Sunday, November 13

Attended the conference,

Longing for Beauty,

presented by the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, celebrating their 30^th year in existence.

Some key recurrent words used during the lectures were aesthetics, consciousness, reverie, imagination and dreams.

Saturday, November 12

Swerve, in Latin, clinamen, means an unexpected, unpredictable movement of matter.

Harvard professor, Renaissance scholar and writer, Stephen Greenblatt in his new book, The Swerve, How the World Became Modern, writes that the rediscovery in 1417 of a poem written a thousand years earlier by the Roman Lucretius was such a swerve. 

We can probably think of other examples of things going from near oblivion to near universal awareness.  

In our own lives we can probably think of examples of a remarkable coincidence or chance meeting or undertaking that changed the trajectory of our lives.

Keep swerving.

Friday, November 11, 2011

11/11/11

Bread Recipe

Desolina Merlino's, Panne di Corpisanti (Bread of the Holy Spirit), as recorded by Frank and Debra Merlino while watching on 12/16/94 (Mom was born in the tiny town of Corpisanti, in the Abruzzo region of Italy.  My wife and I visited it in 2004.)

6 potatoes

5 lbs unbleached flour (separate out two big handfuls to use later when kneading as needed)

2 Fleichmann's Active Dry Yeast packets

teaspoon of sugar

teaspoon of salt

in a cup pour 2 Fleichmann's Active Dry Yeast packets and a teaspoon of sugar, stir, then add warm water up half way, stir, and put aside to rise to top of cup

peel and boil and mash potatoes (save the water to add to dough when kneading as needed)

mix potatoes, flour, cup of yeast/sugar and half cup of potato water(from being poured into yeast cup to rinse any yeast remnants), add teaspoon of salt - knead, adding flour put aside and potato water as needed

let rest in a covered pan for one hour

remove and work over adding flour to sides of pan and hands to de-stick as needed then return to pan and cover for an hour

repeat above once more

then cut pieces off and form shapes and place in pans greased with olive oil and sprinkled with flour, cut a cross on top

let rest in oiled/floured pans for about 15 minutes

bake at 425 for about a half hour

Life is a work of art designed by the one who lives it.

Enjoy

Thursday, November 10

From today’s Harvard Gazette:

Almost three years ago, two archivists from Harvard’s Houghton Library appeared at author John Updike’s front door in Beverly. Barely three weeks later, America’s master stylist would die from lung cancer. “He knew it was time,” said Leslie Morris, Houghton’s curator of modern books and manuscripts. “He asked us to come.”

Leaning on a walker, Updike chatted with Morris and her assistant while they packed cartons in his upstairs study. Into one box went the unfinished novel from his writing desk.

Updike had wanted to know that the outward signs of his literary ardor — decades of handwritten drafts, typescripts, galleys, and research files — would survive him. And he knew death was near. “Old age,” he had written in a short story, “arrived in increments of uncertainty.”

But there was no uncertainty about what should happen next at Houghton, the first building at an American university that was designed to house rare books and manuscripts. For decades, Houghton had been collecting the material now known as the John Updike Archive, which will be fully cataloged and ready for researchers by next summer.

In the end, the lives and thoughts of literary greats live on through their work and papers. Houghton and other Harvard libraries carefully tend the records left by dozens of prominent authors, providing pivotal research material for scholars.

Wednesday, November 9

Wyman Meinzer graduated from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas.

After he graduated, he moved back to a ranch near Benjamin, Texas so he could begin his photography.  He lived in a dugout for a few months to be in the middle of the roadrunners, coyotes and snakes. 

“46 years ago I sat on a hilltop in Knox County and called up my first coyote. On October 17 of 1965 at 2:15 pm that epiphany occurred and my life was never the same, in a very good way.”

 http://www.wymanmeinzer.com/

Tuesday, November 8

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Hebrews 11:1

Sunday, November 6

A book about the discovery of a book, Harvard professor, Stephen Greenblatt’s, The Swerve, How the World Became Modern, 2011 about Roman poet Lucretius (c.98 - c.55 B.C.) who argued that the world was made up of atoms and the Renaissance book hunter Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459) who rediscovered his epic poem.

Monday, November 7

Rutgers professor, Jacob Soll, mentions Poggio Bracciolini in his 2009, The Information Master, Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System at page 16.