“I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.” – Union Gen. William T. Sherman to President Lincoln on today’s date during the Civil War in the year 1864.
That is a cool present. I’ve never gotten a city as a present before. A village yes but a city? What a nice gesture. I hope Lincoln wrote a prompt and very nice thank you note.
I am currently making my way through Edith Hamilton’s seminal collection of Greek, Roman and Norse myths titled simply Mythology. I started re-reading it last year on my honeymoon which coincided with the Athens Olympics (a perfect time to be reading Greek mythos) and am still at it after many stops and starts. In finishing the section on Virgil’s Aeneid I came across this quote about “the Roman race” by Virgil (whose Wikipedia entry calls him “Vergil”):
“They were destined to bring under their empire the peoples of earth, to impose the rule of submissive nonresistance, to spare the humbled and to crush the proud.”
Interesting to think about, especially as a citizen of the world’s only “empire” today.
I received an email at work yesterday stating that “the tragic events in London late last week require a disruption of the ordinary” which included the 3 quotes below. If you can, take 5 minutes to read and reflect on what those men are really saying:
This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first century — solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely, the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others.
-Elie Weisel
Responsibility does not only lie with the leaders of our countries or with those who have been appointed or elected to do a particular job. It lies with each of us individually. Peace, for example, starts within each one of us. When we have inner peace, we can be at peace with those around us.
– HH The Dali Lama
God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, “This is my Country.”
– Ben Franklin
The answer is “maybe never.” One my favorite movie quotes all time is from Spaceballs – its the classic “We’re looking at now, sir. Everthing that happens now is happening now…” quote (I’ve included the entire quote after the jump). However, a young astrophysicist named Peter Lynds has forumlated a theory which states that “time” is merely an illusion, that time has no divisible unit and therefore there is no “now,” only sequences of events. I know what you are thinking – “Whoa.” I’ll give you a second to process that.
He came up with this idea after watching IQ back home in New Zealand – I shit you not. After the movie, he couldn’t shake the idea that if Zeno’s paradoxes are true, then there is no such thing as a discrete slice of time. So, he began working on a paper stating as such and eventually it was published to widespread notoriety.
His theory threatens to turn the entire physics universe on its head and here’s the best part: he’ a 30 year old college dropout living in a hillside flat described by a Wired reporter as a “cross betwen a tree house and a Hobbit hole.” In fact, the entire Wired article about Peter Lynds is a fascinating read and I heartily suggest you read it.
As promised, one of my favorite quotes of all-time:
Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
Colonel Sandurz: Now. You’re looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.
Dark Helmet: What hapened to then?
Colonel Sandurz: We passed then.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now. We’re at now now.
Dark Helmet: Go back to then.
Colonel Sandurz: When?
Dark Helmet: Now!
Colonel Sandurz: Now?
Dark Helmet: Now!
Colonel Sandurz: I can’t.
Dark Helmet: Why?
Colonel Sandurz: We missed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now.
Dark Helmet: When will then be now?
Colonel Sandurz: Soon.
Dark Helmet: How soon?
Private: Sir.
Dark Helmet: What?
Private: We’ve identified there location.
Dark Helmet: Where?
Private: It’s the moon of Vega.
Colonel Sandurz: Good work. Set a course and prepare for our arrival.
Dark Helmet: When?
Private: 1900 hours.
Colonel Sandurz: By high noon tomorrow they will be our prisoners.
Dark Helmet: WHO!?
Saul Bellow passed away recently and it saddened me greatly. Although I have not read many of his books, his existence, along with Eli Weisel, acted as Jewish Titans. At one point in his novel Herzog, Mr. Bellow seems to set out a kind of manifesto, a ringing checklist of the challenges the novelist must confront, or the reality he must contain or describe:
“Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. As megatons of water shape organisms on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs…”
The only word I can think of is “powerful”. Mankind has lost another great thinker.
“A writer should be in a cold room because the chill quickens the brain, should be hungry as an incentive to earn, and should dress only in underwear so as to place an obstacle in the way of chucking the job at hand in favor of heading for the neighborhood bar.” – Bill Jayme
“Those guys suck so bad that its like total suck.” – Chris, in reference to a workplace annoyance.
I found these words on an index card while cleaning this past weekend. I finally looked them up and I’ve posted both the words and their meanings:
Perspicacity: Acuteness of perception, discernment, or understanding.
Occidentals: Natives or inhabitants of an Occidental country; a westerner.
Syllogism: A form of deductive reasoning consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion; for example, All humans are mortal, the major premise, I am a human, the minor premise, therefore, I am mortal, the conclusion.; reasoning from the general to the specific
Engender: To bring into existence; give rise to: “Every cloud engenders not a storm” (Shakespeare); to procreate; propagate.
“Folk songs are evasive.” They offer “the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that’s exactly the way we ant it to be.” Their lesson? “If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that’s still well and good. Folk songs taught me that.”
“The sociologist were saying that TV had deadly intentions and was destroying the minds and imaginations of the young – that their attention spans were being dragged down. Maybe that’s true but the three minute song also did the same thing.”
The Civil War was when “America was put on the cross, died and was resurrected…would be the all-encompassing template behind everything that I would write.”