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Up-hill
Up-Hill Christina Rossetti Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day’s journey take the whole long day? From morn to night, my friend. But is there for the night a resting-place? A roof for when the slow dark hours begin. May not the darkness hide it from…
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Where My Books go
Where My Books go William Butler Yeats All the words that I utter, And all the words that I write, Must spread out their wings untiring, And never rest in their flight, Till they come where your sad, sad heart is, And sing to you in the night, Beyond where the waters are moving, Storm-darken’d…
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Progress in the Little World
Giovannino Guareschi’s Don Camillo stories are delightful little tales set in the “little world” of an Italian town in the Po valley in the years immediately after World War II. What makes them wonderful is their pure humanity, the sheer warmth of the oft-contentious between Don Camillo, his eternal rival, the communist mayor Peppone, and…
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Thoughts (borrowed) while Riding the Red Line at Rush Hour
Further thoughts, looking down on Michigan Avenue from the 12th floor:
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By the Margin of the Great Deep
By the Margin of the Great Deep George William (“A. E.”) Russell WHEN the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies, All its vaporous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes; I am one with the twilight’s dream. When the trees and skies…
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A Flat Stanley World
The modern world often feels very hollow, flat and dull. But why? We live in an age of riotous color and spectacle, of the greatest material abundance in human history. In our pockets we carry devices capable of bringing us the most beautiful music, the greatest works of literature, and conversations with our loved ones…
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Small is Beautiful
Beginning another series of posts, this time concentrating on E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful. Schumacher was a mid-20th century economist, a student of Keynes, who advised the British National Coal Board (a far bigger deal than the name alone indicates) for decades. Influenced by his study of philosophy, particularly the traditional social thought of the Catholic…
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A Wish
A Wish Samuel Rogers Mine be a cot beside the hill, A bee-hive’s hum shall sooth my ear; A willowy brook, that turns a mill, With many a fall shall linger near. The swallow, oft, beneath my thatch, Shall twitter from her clay-built nest; Oft shall the pilgrim lift the latch, And share my meal,…
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The wind had a mysterious voice and carried nothing now of the songs of birds, or of the rustling of palms and fragrant vines. Its burden was gathered from a stormy expanse of crested waves and briny tangles. I could see no striving in those magnificent wave motions, not raging; all the storm was apparently…
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The Captive Mind, pt. 4
[part 1, part 2, part 3] In previous posts, we’ve seen the tremendous appeal of the totalitarian ideology to the intellectual as a means of overcoming social alienation and the terrific social pressure on doubters that ensues after the ideology has become ascendant. This ascendancy is unstable, however, because the totalitarian ideology is, ultimately, a lie.…
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Dan Yingst 