Re-upping from a year ago today: Why I don’t keep track of how many books I read.
Do yourself a favor and listen to the incomparable Ella sing “What Are You Doing On New Year’s Eve?”
Martin Van Buren “proceeded swiftly from senator to secretary of state, vice president and president. And though he failed to win a second term, [James M. Bradley says, ‘He built and designed the party system that defined how politics was practiced and power wielded in the United States.’ We are living in the world Van Buren created.” Good to know whom to blame.
New entry in my series on family, about the poet Robert Hayden.
foggy, Christmassy, spooky
Damien Walter: “Just give Adam Roberts a Hugo already. It’s getting embarrassing! Like not giving Taylor Swift her Grammys.”
Mike Sacasas channeling Lewis Mumford: “Life cannot be delegated.”
Got to thinking English thoughts when I came across this photo, taken in 2011 on the way up Wansfell Pike. Larger version here.
On impulse, I made a list of places in England I’ve visited.
Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations I.5:
I will not by the noise of bloody wars and the dethroning of kings advance you to glory: but by the gentle ways of peace and love. As a deep friendship meditates and intends the deepest designs for the advancement of its objects, so doth it shew itself in choosing the sweetest and most delightful methods, whereby not to weary but please the person it desireth to advance. Where Love administers physic, its tenderness is expressed in balms and cordials. It hateth corrosives, and is rich in its administrations. Even so, God designing to show His Love in exalting you hath chosen the ways of ease and repose by which you should ascend. And I after His similitude will lead you into paths plain and familiar, where all envy, rapine, bloodshed, complaint and malice shall be far removed; and nothing appear but contentment and thanksgiving. Yet shall the end be so glorious that angels durst not hope for so great a one till they had seen it.
Christmas presents!
“Wild Mountain Thyme” is one of the world’s loveliest songs, and thousands of singers have recorded it, so you might think that it would be impossible to decide whose version is best. But no, it’s an easy call: Sandy Denny.
This is better.
Angus did not like wearing his Christmas bandanna as a babushka. We immediately removed it.
From a sermon preached by John Donne on the evening of Christmas Day at St. Paul’s in 1624:
God made Sun and Moon to distinguish seasons, and day and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their season: But God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of his mercies; In paradise the fruits were ripe, the first minute, and in heaven it is always Autumn, his mercies are ever in their maturity. We ask panem quotidianam, our daily bread, and God never says you should have come yesterday, he never says you must again tomorrow, but today if you will hear his voice, today he will hear you. If some King of the earth have so large an extent of Dominion, in North, and South, as that he hath Winter and Summer together in his Dominions, so large an extent East and West, as that he hath day and night together in his Dominions, much more hath God mercy and judgment together: He brought light out of darkness, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thou Summer out of Winter, though thou have no Spring; though in the ways of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintered and frozen, clouded and eclipsed, damped and benummed, smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the Sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.
My guitar hero, Martin Simpson, playing “The Cherry Tree Carol.”