Who are you?

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

“Who are you?” said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

“What do you mean by that?” said the Caterpillar sternly. “Explain yourself!”

“I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,” said Alice, “because I’m not myself, you see.”

“I don’t see,” said the Caterpillar.

“I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,” Alice replied very politely, “for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.”

“It isn’t,” said the Caterpillar.

“Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,” said Alice; “but when you have to turn into a chrysalis—you will some day, you know—and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?”

“Not a bit,” said the Caterpillar.

“Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,” said Alice; “all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.”

“You!” said the Caterpillar contemptuously. “Who are you?”

Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation. Alice felt a little irritated at the Caterpillar’s making such very short remarks, and she drew herself up and said, very gravely, “I think, you ought to tell me who you are, first.”

“Why?” said the Caterpillar.

Here was another puzzling question; and as Alice could not think of any good reason, and as the Caterpillar seemed to be in a very unpleasant state of mind, she turned away. .... (more)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter v.

Questing

An appreciation of Christianity is not enough. To be saved requires faith. From The Telegraph on "cultural Christianity":

Being a Christian, I suppose I should prefer Christian jokes about religion, but I often find the Jewish jokes have more bite. Here is one.

The boy who is about to be bar-mitzvahed approaches his instructor with a troubled expression: "Rabbi, I have to tell you something important. You see, I don't believe in God. The rabbi stares at the sad youth with scorn, and replies, "Do you think He cares?"

Even as a joke, it is unimaginable that a Christian priest could speak like that. He would have to tell the equivalent boy that he could not be confirmed without faith. He would probably add, by way of consolation, something like "God loves you all the same."

For Christianity, faith is the thing without which, nothing. Faith is not sufficient — hope is equally great, says St Paul, and love is the greatest — but faith is necessary. The Nicene Creed, 1,700 years old next month, is a statement of what a Christian must believe. This requirement, this "I believe...", spoken by each individual, is something that a great many well-disposed people, especially in the modern Western world, cannot conscientiously say.

Hence the existence of what are known as "cultural Christians". These are people who like the tenor of Christianity, its moral norms, its tenderness towards the poor and weak, the beauty of its liturgy and art, its civilisational benefits, but do not in fact believe that, as the Nicene Creed puts it, Jesus is "the only begotten son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds" etc. ....

Dr [Rowan] Williams is surely right that cultural Christians, because they do not believe, are not fully experiencing the life that is Jesus. There is the world of difference between, as he puts it, admiring Christianity and being "called on to love God". But what I think he fails to recognise is that most cultural Christians know that.

They are not in a steady state of contentment about where they are. They may well be, as the Archbishop thinks Jordan Peterson is, "sad and angry". After all, nearly 2,000 years after Jesus was unjustly killed, the number of things to be sad and angry about seems greater than at any time since 1945. The point, however, is that they are questing. They need help in that quest. ....

But faith, in any case, is not something human beings can create for themselves.

All we can try to be is in the right place at the right time. Cultural Christians do at least recognise that they may be in the right place, which probably means they are looking for the right time. (more)

Charles Moore, "Cultural Christians already know what they are missing from religion: faith," The Telegraph, April 18, 2025.

"Will the Circle be Unbroken?"

Looking through some previous posts here I came across an article describing how the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou? broadened the audience for bluegrass. Toward the end of that article its author noted the importance to bluegrass of another recording:

.... [T]he Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's expansive 1972 record Will the Circle Be Unbroken brought revered traditional artists like Doc Watson, the Carter Family, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, and Jimmy Martin back into the national spotlight. It remains an important crossover record that bridges revered old-school figureheads with a young, fresh audience.

"These albums really helped cross over into the mainstream, and I think remind people how powerful and important the music is," Lewis says. ....

There were eventually three collections of songs in a series of "Will the Circle be Unbroken" records/CDs. My favorite is Volume Two, the one that includes the remarkable gathering of musicians above (and more).


Fifteen Years Later, Bluegrass Is Still Reeling from O Brother, Where Art Thou? | Music Feature | Indy Week

"He is not here..."

Some years ago, when a family in his community had suffered a terrible loss, a Lutheran pastor preached an Easter Vigil sermon:

.... For almost two thousand years, humans have heard this story and for almost two thousand years we have been coming up with reasons not to believe it. Perhaps Jesus' body was stolen, it is argued, and the appearances to his disciples were the work of an imposter. Perhaps the appearances were a mass hallucination by the disciples, unresolved grief expressing itself as a sort of denial that he was even dead. Maybe the empty tomb is a later addition to this story. Maybe the whole thing is a metaphor for the power of Jesus' teaching. Maybe it is an echo of the stories of the pagan gods of the ancient near east, who go to the underworld for a season and then come back, bringing spring with them. The sun will come up tomorrow and life will renew itself.

These arguments are, briefly, all balderdash. Yes, the stories are strange and filled with mystery. No, they do not create one consistent picture of that morning and the days that follow. But the doubt and confusion are written into the story from the start. This is not a confidence game or a fraud or a metaphor. The stories would look totally different if they were. The people who were there believed this had happened. What and how, exactly, they couldn't say. But it was unbearably, unbelievably real to them. ....

Yet there it was, and there it is: a tomb with no corpse. A door opening to a possibility we may not even want to entertain. That there is something beyond the grave—not in our warm, rose-tinged memories, not in some distant shore where the souls of the righteous congregate, not in the recurring cycle of nature, spring following winter and day following night, not in our plucky human desire to go on living despite it all—but in the love shown to a broken body as it is knitted back together. In the care shown to a dead body as it is revived to life. In the promise of salvation and in-gathering of all the peoples that is initiated by this one lonely empty tomb. In a new age that begins now, in the devil being cast out from this one cranny of earth, hell being crushed under this one foot, death being deprived of its spoils in this one corpse. .... (more)

Benjamin Dueholm, "Preaching the Easter Vigil," The Parish Bulletin, April 17, 2025.

The day in-between

From "Sitting, Waiting, and Hoping in the Tomb of Jesus" by A.J. Swoboda:

.... Martin Luther said himself that Saturday was the day that God himself lay cold in the grave. Friday was death, Sunday was hope, but Saturday was that seemingly ignored middle day between them when God occupied a dirty grave in a little garden outside Jerusalem. Saturday is about waiting, about uncertainty, about not knowing what’ll happen. ....

So much of Christian faith is Saturday faith. ....

A medieval theologian, Anselm, once described the kind of faith that comes with Saturday—fides quaerens intellectum: “faith seeking understanding.” By that, he meant that faith isn’t something that arises after moments of understanding. Rather, faith is something that you cling to when understanding and reason lay dead. We don’t believe once we understand it—we believe in order to understand it. Saturday’s like that: offering a day of waiting, a day of ambiguity, a day when God is sovereign even if our ideas and theologies and expectations about him are not. It is the day that our ignorance is our witness and our proclamation. Truth is, our intellect will always be one step behind in our love of God. We don’t love God once we understand him; we love God in order to understand him. ....

At times, we are all like the two disciples on their way to Emmaus who were really close to Jesus but didn’t always know it. In Luke 24, two disciples walked away from Jerusalem, where they’d just seen their Lord and Master die on the cross. Leaving, dejected, upset, hopeless, and broken, to find the next stage in their lives and careers. Unbeknownst to them, Jesus had been resurrected and was actually walking alongside them on their way to Emmaus. The hope of Sunday hadn’t dawned on them yet. The Gospels tell us that, on their way to Emmaus, the disciples were “downcast.”

That experience is the kind of experience Saturday is all about. .... (more)

This is from A.J. Swoboda's A Glorious Dark: Finding Hope in the Tension between Belief and Experience, excerpted in Christianity Today.

Sitting, Waiting, and Hoping in the Tomb of Jesus | Christianity Today

Good Friday

Kevin Williamson:

This week, Christians around the world will observe Good Friday, the most somber day on the liturgical calendar. The word good in Good Friday expresses an older sense of the adjective: holy, rather than desirable or positive. .... Good Friday is not an observance for the sort of person who insists he has “no regrets.” I don’t know what you do with somebody like that. But for people who understand, even if it is only at some instinctive level, the necessity of penance and reconciliation, Good Friday can be useful and purpose-giving, if not joyous. It isn’t only the joyous things that we need.

Kevin D. Williamson, "The Indictment and the Problem of Discretion," The Dispatch, April 3, 2023.

"Love one another"

Kevin DeYoung:

.... If you've never heard the term, it's not Monday-Thursday (which always confused me as a kid), but Maundy Thursday, as in Mandatum Thursday. Mandatum is the Latin word for "command" or "mandate", and the day is called Maundy Thursday because on the night before his death Jesus gave his disciples a new command. "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another" (John 13:34).

At first it seems strange that Christ would call this a new command. After all, the Old Testament instructed God's people to love their neighbors and Christ himself summarized the law as love for God and love for others. So what's new about love? What makes the command new is that because of Jesus' passion there is a new standard, a new examplar of love.

There was never any love like the dying love of Jesus. It is tender and sweet (John 13:33). It serves (John 13:2-17). It loves even unto death (John 13:1). Jesus had nothing to gain from us by loving us. There was nothing in us to draw us to him. But he loved us still, while we were yet sinners. ....

"To lay aside His crown..."

A good Lenten hymn. The last two verses here were unfamiliar to me, but I like them.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To lay aside his crown for my soul, for my soul,
To lay aside his crown for my soul.

To God and to the Lamb, I will sing, I will sing;
To God and to the Lamb, I will sing.
To God and to the Lamb who is the great I AM;
While millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing;
While millions join the theme, I will sing.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on.
And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing and joyful be;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on;
And through eternity, I’ll sing on.

Then friends shall meet again, who have loved, who have loved,
Then friends shall meet again, who have loved;
Then friends shall meet again, in Jesus' presence, when
We'll meet to part no more, who have loved, who have loved,
We'll meet to part no more, who have loved.

Ye winged seraphs, fly! Bear the news, bear the news.
Ye winged seraphs fly! bear the news;
Ye winged seraphs fly! Like comets through the sky,
Fill vast eternity with the news, with the news,
Fill vast eternity with the news!

Anonymous; composite; 19th cent.

Tune: WONDROUS LOVE (6.6.6.3.6.6.6.6.6.3.)

American folk tune; The Southern Harmony, 1840

Conjubilant with Song included this about the hymn, which first appeared in 1811:

The tune for this hymn, adapted from an earlier folk tune, was first printed in the second edition of William Walker's The Southern Harmony (1840), in three-part harmony (and with only one stanza of the text). There have been many different arrangements of the tune since then, not only in hymnals but also as choral anthems and instrumental pieces.

Conjubilant with Song: Like Comets Through the Sky

An image

Re-posted:

I've posted about the Shroud of Turin on this blog several times. In 2009 I wrote:

The Shroud of Turin is the one religious relic that has intrigued me over the years, not as an object of reverence, but because of the possibility it could be authentic. Might there be an actual image of Jesus as well as evidence for His execution and possibly even the resurrection which had been preserved until a time when science could authenticate it? I should have known better — controversy about this sort of thing never ends and there is never enough evidence to erase all doubt. Nevertheless, the seemingly inexplicable nature of the image, the things a medieval artist would have been unlikely to know like the wounds on the wrists rather than the palms and the similarity to actual Roman methods of crucifixion, made the possibilities of the Shroud extremely interesting. .... (more)

The New York Post published an AI-generated image based on the shroud:

Olivia Land, "Face of Jesus? AI recreates stunning likeness of Shroud of Turin image that many believe to be Christ," New York Post, August 22, 2024.

"Every Holy Week thereafter..."

Dorothy L. Sayers and C.S. Lewis were friends. CSL wrote about their relationship: "She was the first person of importance who ever wrote me a fan letter. I liked her, originally, because she liked me; later, for the extraordinary zest and edge of her conversation—as I like a high wind. She was a friend, not an ally." Lewis approved of The Man Born to be King, a series of radio plays she had written for the BBC.

Lewis read the radio plays when her book was first published and then every Holy Week thereafter. This is the first letter he wrote her, on May 30, 1943:

Dear Miss Sayers— I’ve finished The Man Born to be King and think it a complete success. (Christie the H.M. of Westminster told me that the actual performances over the air left his 2 small daughters with “open and silent mouths” for several minutes). I shed real tears (hot ones) in places: since Mauriac’s Vie de Jesus nothing has moved me so much. I’m not absolutely sure whether Judas for me “comes off”—i.e. whether I shd. have got him without your off-stage analysis. But this may be due to merely reading what was meant to be heard. He’s quite a possible conception, no doubt: I’m only uncertain of the execution. But that is the only point I’m doubtful on. I expect to read it times without number again…. Yours sincerely C.S. Lewis (Collected Letters, II, 577f)

The Man Born to Be King is available at Amazon.

"Who is the ultimate sovereign..."

Meir Soloveichik on "America and the Exodus":

.... Ben Franklin made this proposal for a seal for the United States: “Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to express that he acts by Command of the Deity. Motto, Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

Franklin’s suggestion reminds us that the Haggadah’s central exhortation—that we must see ourselves as if we had been slaves in Egypt and had been guided out by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm—is not only a religious idea but also one with political and moral implications. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has noted that modernity was formed by four revolutions: the British (in 1688) and American on the one hand, and the French and Russian on the other. In Britain and America, one source of inspiration was the Hebrew Bible. Secular philosophy guided the French and Russian revolutions. The former led to free societies, while French and Russian utopian revolutions ended in tyranny.

Why, asks Sacks, did Britain and America succeed where France and Russia failed?

The explanation is surely complex but much—perhaps all—turns on how a society answers the question: who is the ultimate sovereign, God or man?.... For the British and American architects of liberty, God was the supreme power.... For the French and Russian ideologists, ultimate value lay in the state...when human beings arrogate supreme power to themselves, politics loses its sole secure defense of freedom.... Societies that exile God lead to the eclipse of man. .... (more)

Cecil B. DeMille made two movies titled The Ten Commandments, a silent version in 1923 (poster above) and the more familiar one starring Charlton Heston as Moses.

 Meir Soloveichik, "America and the Exodus," The Free Press, April 10, 2025.

"The notion of 'Christian fiction' is problematic..."

Paul Kingsnorth is a novelist and an adult convert to Christianity. From "The promise and peril of the 'Christian novel'":

The notion of 'Christian fiction' is problematic in the same fashion as is the notion of a 'protest song.' Consider: how many good protest songs have you ever heard, in comparison with the number of bad or terrible ones? I would be willing to bet that the latter list was a lot longer, and the reason is simple enough: polemic and poetry don't mix. Making a point or pushing an agenda sits very badly with the task of exploring the complexity of human being in all its fullness. ....

C.S. Lewis once claimed that it was much harder to present the Christian story to a post-Christian culture than to a pre-Christian one, and today we can see how true this claim is. Where I come from, people are largely inoculated against Christianity, or what they imagine Christianity to be. The history, the cultural baggage, the half-formed prejudices: all of these are compounded by a stark lack of understanding of what the Christian Way really is. Recently I was admonished by an editor for making a reference to one of Jesus's well-known parables in an article I was writing. 'Young readers today', she said, 'won't understand the reference.' I was shocked. When I was young, we all knew these things even if we didn't believe them. No more. The shared stories we once took for granted are blowing away on the wind. For all of these reasons, a Christian who wants to write a novel which even touches on his or her faith faces a steep climb. ....

How could a Christian write a novel in times like these, and what models might we have? Recently I read C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy, which I thought was a brave attempt to disguise the Christian pattern of the universe in sci-fi clothing. Some of it was inspiring or intriguing: the treatment of space as heaven — literally — and the portrait of an Earth occluded by evil spirits and thus cut off from God since ancient times, offers up powerful images to the imagination. That Hideous Strength, the final novel in the trilogy, points at our current spiritual dilemma with perspicacity. Lewis's ambitious, grand sweep of a tale showed me how a conceptual trilogy about the spiritual realities of Heaven and Earth could be constructed. But the novels are dated now, as any book written about space exploration in the 1940s would be. ....

Last year I was approached by the editor of the Buechner Review, a publication dedicated to the work of an author I had never heard of, and asked if I would write something for them. What they told me about him piqued my interest: Buechner was a novelist who had become a Christian — indeed, a Christian pastor — and then had to answer for himself the question of how to reconcile the two callings. So I said yes, and then I sat down with Buechner’s 1980 novel, Godric, which is a fictionalised account of the life of  St Godric of Finchale. ....

What he does is, in some ways, almost at the opposite end of the spectrum to the one that Lewis was inhabiting. While the Space Trilogy spreads itself over the widest vista imaginable, both literally and conceptually, Godric is a small book, in its scope if not its concerns — or its writing. Buechner sets out to tell the story of one obscure saint in one period of time in one particular place, and through that to illuminate the spiritual struggle that is the Christian Way. He does so, in my opinion, with great success. .... (more)

Paul Kingsnorth, "The promise and peril of the 'Christian novel,'" The Abbey of Misrule, April 9, 2025.

"All-or-nothing"

Michael at Shadow to Light usually takes on the arguments of atheists. This time, he posts on a subject that will annoy some Christians: "The First Chapters of Genesis":

There are many Christians who argue that the first chapters of Genesis must be read as literal history. What’s more, if you refuse to embrace such an interpretation, you are rejecting the Bible, therefore rejecting Christianity. I don’t agree. In fact, when I read the first chapters of Genesis, it’s seems clear (to me) that we are dealing with a significant amount of symbolism. In other words, Genesis reads more like symbolic history, an allegory that is conveying deeper truths about our past and who we are. The literalists would disagree, arguing that unless Genesis is literal history, describing things as they happened, it’s nothing more than a fantasy. And of course, atheists everywhere are happy to weigh in and agree with this all-or-nothing thinking. ....

He intends to do a series on the subject: "First, I want to lay out some of reasons I think Genesis is meant to be interpreted as symbolic history. Second, consider some of the truths that Genesis is conveying. Finally, consider what would be the historical truths."

Michael, "The First Chapters of Genesis," Shadow to Light, April 6, 2025.

Moderation is out of style

Dave Cieslewicz is a former mayor (2003-2011) of the politically liberal city where I've lived since 1970. He writes a regular column for a free weekly publication called Isthmus. He defines himself ideologically as "a moderate, center-left, nonpartisan Democrat," which means he doesn't fit comfortably in today's Democratic party. He recently felt the need to explain himself:

.... Moderation is as much a way of living as it is a form of political commentary. I believe in moderation in all things. I drink, but not too much. I’ve cut my red meat consumption, but I’d never be a vegan. I like to cross-country ski, but I’ve never done a Birkie. I’ve done half marathons but never the full deal. And, when it comes to politics, I’ll settle for a half loaf most days and, on really bad days, even the crumbs look pretty good to a guy who’s hungry for any progress at all.

Being center-left is an ideological distinction. I support the free market as the basic way of organizing our economy and our society. But I don’t think the market has all the answers all the time. The broader society holds values that the market, left entirely to its own devices, might not respect. So we need sensible regulations to, for example, protect workers and the environment. ....

But here comes the “nonpartisan” part. I don’t avoid criticizing Democratic pols or the party as a whole when it does stuff that I don’t agree with or which I think is politically stupid. (And there’s a lot of that going around these days.) And I won’t criticize a Republican just for being one. In the rare moments when they do something I agree with, I don’t have any trouble saying so.

I find myself in the middle, shading to the left of dead center. On the one hand, the Republicans have just gone off the cliff, devolving into something very close to a fascist party. And yet the Democrats have evolved into a party of condescending, college-educated snobs who hold views on social issues that I find both odd and extreme. What I mean by that, mostly, is the penchant on the hard-left to view everything in terms of race and gender, literally black and white. They see a world of victims and oppressors and all that matters is your membership in one group or the other, a membership assigned to you and over which you have no control.

By stark contrast, I see people primarily as individuals and mostly responsible for their own lot in life. I think people have a lot of personal agency. I don’t see them as helpless victims of the system. I believe in a color blind society. I’m for equality but not “equity,” which has come to mean active discrimination to make up for past discrimination. And all of that sets me apart from a good chunk of the activist part of the Democratic Party. .... (more)

Dave Cieslewicz, "Explaining myself," Isthmus, April 5, 2025.

“Whistle While You Work”

Comparing the 2025 Snow White to the one released in 1937, Disney's first full-length animated film:

.... The 2025 film brazenly removes the heart of the original film’s princess. It was dead on arrival.

The 1937 Snow White is the only Disney princess film that includes a literal depiction of prayer. Many age-old stories contain allegories for divine intervention (fairy godmothers, for instance), but in the original Snow White, the princess kneels at her bedside and prays. She prays for the seven dwarves, for Grumpy to like her, and for her dreams to come true—namely, that someday, her “prince will come.” (Lest we forget, the prince was a man she knew and liked from her time at the castle, not a complete stranger.) She prays for safety.

And her prayers are answered. The evil queen is vanquished by a lightning strike from the heavens. Divine help is integral in the 1937 film; the dwarves, the prince, and the princess just participate in it.

In the live-action film, there is no prayer for love and marriage. Not only that, desiring such things is ridiculed. ....

In the classic, Snow White sweeps while singing “Whistle While You Work.” In the remake, she noticeably offloads the broom to one of the dwarves. The filmmakers are clearly trying to remove any insinuation that cooking and cleaning are women’s work. But the Snow White in the original is defined by cheerful acceptance of such duties—performed in gratitude for the dwarves’ hospitality—and hopeful optimism in the face of hardship and persecution. In the new version, Snow White is despondent and worn down by injustice. The impression one is left with is that the filmmakers rewrote the character because they simply do not like Snow White. .... (more)

The illustration is from the 1937 version. I do have the '37 Snow White on Blu-ray. I should watch it again.

Mary Rose Somarriba, "How Disney Killed Snow White," First Things, April 4, 2025.

“For the Snark was a Boojum, you see”

I've been looking through the archive of Michael Dirda's essays again. Here, he writes an appreciation of Lewis Carroll, especially The Hunting of the Snark:

On July 18, 1874, Carroll was out walking when a sentence suddenly popped into his head: “For the Snark was a Boojum, you see.” Most people would immediately wonder: What’s a Snark? What’s a Boojum? In fact, 150 years later, we’re still wondering whenever we read or reread his great nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark — which, by the way, has no established connection with the contemporary use of “snark,” meaning mockingly sarcastic.

At this time, Carroll was already quite familiar with bizarre creatures bearing strange names. Hadn’t he previously imagined the Jabberwock — “the jaws that bite, the claws that catch” — as well as the Jubjub bird and the frumious Bandersnatch? Those fearsome beasts first appeared in the heroic ballad “Jabberwocky,” part of Through the Looking-Glass, which also includes that other favorite of versified nonsense, “The Walrus and the Carpenter”:

The time has come,” the Walrus said,

To talk of many things;

Of shoes — and ships — and sealing wax —

Of cabbages — and kings

And why the sea is boiling hot —

And whether pigs have wings.

In “Jabberwocky” — a frequent choice for grade-school recitation — an intrepid young champion, using a vorpal blade that goes snicker-snack, defeats a fearsome dragon-like creature. Its tale of derring-do grew out of four lines that, years earlier, Carroll had titled “Stanza From the Anglo-Saxon”:

Twas brillig and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

....Like any classical epic, The Hunting of the Snark starts in medias res. After sailing for many months and weeks, 10 adventurers finally land on an island that is — in the very first words of the poem — “Just the place for a Snark!” ....

Throughout these wonderfully lilting 141 stanzas one mystery or puzzle succeeds another. To begin with, we’re not precisely sure why the group is searching for a Snark. However, we do learn five ways to identify one that is “genuine,” implying that there are fake or imitation Snarks running about. A true Snark, says the Bellman, tastes crispy when cooked, gets up late in the morning, can’t take a joke, is ambitious and has a “fondness for bathing-machines/ Which it constantly carries about,/ And believes that they add to the beauty of scenes —/ A sentiment open to doubt.”

Some Snarks, we’re also told, have feathers and bite; others have whiskers and scratch. You might also occasionally encounter one that is a Boojum. This would be particularly dire for the Baker, the most agitated figure in the poem. Not only did he absent-mindedly leave his 42 boxes of luggage behind, but he is apparently called the Baker because he has somehow forgotten his actual name. Still, he vividly remembers the parting words of his uncle:

But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,

If your Snark be a Boojum! For then

You will softly and suddenly vanish away,

And never be met with again!

.... (more)

The book illustrated above is from my library. Martin Gardner also authored annotated editions of Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass in The Annotated Alice.

Michael Dirda, "What is a Snark? For Lewis Carroll, a whimsical creature we’ll never know," The Washington Post, August 22, 2024.

When will I ever learn?

Listening to Van Morrison this afternoon.

The sun was setting over Avalon The last time we stood in the west Suffering long time angels enraptured by Blake Burn out the dross innocence captured again Standing on the beach at sunset all the boats All the boats keep moving slow In the glory of the flashing light in the evenings glow When will I ever learn to live in God? When will I ever learn? He gives me everything I need and more When will I ever learn? You brought it to my attention everything that was made in God Down through centuries of great writings and paintings Everything lives in God Seen through architecture of great cathedrals Down through the history of time Is and was in the beginning and evermore shall be

When will I ever learn to live in God? When will I ever learn? He gives me everything I need and more When will I ever learn? Whatever it takes to fulfill his mission That is the way we must go But you've got to do it your own way Tear down the old, bring up the new And up on the hillside its quiet Where the shepherd is tending his sheep And over the mountains and the valleys The countryside is so green Standing on the highest hill with a sense of wonder You can see everything is made in God Head back down the roadside and give thanks for it all When will I ever learn to live in God? When will I ever learn? He gives me everything I need and more When will I ever learn?

When the world looks dark

Michael Dirda is just about the only reason I subscribed to The Washington Post and now he has retired. I do, however, have access to an archive of his columns and reviews. This was from just after the 2024 election:

This fall has showcased D.C. weather at its very best — temperatures in the 70s, day after day of luminous blue skies and dry, crisp air, lovely afternoons for strolling in parks or hiking along the Potomac and in Rock Creek Park. Overall, God couldn’t have ordered a better lead-up to my birthday on Nov. 6. As it turned out, though, I spent most of that day in quiet despondency, thinking about the future of this country and the world.

More personally — it was my birthday after all — I also thought about how to live in a nation governed and controlled by people that even Ayn Rand, let alone Edmund Burke, would despise. Should I follow the advice of Voltaire’s Candide and simply cultivate my garden, in effect just turn my back on the world outside? There are, after all, books I’ve never gotten to ....

The best course is immersion in some great or compelling works of the past. Some people may turn to scripture for hope and consolation; others to philosophy or poetry. But there are other, less obvious options for self-care when the soul is roiled and the world looks dark.

The sun is always shining on Blandings Castle, and the comic fiction of P.G. Wodehouse can brighten even the gloomiest moods. Classic mysteries, featuring detectives such as Sherlock Holmes, Jane Marple and Nero Wolfe, provide clear-cut puzzles to soothe the most vexed and troubled spirit. There’s a reason detective stories were called “the normal recreation of noble minds.” During the Blitz, the British kept calm and carried on, in part by occasionally escaping into long Victorian novels and novel sequences, such as the Barsetshire chronicles of Anthony Trollope. ....

Will you turn for comfort to Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances or to a favorite poet, say George Herbert or Emily Dickinson? Or might you, perhaps, aim to acquire a cooler, more Olympian perspective on the present moment by reading various novels, all well received, that re-create the lives, peccadilloes and intrigues of the best-known Roman emperors: Thornton Wilder’s The Ides of March, John Williams’s Augustus, Robert Graves’s I, Claudius, Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian....

Michael Dirda, "Feeling despondent? So am I. Then I remembered, books can help," The Washington Post, Nov. 14, 2024.

Drowned in noise and nonsense

I loved this, on Oliver Stone's film:

Stone’s film — one of the great cinematic achievements of the 1990s — has a grasp of history that’s about as loose as David Ferrie’s wig in a hurricane. It doesn’t merely twist New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s botched investigation; it hog-ties the truth and dumps it on Bourbon Street to get pancaked by a sousaphone section and a guy in a gator suit.

.... Who killed Kennedy? Stone’s answer: Who didn’t? The CIA, LBJ, the Mafia, the Secret Service, the Pentagon, right-wing wackjobs, crazy Cubans (my peeps), angry Texans, oil tycoons, “Tricky Dick” Nixon, and — why not? — even the Caddyshack gopher was spotted behind the picket fence, cheeky little rascal.

Mechanically, Stone’s three-hour Gish gallop mirrors how social media influencers lobotomize their audiences: it drowns you with a barrage of noise and nonsense that you can’t possibly untangle, so you surrender — and paranoia sets in. It’s one of the greatest movies ever made about conspiracy theories because it is a conspiracy theory....

By the time you realize that there’s no way Julia Ann Mercer could have seen Jack Ruby near Dealey Plaza, you’re already sitting across from Donald Sutherland’s “X” spinning a monologue for the ages. Next, you’re knee-deep in the debunked “magic bullet” theory — which rests entirely on the fallacy that Kennedy and Texas Governor Connally were seated at the same height (they weren’t) — right before Kevin Costner, channeling Jimmy Stewart, pleads, “It’s up to you.” ....

JFK was a warning, but, instead of heeding it, we turned it into a business model. Minutes after Tuesday’s JFK files dropped, Twitter lit up like one of Ruby’s neon signs outside his strip joint: we saw Ramparts clippings sold as fresh intel, antisemitic bile disguised as “just asking questions,” and even a forged JFK memo about UFOs. .... (more)

Giancarlo Sopo, "From Camelot to Clickbait: America’s Dealey Plaza Syndrome," National Review, March 20, 2025.

Oswald did it.

My last post reminded me of this, posted eight years ago, the last time Trump had documents released related to JFK's assassination :

I taught high school history and social studies classes for thirty-five years. For almost all of those years, I taught required 9^th grade US history classes. Eventually, I got pretty good at it. Each quarter one of the units involved the production of an essay that propounded a thesis, supported the thesis with evidence properly footnoted, and a conclusion flowing from the argument. Since these were 9^th graders I supplied packets of primary and secondary sources for them to use although they were free to find other materials. Of the topics I gave them the most popular by far was the assassination of JFK. Since I used that subject year after year I became very familiar with the various conspiracy theories and the evidence (or, rather, the lack thereof) supporting them. There is really no reason to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the only shooter that day in Dallas. All of the alternate theories were answered long ago and it requires a genuine unwillingness to consider the evidence to believe otherwise. Peter Jennings' ABC documentary (2003) effectively dealt with all of the questions regarding a second gunman or an alternate assassin firing from somewhere other than the Schoolbook Depository. A thorough debunking of the various conspiracy theories can be found in Gerald Posner's Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993). If your understanding of the issues is based on Oliver Stone's movie, look further. Like most of his films, JFK is pretty good as a movie and pretty terrible as history.

The President has decided to release the remaining documents relating to the investigation of the assassination. As of last night, he has ordered that all those remaining should be released holding back only the names and addresses of people still living. I predict that nothing new of importance will be revealed. Was Oswald himself part of a conspiracy? People who know the most about him are doubtful that he could have worked in concert with anyone. From today's London Times:

Farris Rookstool, a former FBI analyst who spent nine years reading 500,000 pages of documents in the bureau’s Kennedy collection, said the notion that Russia controlled Oswald was seductive but flawed.

“I did the interviews with the KGB, the first FBI-authorised face-to-face meetings, and I can tell you they thought Oswald was just as crazy as we did. I don’t think they were trying to wash their hands of being involved with him but they were just being very candid. Oleg Nechiporenko [a KGB officer who also met Oswald in Mexico City] said they called him ‘the Tornado’ because he was spiralling out of control.

“If you strip Oswald down and look at him as just a human, he had antisocial personality disorders, he had a childlike understanding of world history and he didn’t take orders very well.

“When he was in Russia they did a two-year electronic surveillance on him and they finally realised the guy was an idiot. They thought this guy is obviously not an American double agent or false flag or a dangle. When they folded their operation over there they gave him 72 hours to leave the country.”

There are still people who believe Stanton had Lincoln assassinated or that Spain blew up the Maine in Havana harbor and there will always be people who think a professional assassin might have chosen an exposed position behind the wall of a public parking lot and fired over the heads of people lining a parade route.