Frost on Spring
Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the yea
The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off, Conclusion
Early specialization has eliminated the common culture that could produce a D’ Arcy Thompson or an Anthony Powell or a Douglas Young, and we are left with an intellectual life dominated by trained savages who can do their job, understand (perhaps) some little corner of the universe (and, in the case, of cosmologists, that corner is very tiny, indeed!), but they cannot integrate what they have learned into a larger picture. Read popular books by scientists, and whenever they step outside their field of specialization, they either fall back on the platitudes of the Durants or, what is worse, rely...
a spring poem by e.e. cummings
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
Let’s Call The Whole Thing Off, Part One
The folly of opinions–and the people who have them. This is a revised version of the original essay that was published in somewhat truncated form in September, 2006.
Guns ’n’ Grammar
The late Charley Reese got the gun issue right: “Some might say the Second Amendment is obsolete. Our own century shows us that it is not. Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot and Mao all saw to it that people were disarmed prior to commencing their reigns of terror and tyranny. God forbid, but Americans, too, could find themselves some day having to choose between submission or resistance to a tyrant.”
Another Spring Poem by William Wordsworth
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind
Historiography for Damocles: Nikolai Berdyaev’s End of Our Time, by George Bagby
The modern age, argues Berdayev, has ended with the catastrophe of the Great War and a “New Middle Age” is upon us, where all will eventually choose between religious belief and the ersatz religion of ideology.
A Spring Poem by Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Shakespeare on Spring
From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
