Waugh on Wodehouse

something to the effect that the Jeeves & Wooster novels "will release future generations from a captivity that may be more irksome than our own" ...

Hello all

Nothing much to report. It rains in Boston.

More later!

Heaven

The blue heaven, the wide heaven. The wild heaven, and the heaven of postcards. The rays of sun spilling forth from an evangelical heaven. Penelope's smile, Serena's slippers.

Heaven in the active valley, heaven on the passive mountaintops. Then there was Karen, and the girl that looked like Karen, her sister perhaps. Sixteen parcels of heaven. There was a robin who spoke to Robyn. A spacious heaven, a farmhouse heaven. And Cynthia's baseball cap. And energy, and winter, and purple petals, rose-petals, petals from the spotted lily. Heaven strewn like petals among the glossy magazines.

The frantic precision of commercial heaven. And the voice of beatitude, impinging upon our affairs, restoring prelapsarian purity. It is the first morning of the world, like a dazed flower breathing softly into the night.

Here we have heaven and an accidental psalm. Here we have heaven and October memories. The bumblebees, the lecture-hall, the celestial voice saying "Hey!" Behold, the abstract heaven of the fine arts gallery!

The heaven of laughter is a most acceptable heaven. The heaven of tears is a most acceptable heaven.

The heaven of poets with their particolored stanzas, their kinetic rhymes, their unassuming amphibrachs! And the heaven of painters, their symphonic colors composing a heaven, a polychromatic song, a hinting picture, an opus of heaven.

The heaven of silence and pine-trees. The heaven of starlight. The heaven of Kimberly, Tracy, Aisha, the heaven of peaceful names. The heaven of Kobayashi and his dewdrops, his autumn wind. The heaven of Forest Hills.  The heaven of Petrarch, of Laura, of the sonnets of centuries past.

Archbishop Sheen

God does not love us because we are valuable. We are valuable because God loves us.

[bibliographical information not at hand]

Memorandum

to a confrère

Accent grave on père.

Wooster

Bertram Wooster
via P. G. Wodehouse's Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Aberdeen terriers, possibly owing to their heavy eyebrows, always seem to look at you as if they were in the pulpit of the church of some particularly strict Scottish sect and you were a parishioner of dubious reputation sitting in the front row of the stalls.

Churchill

Winston Spencer Churchill
via Andrew Sullivan

I've taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.

Dante

Dante
Inferno, xxi, 139

ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta

News

Also from the Herald

Lutheran parish gathers and heals after poisonings and an apparent suicide.

Old Man

More on the Old Man

Campers heard a loud rumble. Story from the Boston Herald.

Psalm 70

Psalm 70. Deus, in adjutorium.

1928 BCP version :

HASTE thee, O God, to deliver me; * make haste to help me, O LORD.

2 Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul; * let them be turned backward and put to confusion that wish me evil.

3 Let them for their reward be soon brought to shame, * that cry over me, There! there!

4 But let all those that seek thee be joyful and glad in thee: * and let all such as delight in thy salvation say alway, The Lord be praised.

5 As for me, I am poor and in misery: * haste thee unto me, O God.

6 Thou art my helper, and my redeemer: * O LORD, make no long tarrying.

+ + + + + + +

King James Version :

1: Make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O LORD.

2: Let them be ashamed and confounded that seek after my soul: let them be turned backward, and put to confusion, that desire my hurt.

3: Let them be turned back for a reward of their shame that say, Aha, aha.

4: Let all those that seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee: and let such as love thy salvation say continually, Let God be magnified.

5: But I am poor and needy: make haste unto me, O God: thou art my help and my deliverer; O LORD, make no tarrying.

Inferno test

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Fifth Level of Hell!

And that's just about all you need to know. After that quiz, I need a little heaven! See the George Herbert poem below.

George Herbert

Heaven
by George Herbert (1593-1633)

O Who will show me those delights on high?
      Echo.       I.
Thou Echo, thou art mortal, all men know.
      Echo.       No.
Wert thou not born among the trees and leaves?
      Echo.       Leaves.
And are there any leaves, that still abide?
      Echo.       Bide.
What leaves are they? impart the matter wholly.
      Echo.       Holy.
Are holy leaves the Echo then of blisse?
      Echo.       Yes.
Then tell me, what is that supreme delight?
      Echo.       Light.
Light to the minde: what shall the will enjoy?
      Echo.       Joy.
But are there cares and businesse with the pleasure?
      Echo.       Leisure.
Light, joy, and leisure; but shall they persever?
      Echo.       Ever.

As long as

As long as they don't replace him

with something called "The New Man of the Mountain."

Why is it

that we often hear people speak of a disconnect but we never hear them speak of a connect?