung the whole structure of the State. . . . Her own personal fearlessness added to the peril. She refused, she said, to mistrust the love of her subjects; she was singularly free of access; and she appeared in public with a totally inadequate guard. In such a situation, only one course of action seemed to be possible: every other consideration must be subordinated to the supreme necessity of preserving the Queen's life. . . . It was futile to talk of justice; for justice involves, by its very nature, uncertainty; and the Government could take no risks. The old saw was reversed; it was better that ten innocent men should suffer than that one guilty man should escape. To arouse suspicion became in itself a crime.
It was in the collection of evidence that the mingled atrocity and absurdity of the system became most obvious. Not only was the fabric of a case often built up on the allegations of the hired creatures of the Government, but the existence of the rack gave a preposterous twist to the words of every witness. Torture was constantly used; but whether, in any particular instance, it was used or not, the consequences were identical. The threat of it, the hint of it, the mere knowledge in the mind of a witness that it might at any moment be applied to him—those were differences merely of degree; always, the fatal compulsion was there, inextricably confusing truth and falsehood. What shred of credibility could adhere to testimony obtained in such circumstances—from a man, in prison, alone, suddenly confronted by a group of hostile and skilful examiners, plied with leading questions, and terrified by the imminent possibility of extreme physical pain? Who could disentangle among his statements the parts of veracity and fear, the desire to placate his questioners, the instinct to incriminate others, the impulse to avoid, by some random affirmation, the dislocation of an arm or a leg? Only one thing was plain about such evidence: it would always be possible to give to it whatever interpretation the prosecutors might desire. The Government could prove anything.

Reprieved

I rid myself of another large carton of books. Mysteries by Ruth Rendell and Edmund Crispin. The Raj Quartet by Paul Scott. I received, much to my astonishment, sixteen dollars, with which I purchased "The Judgment of Paris" and "Alfred Kazin's America". I then began emptying another carton onto the living room floor to sort. After close consideration I have decided to keep a dozen books which I have had for many years but have never quite gotten around to reading:
Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais
The Devil to Pay in the Backlands by Joao Guimares Rosa- apparently Brazil's answer to "Ulysses"
Natural History by Joan Perucho- a sort of literary vampire tale
Dog Years By Gunter Grass- even understanding that I have still never finished anything by Grass
Essays by Leon Edel
A book on the English Civil Wars, "War Without an Enemy"

and several others I am anxious to read: J.G. Farrell's Singapore Grip, Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons.

A few have a probational period until I have the energy to open them: Nancy Lemann, Carson McCullers, Glenway Westcott.

And some have exhausted my patience and appear overweening and unforthcoming:
Daniel Martin by John Fowles, Emily Holmes Coleman's The Shutter of Snow, and B. Traven's The Night Visitor.

And in a postscript.... I found a hardcover set of "The Raj Quartet" and bought it... and have found the Farrell to be an unprofitable read.

From "The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook"

"When we first began reading Dashiell Hammett, Gertrude Stein said that it was his modern note to have disposed of the victims before the story commenced. And so it is in the kitchen."

Some marvelous Dorothy Parker

From a 1953 speech of Parker's discovered in a remarkable hardcover periodical called "7 Arts" which also includes contributions from Henry Miller and Washington Irving:
"I don't know what more to say about Hollywood. I just say it is a Stagnation. It is a horror. Brilliant flowers smell like old dollar bills. Those enormous vegetables taste as if they had been grown in old trunks."

elsewhere:
Gilbert Highet on kitsch:
"If you have ever spent an hour wandering through an antique shop, you must have noticed how your taste grows numb , and then- if you stay- becomes perverted. You begin to see unsuspected charm in those hideous pictures of plump girls fondling pigeons, you develop a psychopathic desire for spinning wheels and cobblers' benches.
There is a name for such stuff in the trade: kitsch. It means vulgar showoff, and is applied to anything that took a lot of trouble to make and is quite hideous.

elsewhere, Miller:
"The late John Dudley once chalked up over my door,"When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my revolver."

I now devote myself to the works of Anthony Powell

Powell's effortless mastery has won me over. From the first volume of the unfortunately titled "Dance to the Music of Time", "A Question of Upbringing":

"To Short, Sillery was a mysterious, politically-minded cardinal of the academical world, 'never taking his tea without an intrigue'(that was the phrase Short quoted) forever plotting behind the arras. Others, of course thought differently, some saying that the Sillery legend was based on a sort of kaleidoscope of muddled information collected in Sillery's almost crazed brain, that his boasted powers had no basis whatever in reality; others that Sillery certainly knew a great number of people had passed around a lot of gossip, which in itself gave him some claim to consideration as a comparitively influential person, though only a subordinate one. Sillery had his enemies, naturally, always anxious to denigrate his life's work, and assert that he wass nothing more than a figure of fun; and there was probably something to be said at least for the contention that Sillery himself somewhat exaggerated the effectiveness of his own activities."

The acerbic pianist

I took a bushel of admittedly undesirable coffee-table books of the American West purchased at auction to Half Price Books. They offered one dollar. I politely demurred and dragged the lot uphill to the shabby, smelly Twice Told Tales where I was offered fourteen dollars credit. It took an impossibly long time to find anything remotely readable in the shop. They have either the worst instincts or the worst luck possible. Eventually I unearthed a copy of Claude-Edmonde Magny's "The Age of The American Novel: The Film Aesthetic of Fiction Between the Two Wars" and a biography of Oscar Levant, the dog-faced cohort, from which the following anecdotes are culled:
It was William Goetz, an executive at 20th Century-Fox who finally fired Levant. Goetz, who had married one of Louis B. Mayer's daughters and so owed his job to his father-in-law had harbored a grudge against Levant ever since Levant had one-upped him in a battle of insults at a Hollywood party. Goetz had snidely asked Levant "Why don't you play us a medley of your hit?" referring to Levant's one hit song.
"Why don't you play us a medley of your father-in-law?" Levant responded.
and
The perennial bachelor Moss Hart entered a room with Edith Atwater on his arm. "Ah, here comes Moss Hart and the future Miss Atwater," Levant said.
and
After playing his moving, elegiac composition dedicated to his late friend George Gershwin, Levant's mother comments, "You call THAT a dirge?"

What progress I'm making!

The next batch:

An obituary of the painter Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski) the maestro of the hiked skirt, the akimbo legs and the bared pudendum. Illustrations accompanying are by the decedent.

An article on 200 Afghani refugees wandering the mountainous wilderness: During the night the people on the outer edges of the sleeping pile rotated inward, and the people in the middle were spun outward. In this way no one froze to death.

An incisive description by Kevin Kelly of the way recording technology influenced the shape of music:
There is no music made today that has not been shaped by the fact of recording and duplication. In fact, the ability to copy music has been deeply disruptive ever since the invention of the gramophone. When John D. Smoot, an engineer for the European company Odeon, carted primitive recording equipment to the Indonesian archipelago in 1904 to record the gamelan orchestras, local musicians were perplexed. Why copy a performance? The popular local tunes that circulated in their villages had a half-life of a few weeks. Why would anyone want to listen to a stale rendition of an obsolete piece when it was so easy to get fresh music?
As phonographs spread throughout the world, they had a surprising effect: folk tunes, which had always been malleable, changing with each performer and in each performance, were transformed by the advent of recording into fixed songs that could be endlessly and exactly repeated. Music became shorter, more melodic and more precise.
Early equipment could make recordings that contained no more than four and a half minutes, so musicians truncated old works to fit and created new music abbreviated to adapt to the phonograph. Because the first sound recordings were of unamplified music, recording emphasized the loud sounds of singers and de-emphasized quiet instrumentals. The musicologist Timothy Day notes that once pianists began recording they tried, for the first time, to ''distinguish carefully between every quaver and semiquaver -- eighth note and sixteenth note -- throughout the piece.'' Musicians played the way technology listened. When the legendary recordist Frederick Gaisberg arrived in Calcutta in 1902, only two decades after the phonograph was invented, he found that Indian musicians were already learning to imitate recorded music and lamented that there was ''no traditional music left to record.''
As the technologies of reproduction bloomed in the last century, consumerism boomed. What consumers consumed -- whether in the form of a book, a CD or a can of Coke -- were exact copies. The ability to make copies in mind-boggling quantities, ceaselessly and perfectly, was the chief ingredient of mass culture. Music rapidly adapted to the culture of the copy. Reproductions were made exact, while copies were multiplied vigorously. Music lived in its constant reproduction

A marvelous and important article on the authenticity of 20th century "antiques":

The market for modernist furniture, once young, fun and inexpensive, is superheating. But it's also getting uncomfortably hot. As Richard Wright, a co-owner of Wright, a Chicago auction house that specializes in modernism, put it, now that big money is involved, ''people have the incentive to cheat.''
As is advisable with fine 18th-century furniture, an unspoken rule has become advisable with modern design: let the buyer beware.
Authenticity, the issue that defines mature antiques markets, is being called into question as objects by the most fashionable names in the business, like Charlotte Perriand, Pierre Chareau and Jean Prouvé, become the newest blue chips of decorative arts. As pieces are rebuilt, repainted, reproduced and newly assembled, or as hybrids of new and old come to market, assumptions about what is original or real are being redefined as rapidly as the prices.
Does refurbishment respect or disguise a designer's intentions? Shortly before the Christie's sale, Ms. Grajales explained that for each of her clients, authenticity was very personal. For some, only a piece without restoration, even if its condition was poor, would carry rarity and value, as is true for traditional antiques. For others, a reconditioned piece, with obvious work, recalled and revalidated the strength of the design.
That Prouvé cabinet, bright red and factory-fresh-looking, in its 50's and still sexy? Read the condition report. It's had more work than Catherine Deneuve. But hey, the loft needs a star for the dining room wall. Would Prouvé be proud?
James Zemaitis, the head of 20th-century design at Sotheby's, which sold the cabinet described above last Wednesday for $78,000 (above its estimate of $30,000 to $50,000), said he thought that modern furniture buyers were savvy and aware of distinctions in condition, which differ by designer.
''If you're seduced by the aura of Prouvé or Perriand, you have to accept the prevailing market realities of condition,'' Mr. Zemaitis said. ''The entire Prouvé market is built on things being refinished and rebuilt. I don't think collectors are being duped. They're completely understanding of this.''



The entire article is here:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D05E2DB163BF935A25755C0A9639C8B63