Not much time to post because of family visits and power outages, but did snap a few photos on a trip to a quiet (though blazingly hot) Brookside Gardens.
List: The Millions on Upcoming Books
Found via Powell’s Books, a rundown from the uber-hip Millions site on interesting books slated for the rest of the year.
Our Kind of People by Uzodinma Iweala and a new James Meek both piqued my interest, among many others–which will, alas, probably remain unread by me.
Library Exhibit at PEM
Salem’s Peabody Essex Museum is a quirky treasure, and despite some sleek modern elements still retains the “cabinet of curiosities” quality that has been curated out of many museums.
So what’s even quirkier than its main galleries? The library I bet. There’s a show from the library up now, with, among other things, this oddly Warhol-like chromolithograph of Beethoven (it would make a great CD cover for a recording of some of his piano variations.)
Carl Zimmer on “Neuro” Drinks
Science writer Carl Zimmer writes about drinks that claim to enhance your neural performance. Good reporting, and he used himself as a guinea pig.
In passing mentions the trend of college students taking ADHD drugs to get an academic edge:
A growing number of college students are taking Adderall—typically prescribed for attention deficit disorder—in hopes of boosting academic performance. But Farah and other neuroscientists have found some of those students are fooling themselves. “There are a decent number of null results,” she says.
I’d heard of pre-med students taking up smoking (in a rather vivid irony) to get a point or two on the boards. It all seems a little nuts, perhaps “cognitive enhancers,” aren’t here now, but they will arrive soon enough, bringing a host of philosophical and educational issues. And I thought the steroids in sports controversy was full of tough calls.
Monhegan
My post on Monhegan (location of photo above) for WGBH Arts is live on their site: http://www.wgbh.org/wgbharts/Article.cfm?articleID=6644
Derecho
The region is still recovering from last night’s derecho. We’re among the fortunate ones who got electricity back within 24 hours.
Full background on this kind of storm from the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang and NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center.
Unreasonable Words? Steven Wright:
I’ve always loved this joke of his:
“I woke up one morning and looked around the room. Something wasn’t right. I realized that someone had broken in the night before and replaced everything in my apartment with an exact replica. I couldn’t believe it…I got my roommate and showed him. I said, “Look at this–everything’s been replaced with an exact replica!” He said, “Do I know you?”
Reasonable Words: On Reading
Eliazabeth Hardwick, interviewed by the Paris Review:
“As I have grown older I see myself as fortunate in many ways. It is fortunate to have had all my life this passion for studying and enjoying literature and for trying to add a bit to it as interestingly as I can. This passion has given me much joy, it has given me friends who care for the same things, it has given me employment, escape from boredom, everything. The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.”
In a fine NYTimes obit of her written by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt she relates,
““Even when I was in college, ‘down home,’ [in Kentucky] I’m afraid my aim was — if it doesn’t sound too ridiculous — my aim was to be a New York Jewish intellectual,” she told an interviewer in 1979. “I say ‘Jewish’ because of their tradition of rational skepticism; and also a certain deracination appeals to me — and their openness to European culture.”
I’m with you, Elizabeth, reading, skepticism, and displacement, preferably on the Upper West Side, but for now a coffee shop in Takoma Park will have to do in my particular case.
Poem: David Slavitt
A Cambridge (MA) poet whose work I’ve always admired (and who is hilariously candid in readings, if you get the chance go see him.)
A good example of his style.
Repetition by David R. Slavitt
Somewhere between the rehearsals and reenactments
there must be–we suppose–a performance we either
perceive or whimsically choose and declare as the realthing to which past and future, knowing or not,
all along referred. That welter of repetitions
turns out in the end not to have been so free,as meaning imposes or, like the dumb sun, dawns,
and objects that swam in an indeterminate sea
of diffident potential assume their recalcitrantshapes. So it is with events we thought we knew
rather too well. Beginnings and endings are clear,
but middles, that murk where significance often lurks,are tricky, and joy, which ought to be easy enough
to recognize, defies the fastest tripping
shutter or eyelash flutter and, sly, furtive,shy as a timid child, is abruptly gone,
leaving us searching, rummaging high and low,
(those, I’m afraid, are the usual places) lookingfor some faint trace or imprint. Exceptional moments?
Diversions, mostly. Experience, where we live,
is lying down each night, disposed the same wayon the same bedding we tidied that morning. The rumples
we smoothed mean more than the wretched or splendid dreams
our souls proposed while our bodies shifted or thrashed.What’s hard to see is whatever the blasé eye
assumes as we tread our daily round: a flash
of red as a cardinal crosses the sky, we’ll remark,looking up, and ignore how our path leads gently downward.
Reminds me of Aaron Copland’s idea of repetition as the basic principle in all music: you only have two choices in a piece, do the same thing or something different. So it is in life…
Creative Insomnia: Late Night Listening
Fighting off a cold and looking for something exquisite to take my mind off of a scratchy throat in the middle of the night. Found this:
Yes, the aria is about saying goodbye to a table. Trust me, in the opera it’s very poignant. And Victoria De Los Angeles, with her “smiling through tears” voice, is wonderful in it.
A Few Reasonable Words 