Further Adventures in Lincolniana

As happens every year or so, I've been on another Lincoln kick. Last summer I revisited the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, as well as various other places, including his house, his tomb, and the church he attended (which has a fabulous Brombaugh organ I was permitted to play).

Why should one particular historical figure prove so persistently compelling? This post provides sufficient explanation. One gets, in Lincoln, the sense of a truly moral man, perhaps the closest thing to a saint that secular American society has produced.

An aside: though the evidence suggests that Lincoln could not really be considered a Christian in any orthodox sense, his language owes an incalculable debt to the Authorised Version. We, in this age of literary and spiritual decline, are much impoverished for not being a referential culture. (Or, if we have broadly-shared references, they are generally from popular movies and other light entertainment.) Discourse in the nineteenth century was permeated with references to Scripture, and Lincoln's speeches are no exception. In losing any societal sense of a shared literary or religious corpus, we are cut off from the conversation with the dead that must inform real conservatism (in its original and best sense).

I'll recommend here an instructive book: Lincoln in Photographs. In my more optimistic moments, I like to think that Lincoln's face is iconic not merely because it is on our currency, nor because it so strikingly homely, but because we can intuït on it the markings of a great soul — melancholic but confident, resigned but determined, defined by a generous sense of humor and an iron will.

Oh, and spare a thought, kind reader, for Mary Todd Lincoln. Much-maligned, temperamentally unable to perform her prescribed rôle, marked by tragedies both minor and cataclysmic, hers was in many ways an unenviäble life. She went insane, but for very good reasons.

Overworked Academics

Quamobrem otium sanctum quaerit caritas veritatis; negotium justum suscipit necessitas caritatis.

Augustine, De civitate Dei, XIX, §19

Having found myself as yet unsuited for total immersion into the world outside the university campus, I became, once more, a student. I should state first that it is good and pleasant to be around other people possessed of a natural curiosity.

(When I first left the womb-like comfort of Academe — though I don't personally recall residing in the womb, myself, I trust that it was comfortable enough to justify the simile — I found myself among a great many people who are perfectly content to never learn anything ever again. Indeed, this may be the default mode of existence. I have endeavored quite fruitlessly to understand it. How is it that all of these perfectly nice, well-meaning people can be so utterly devoid of curiosity? A day without a new experience, without new insight into the beauty and wonder of the world, is not only a day wasted: it is a kind of intellectual death, a persistent vegetative state of the mind. A string of such days is the surest way to drive me to that particular sort of melancholy to which I am susceptible.)

I will say, secondly, that perhaps the greatest joy of being a student is making connections (or, if you prefer, connexions) between seemingly disparate things; this is particularly satisfying when it happens between different disciplines. Hegel's whole bit about thesis and antithesis leading to synthesis is a pleasing model.

At the same time, it has been difficult to go back to living like a student: one wants some time, here and there, to do things that aren't especially related to one's job or classes, but such time is rare. One can acquire, upon prolonged exposure to such an atmosphere of constant work, an unpleasant mindset. It is impatient, ungenerous, uncurious, this mindset. It is thus the opposite of the spirit of real scholarship, which is gracious, forgiving, and — above all — constantly interested in the world. When I was an undergraduate and observed, from time to time, how academics could be so petty and myopic, I wondered how this could be. I now see how we are warped by overwork — and I say we, for I have found myself engaging in such behavior in the last few months. It is distressing, and I resolve to do better. Someday ages and ages hence, when biographers begin to chronicle my gradual descent into madness, they may well start at the point where I began my doctoral studies. But I retain some hope that it is possible to become a professional academic without abandoning the joy of learning.

Parhelion

Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;
Not separated with the racking clouds,
But sever'd in a pale clear-shining sky.
See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss,
As if they vow'd some league inviolable:
Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun.
In this the heaven figures some event.

Henry VI, Part III: Act 2, Scene 1

Today, whilst driving to classes in Iowa City, I spied a prominent sun dog, which is the sort of term one couldn't possibly make up. (The second element in the term is attributed in some sources to Norfolk, where it may have been a corruption of dag, ultimately from the Norse.) I have chosen to take this as a good omen for the semester. Or, more accurately, the past week suggested that this will be a good semester, and I am coöpting an unrelated meteorological phenomenon as confirmation of that fact.

This semester, you see, I have finally gotten an apartment in Iowa City. The chief benefit of this is that I no longer need drive two hours every school day. In what must be a sure sign that I am a raving socialist, I find that I greatly prefer mass transit. It is remarkable how a thing like driving, that we think nothing of, can so effectively make life unpleasant. No other activity exposes us to a greater swath of the American public than does driving; driving, therefore, is the chief reminder (and an unwelcome one) of how horrible most people are. I suspect that one reason why I enjoy traveling to Europe so very much is that I never have to drive there.

But don't let me ramble on about such things. I am looking forward to my classes this semester, too. Of the three — Seventeenth-century music, a seminar on Max Reger and Karl Straube, and Counterpoint before 1600 — I find the last the most promising, as I have a well-documented interest in Renaissance polyphony.

"The Chill of Death"

"He who can," George Bernard Shaw observed, "does. He who cannot, teaches." It is, though not entirely unfounded, a rather cheap comment. It is an undeniably false comment with regards to Strunk and White. Anyone who doubts the advice given therein need merely read the essays of E.B. White: they are exemplary. Skim One Man's Meat, an essay collection of his, and you'll happen upon any number of fine passages.

On priorities: "We teach our child many things I don't believe in, and almost nothing I do believe in. We teach punctuality, but I do not honestly think there is any considerable good in punctuality, particularly if the enforcement of it disturbs the peace. My father taught me, by example, that the greatest defeat in life was to miss a train. Only after many years did I learn that an escaping train carries away with it nothing vital to my health. Railroad trains are such magnificent objects that we commonly mistake them for Destiny."

On church music: "The organ makes a curious whine, sentimental, grandiose — half cello, half bagpipes. ... Praise God from whom all blessings flow ... hesitatingly the assembled voices, embarrassed at the sudden sound of their own once-a-week excursion in piety, the too weak, the over strong, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

On poets: "We would all like it if the bards would make themselves plain, or we think we would. The poets, however, are not easily diverted from their high mysterious ways. A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer; he approaches lucid ground warily, like a mariner who is determined not to scrape his bottom on anything solid. A poet's pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring."

In "Once More to the Lake", perhaps White's best essay, he dwells on the confusion, the duality, he experiences in taking his son to the same lake he visited as a boy. He is, at once, the boy he was and the father he has become — taking the place of his own father. White is too fine a writer to try and draw some greater conclusion from this. (He is not inclined, in any of the essays, towards tiresome moralizing.) He does not claim that it is a good or necessary thing for society that a man should know what it is to become his father. All the same, I cannot help but think it. I then wonder: what of those who cannot, or will not, have children? (To say nothing of the many who certainly should not.) Are they to always remain the child, and never the parent? Is it necessary to have one's own offspring in order to fully mature as a person? Or, rather, perhaps, is it necessary that one take responsibility for those placed into one's care? (Surely you know teachers and other mentors, without children, who have nonetheless served you as parental figures.) It is, in any case, worth thinking about. Can we only truly confront our mortality — as White does — by observing those who we once were?

Arthur Schopenhauer, Fanboy

Alex Ross (whose The Rest Is Noise you should read. Go get it) alerts us to an account (related in David Cartwright's biography) of Schopenhauer and his musical idol, Rossini:

In 1856, Rossini came to Frankfurt, Schopenhauer's home town, and was seen dining at the Englischer Hof, the philosopher's favorite spot. Alerted in advance, Schopenhauer arranged with the management to be seated near the composer. But he did not rise to say hello; instead, too shy or too proud, he lingered in Rossini's vicinity for the duration of the meal.

That Schopenhauer, that titan of Teutonic seriousness, should be so infatuated with the rather silly music of Rossini, is curious. To be certain, Rossini has his moments; the man could write an overture. But one doubts that his musical idiom was really conducive to expressing the full range of human experience. His Stabat Mater is a particularly egregious example. The depth of the despair of the Theotokos, whose heart was pierced also, is expressed as an hour-long overblown extroverted operatic tour-de-force. I heard the tenor aria "Cujus animam" at a recital once, and was hard-pressed to keep from laughing at the incongruïty.

And yet it is satisfying, somehow, that Schopenhauer took a dim view of Wagner (who, in turn, idolized him, regardless). De gustibus non est disputandum, at any rate.

Beards

...sicut facies barbam, quam non esse munimento, sed virili ornamento...

Augustine, De civitate Dei, XXII, §24

Due to a combination of laziness, climate, and sensitive skin, I have resolved to attempt growing facial hair (viz., the beard sometimes called the "Verdi"). This is, in fact, the second time I have tried such a thing; the first essay, conducted one Lent during my undergraduate years, was a resounding failure. I am beginning to wonder whether this attempt might be equally unsuccessful. Unexpected facial hair is a conversation starter, to be certain. People feel no compunction about commenting on it. But my experience has been that most people, rather that ask "Oh, you're growing a beard, eh?", will ask "Oh, you're trying to grow a beard, eh?" I have received donations put forth for to buy me a razor (jokingly, har har). Nevertheless, I hope to persevere, until I am either successful or so obviously misguided that shame compels me to shave.

Letters from Flannery

Though real work, as I mentioned, is satisfactory, it leaves far less time for leisure. This is particularly true in this particular month, as I have three important Sundays in a row (St. Luke, transferred from today; Reformation; and All Saints) and that upcoming recital, as well as planning for Advent Lessons & Carols and a chamber music concert in December. And I am attending Lectures in Church Music, again, and helping to tune the instruments at my two churches. Why, it barely leaves time for my wonted hobby of late, preparing editions of Hassler motets for CPDL.

Books have begun to pile up. There are, of course, the dozen or so that I have already begun reading and have not finished. (Most of these, at least, are not novel-length fiction.) But people persist in recommending books unto me. I appreciate this very much, but feel I am being set up like a protagonist in a Greek tragedy, doomed to some miserable end. (It remains to be seen what my ἁμαρτία is. Perhaps it is a susceptibility to distraction.) Alas, but oh well. For the meantime, I am occupying myself with the letters of Flannery O'Connor, whose spelling is rather haphazard but whose observations are keenly informed and whose sense of humor is inimitable.
On suffering:

I believe that everybody, through suffering, takes part in the Redemption, and I believe they suffer most who live closest to all the possibilities of disbelief.

On modern education:

I have what passes for an education in this day and time, but I am not deceived by it.

On librarians:

Librarians are the last people you can trust about the insides of books.

(I hesitate to add, in deference to any dear reader of mine who may be a librarian, that doubtless Miss O'Connor was referring to a very particular sort of small-town — possibly southern — librarian. Surely.) There's much to unpack in O'Connor's letters; one wishes for the other half of some correspondences. But at least they provide interesting background about her stories, which I find to be consistently good.

In other news, today I encountered a fine recording of the Bach B-flat Partita (BWV 825). Here it is. I have mixed feelings about playing harpsichord music on a modern piano — it seems as foolish as playing gamba repertoire on a cello — but while listening to such a recording I can suspend my objections.

O Tempora! O Mores!

After many years of abuse (mostly repeated droppings, mostly on concrete), it was decided that I need a new cellular telephone. I therefore made my way to the local cellular-telephone-store, fully prepared to have wares hawked at me. There is an almost antiseptic quality to such a store, what with its kiosks on an otherwise bare floor space. I suppose this is the most fitting sort of display for a technology so far removed from any sort of organic human experience. At least I was only there for a brief time: I stipulated that I needed a phone that I'll be able to use in Europe, and was pointed toward several options, of which I selected the cheapest and least modern. I was dismayed to find that it was a "smart" phone (am I using the proper terminology? I mean it was a phone with internet and a tiny little keyboard). Heretofore I had taken some consolation from the fact that I did not own a "smart" phone; was I to give up this source of satisfaction so easily? Alas, there were no other options. There can be, I confess, a fine line between Luddism and snobbery. I maintain that the amenities provided, beyond (or perhaps including) that of making phone calls, are patently unnecessary, and I felt as though pierced by the disapproving glance of Wendell Berry. But I now will use said amenities, nonetheless. Perhaps I should've put up more resistance? Probably. Shall I come to depend on these unnecessities? I do hope not. Is there a day when I shall give up the cell phone entirely? It is my fond desire, but not one I foresee fulfilled for a long while. In any case, I have resolved to limit my use as much as possible.

The Lutheran Insulter

An esteemed correspondent has shared with me the Lutheran Insulter, which is not a tool for insulting Lutherans (unfortunately?) but rather a compilation of the many and varied insults Luther hurled at people in his writings. He was a rather combative fellow, after all. Anyone who argues that public discourse has become less civil these days should have a look-see at tracts from Luther's day.

Peace, Goodwill, Christmas Hymns

I was once on the verge of becoming a Christmas fundamentalist. So obsessed was I with the idea of reclaiming Advent (which is, after all, a wonderful season that is overlooked by far too many) that I became a bit angry at the thought of putting up Christmas decorations before The Day Itself. Christmas music pumped out over the loud speakers at sundry public places was cause to avoid going anywhere. The Feast of the Incarnation, I was at pains to remind everybody, is properly speaking the start of the Christmas season, which lasts until Epiphany (though one could leave up Christmas decorations until the Feast of the Purification of Mary, Candlemas, on the second of February).

Whether it is a sign of the abandonment of principle or merely the mellowing of age, I am no longer quite so angry to see people celebrating Christmas weeks before the Holiday itself. Advent, after all, is only one of the casualties of liturgical ignorance. (I don't think I'll ever understand Christians whose only vestiges of the church year are Christmas and Easter. But then, they are no doubt bewildered by the sort of High Church pageantry that I enjoy.)

I appreciate, at least, that some people are more pleasant during the Christmas season; there is a general feeling of goodwill that makes it more difficult to be purposefully unpleasant. I suspect this is due, in part, to the music. This is the only time of year when we are permitted to like music written before we were born. This should only be encouraged: Christmas music is perhaps the last widely-known musical repertory that links us to a bygone age. Incidentally, this is also the best model for a body of hymnody: people should be taught all the good old hymns. Anyone advocating all new music in church should observe the emotional connection people have to all their favorite Christmas hymns, and ponder this in their hearts.

This is not to say that all old music, or all music that induces nostalgia, is good music. Consider "The Little Drummer Boy", written in 1941: it is one of the perversely worst-written songs ever made, from a compositional standpoint. But then, nostalgia is not a particularly logical impulse.

Quam dilecta!

You'll pardon, I hope, my low output as of late. (I won't apologize for it, anyway.) I have been thinking about several things — Montaigne and friendship, the pleasures of Indian summer, the nature of consciousness (with a nod to Andrew Bird) — but am not yet prepared to expatiate upon any of these themes. I shall, however, refer you to several other things worth reading.

• Philip Larkin: "An Arundel Tomb"
  
• Jason Peters: Curiosity Killed the Keg: A Tribute
  One can read lots of tiresome articles of socio-political claptrap by conservative Christians; sometimes that sort of thing shews up on FPR. But Peters, though he could quite fairly be called "conservative" and "Christian", manages again and again to write things that are actually worthwhile. In this particular treatise — O Theophilus — he makes several very good and entirely accurate points, among them observations about booze, O'Connor, and contemporary Protestant hymnody.
  
• I have had Coverdale's version of Psalm 84 in my head for a while, now. (I suppose this is mostly due to the Vaughan Williams setting.) Its palpable desire for God is quite arresting, I think.
  

  O how amiable are thy dwellings, thou Lord of hosts! My soul hath a desire and longing to enter into the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God. Yea, the sparrow hath found her an house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young, even thy altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are they that dwell in thy house; they will be alway praising thee.

  
  

Knoxville: Summer of 1915

In this time of leaving, becoming aware of all the places and things and people at Notre Dame I will see no more, I have spent some time thinking about those other times that are now lost to me: my undergraduate years, high school (however unpleasant), even my childhood. In a short while my years at Notre Dame will join those others, to add to the pain of recollection (which, happy or not, is painful; that is the nature of nostalgia).

Ah, but now it is nearly summer, the part of the year I remember best from my childhood. (For all my love of Rilke and autumn and that sort of Sehnsucht, there is something more personal about the memories of summer.) I suspect it was the same for James Agee, who wrote about his own childhood in Knoxville, Tennessee:

It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds' hung havens, hangars. People go by; things go by.
...
On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there. They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine... with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth, and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night.

May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble, and in the hour of their taking away.

After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.

That is from Agee's essay, "Knoxville: Summer of 1915", which was later selected to serve as the introduction to his semi-autobiographical (posthumous) novel, A Death in the Family.

Samuel Barber set much of Agee's essay to music in his Knoxville: Summer of 1915. I am not sure which is my favorite recording of this admirable work (it is probably either that of Eleanor Steber or Leontyne Price). But in any case I will refer you here, where you can listen to it. (That particular recording is not special, but is the most convenient and legal to come by.)

I have been listening to the piece many times in the last few weeks. It resonates with the sense of loss I already have begun to feel about this particular place, these particular people. Oh, the terrible sweetness of nostalgia! — nostalgia, even, as in this prose poem and this composition, for a time I myself have never known and will never know. Discussing the piece in a 1949 radio interview, Barber noted its expression of "a child's feeling of loneliness, wonder, and lack of identity in that marginal world between twilight and sleep." Do you recall these feelings? I do. Sometimes I wonder whether there's much difference at all between the insecurities of childhood and the insecurities of the present.

Humor and Religion

It has been a general guideline of mine, for years, now, not to trust anyone without a sense of humor. Humor is a good and worthwhile thing, and I will have no truck with anyone who insists on doing without it. (Perhaps there are some people who never acquired a proper sense of humor; if so, these are wretches to be pitied. What I am chiefly concerned with, here, is the sort of person who has a sense of humor and seeks to stifle it.) The particular misconception of the humorless is that lightheartedness somehow contradicts the effort to take things seriously, that humor is somehow the opposite of earnestness.

I am sorry to say that there are a great many religious people who feel (and act) this way. Many of them are convinced that religion is A Very Serious Thing Indeed, and that any attempt to acknowledge the inherent humor of certain things (dropped thuribles, outlandish lectors, ridiculous vestments) would be to detract from the dignity and reverence and decorum due to the Mass.

(An aside: it's always about the dignity and reverence and decorum of the Mass, in some Roman Catholic circles. What is dignity and reverence and decorum, anyway? Is it a Mass where nobody smiles, or acknowledges the presence of others? Is proper reverence so easily confused with catatonic rigidity? Mind you, I shudder as much as the next person at the thought of those horror stories of post-Vatican II liturgies — beach balls at Mass, rainbow vestments — but one can acknowledge the human dimension of the liturgy without resorting to such excesses. In any case, it might be worth pointing out that regrettably varicolored vestments are not the sole province of hippies and Franciscans.)

But where was I? Oh, yes, humor. Would you believe, like St. John Chrysostom — or Jorge the monk in Eco's The Name of the Rose — that Christ never laughed? I certainly hope not; there's enough to be construed as humor in the Gospels to suggest that he did. (Roman Catholics may take particular satisfaction in that the Church was founded on a pun.)

In any case, if you would associate with religious types at all, I would suggest the sort with a sense of humor: most Anglicans, for example. Avoid the dire sort of fundamentalists (of both Protestant and Papist persuasions). As for me, I shall be having a Life of Brian viewing party next Sunday.

Miscellaneous Links:
A Joking Matter: And Jesus Laughed
On the Second Book of Aristotle's Poetics (his lost treatise on Comedy)
Umberto Eco web-site

Festina Lente

Yesterday, eager to leave South Bend for a while, I undertook an excursion to Chicago. The first parts of the trip — the Cathedral District, Giordano's, the Art Institute — were successful, but a visit out to Bucktown provoked in me a terrible fit of melancholia. It may have been partly the rain, which was cold and constant, but moreso it was the idea that people who live in such a neighborhood — educated liberated young professionals of comfortable means, not beholden to anybody — can still manage to be so unhappy. How unutterably dreary a life of material satisfaction and nothing else! Even when free of the obligations and petty bigotries and irritating stupidities of small-town life, how wretched existence can be!

What I am saying, here, is that a life of real freedom is not An Easy Thing. It's not so simple as merely removing societal constraints and then hoping for a flourishing of aesthetic, philosophical, spiritual awareness. Housewives in the suburbs with three children and an SUV in the four-car garage are unfortunate. But even worse is the young bohemian who has cast off the shackles of the bourgeois life, only to find himself further enchained; what liberation is there to be had from this second, self-imposed imprisonment?

For a while now the phrase "Festina lente" has been running through my mind. "Make haste slowly", yes. But towards what?

Regarding Lawn Ornaments

Upon several months of observation, I have concluded that lawn ornaments in Michiana tend to fall into one of several categories:

• Animal: deer, rabbits, and those ubiquitous geese (often dressed up).
• Religious (primarily Catholic): angels, Francis with his birds, Mary.
• Unimaginative: rocks, sometimes with the family name or a Notre Dame logo.

While the habitats of these different groups rarely overlap, there are occasional instances where one can spy both rocks and concrete deer, or a smartly-dressed goose sharing a yard with the Virgin Mother of God. Kitsch, it seems, is inherently democratic: it is the great leveler.

Someday, when I am a home-owner (and thus, probably, more conservative, a good deal more in debt, and more likely to shout at children to get off my lawn), I think I might get one of those geese. (I have a high opinion of the Theotokos, mind you, but I have no desire to display her in my yard.)

Endurance (and Lemons)

One of the most interesting things I learned about mostly from PBS is polar exploration. I'm not entirely certain why the story of men (and their sled-dogs) trying to get to an arbitrary spot on the top or bottom of the map should be so compelling, but it is. (And yet I find the stories of Everest-climbers to be quite dull in comparison. Perhaps it is a matter of latitude. Or perhaps it is because the poles are the closest thing to a real conspiracy of cartographers.) Scott, Amundsen, Peary, Franklin, Shackleton... they're all fascinating. The failures are often more interesting than the successes; the 'successful' failures moreso. Shackleton's expedition, for example, failed utterly in its objective, but the way they managed to survive is far too good a story to make a decent movie: it beggars belief.

But I digress, as I am wont to do. What I really meant to do was provide a link I think you might find neat: Scott and Scurvy. How is it that a disease that was cured in Napoleonic times ended up perplexing doctors well into the twentieth century? It's a case of science gone awry—with deadly consequences.

Carcassonne

Distraction, as Mr Berry tells us, is inimical to discipline. (One assumes it is inimical to disciprine, as well.) This is unfortunate, as I recently have discovered a new source of distraction. Perhaps you are acquainted with that methodical German board game, Carcassonne? Well, I discovered that it is possible to play this game online (though it is not exactly the real thing; the online version is named after a different walled provençal city, Toulouse). If you happen to know how to play, perhaps we might play together sometime, eh?

Of course, I do feel a bit guilty, what with the distraction and inimicity to discipline. For my penance I intend to visit a local bookstore and buy the real thing, which I have espied in the window of said bookstore. I will then be able to play Carcassonne with real people, which I'm sure will be far more satisfying, anyway. (I'll continue to insist that people make that "doot-do-do-dooo" trumpet sound when claiming a city, though...)

More Presidential Speculation

If, like me, you've always wondered which president would win in a battle to the death with all the other presidents, then perhaps it would behoove you to read this article.

Links Roundup

Whilst traipsing 'round the internet (I use the verb and preposition figuratively, of course), I have happened upon several web-sites that I find quite interesting. I post them here in hopes that you might enjoy one or several of them.

Thesaurus Precum Latinarum, a collection of Latin prayers with English translations. It's notable for the sheer number of prayers, both ancient and (relatively) modern.

Anglo-Saxon Aloud, a collection of many texts in Old English (with audio files!). Much of the Bible is included, as are other interesting texts. I find it fascinating to hear this language, so close and yet so far from our modern tongue. Now I know what the Rohirrim are supposta sound like...

Some industrious and enterprising Anglican came up with St. Bede's Breviary, a handy widget for when you need a dose of sweet sweet Book of Common Prayer.

And, to round out this web-post, here's some web-logs that might be worth following:
Strange Maps: strange maps
The Hebdomadal Chesterton: he's not always right, but he's always worth considering
If Flannery Had A Blog..., the world would be a very different place
Hark! A Vagrant: well, not really a 'blog, but rather comics. It's sometimes uneven, but I refuse to condemn any comic strip that (pretty accurately) deals with Beethoven and his nephew Karl.

1909

"Death and disease stalk the land, like two giant stalking things." I make this quotation from Blackadder not to be glib (though the sentence pretty consistently makes me chuckle). Nationally and internationally, all sorts of disasters have transpired. Worse, bad things seem to be happening all around me: friends and colleagues are struck with misfortune. My choir director, who happens to be the wife of my organ instructor, is battling cancer. (It's not exactly an even fight.) It'd be nice if you could keep her in your prayers. (Hopefully, praying for "that one choir director of Ross's" will be specific enough for the Powers that Be.)

But enough of that. In other matters, I have determined that I was born a century too late. I'd do much better as an Edwardian. I assume that, in 1909, every day was like living in The Music Man, or, in the U.K., My Fair Lady. I would have a red-and-white-striped suit, I would, and a straw hat, and on feast days a monocle, and I would ride a penny-farthing bicycle. When courting lady-friends I would wear a daffodil in my buttonhole and be ever so dapper. I would exchange correspondences with G.K. Chesterton and Edgar Lee Masters. I would disdain those radical suffragettes, as I would surely be thoroughly reactionary.

Yes, in 1909, life would surely be much better than the wretched present.