Whenever an organization says “There is no place for XYZ in this organization” or “We have zero tolerance for XYZ” the proper translation is: “Making this statement is all we’re going to do about XYZ, and you’ll just have to deal with it.”
I decided a couple of weeks ago that I needed to write a biggish essay on what it means to me to be a Southerner. Since then I’ve struggled with it. Today I decided I needed to post it. Think of this not as a completed work but as one abandoned in public.
Currently reading: Loren Eiseley : Collected Essays on Evolution, Nature, and the Cosmos by Loren Eiseley. I’ve written occasionally over the years — here for instance — about how much Eiseley has meant to me since I discovered him at age fifteen or thereabouts. But how did I discover him? I well remember: He was quoted occasionally in Intelligent Life in the Universe, a 1966 book by I. S. Shklovskiĭ and Carl Sagan, which I borrowed from the East Lake Public Library in Birmingham, Alabama. That’s the kind of person I was at age fifteen. 📚
Just a note on how I use micro.blog, in response to some emails: not as a social-media platform. Instead, I follow people in my RSS reader, and only open micro.blog to reply to someone I follow. Also, I write my posts in MarsEdit. So if you reply to me, I am very unlikely to see it. (And I guess I should add that one thing I learned from my years on Twitter is to be very wary of interacting online with people I don’t know IRL.)
Really interesting comment by Ethan Iverson in his interview with Deborah Gordon, the owner of the Village Vanguard. She asked him who he wishes he had seen at the Vanguard:
Well, like you I would have seen Monk … Coltrane and Miles Davis, of course … But you know what? I like Bill Evans but only up to a point. However, those that saw Bill Evans live said the sound he got out the piano was really extraordinary and that the overall ambience was utterly seductive. I hear that extraordinary sound on the records, but I think I could have learned something by sitting close to Bill Evans at the Vanguard one night.
Always interesting when you’re reading a work of history, in this case Charles Norris Cochrane’s matchless Christianity and Classical Culture, and find something that shines a bright and direct light on your own moment.
To Eusebius the glorious and unexpected triumph of the Church constituted decisive evidence of the operatio Dei, the hand of God in human history. At the same time, by an easy and natural confusion of thought, it suggested the dangerous error that Christianity was a success-philosophy. Eusebius quotes with approval the emperor's own profession of faith, made after the defeat of Licinius had delivered him from his last formidable enemy:
… It appears that those who faithfully discharge God’s holy laws and shrink from the transgression of His commandments are rewarded with abundant blessings and endued with well-grounded hope as well as ample power for the accomplishment of their undertakings. On the other hand, those who have cherished impiety have experienced consequences in keeping with their evil choice…. I myself was the agent whose services God deemed suitable for the accomplishment of His will. Accordingly... with the aid of divine power, I banished and destroyed every form of evil which prevailed, in the hope that the human race, enlightened through my instrumentality, might be recalled to a due observance of God's holy laws and, at the same time, our most blessed faith might prosper under the guidance of the almighty hand….
Our concern is not so much with the truth or falsehood of these sentiments as with the consequence of their acceptance. From this standpoint, Constantine is portrayed as the champion delegated by the Most High to be the minister of His vengeance upon the persecutors, whose fate is described in terms which recall the fulminations of Hebrew prophecy.
Inordinately pleased with my little hack of hanging the jacket of the album I’m listening to from a binder clip. This record, by the way, is a neglected masterpiece, with Miles as a sideman (if Miles ever actually is a sideman, which I doubt). Also: Blue Note’s design staff in this era! This jacket was designed by the great Reid Miles. 🎵
Currently reading: Middlemarch by George Eliot. This won’t be my last time reading this infinitely lovable book, but it will be my last time teaching it, so I’m warning my students to expect some melancholy moments. 📚
I’m very frustrated by Ezra Klein’s timidity in his interview with Jensen Huang. Ezra seems unaware that Huang is a salesman; he should have conducted the entire interview with that in the forefront of his mind. He offered very little pushback and effectively let Huang make a 2-hour sales pitch for his company and his industry.
Chilling after a nice long walk through the neighborhood, during which two different people I don’t know said “Hi Angus!” So my dog is a local hero as well as an internet celebrity.