The Rambler

Yes, so I've gotten through three of Johnson's Rambler essays. As I was reading this afternoon on the train, I was reminded of Thomas Nagel, an odd association but apt from the standpoint of a writer's gut-level embrace and finely wrought examination of his subject matter. And I thought, too, of Emerson, but with quite a contrary analysis. I've never understood Emerson's popularity as an essayist except that his sentences are emminently quotable. But that was Emerson's whole reason for being, to be quotable...but never mind the lack of sense behind his aphoristic constructions. The difference between Johnson (who must have been one of Emerson's templates) and Emerson is that whereas Johnson uses language (and disciplined rhetoric) to express his ideas, Emerson uses language to form his ideas ... a dicey proposition at best.

Toronto

Scene from our Embassy Hilton room--






Hard to believe this is a color photo but it does give a good idea of how really bleak the weather was while we were there.

Note: Never do this again. Paul and I drove on Friday to Toronto. Instead of the 8 1/2 hour trip promised by Google Maps, we spent 13 1/2 hours battling icy roads, snow, and, bad as the previous two obstacles combined, Toronto traffic. The funeral of Paul's Aunt Anne was on Saturday. Paul & I met cousin Ken and friend (Ann) for breakfast at our hotel, the Embassy Hilton in Markham. The funeral was held in an Anglican church a couple of towns distant. Reverend Paul read the Gospel -- and read it very well. Afterwards, petite sandwiches in the parish hall with lots of people while the family went to the cemetery. A first cousin of Paul's, Marguerite, talked Paul's ear off while Denise and Mark (friends of Ken's who had visited us with Ken a few months ago) talked my ear off. Afterwards, we went to cousin Christine's for some welcome rye-on-the-rocks, a light dinner, much chatter, and many photos with the family of three sisters and two bothers...minus Ken, who had another engagement.

Drove back on Sunday. This time, about 12 1/2 hours. Complicated by the same obstacles as the trip up, plus, halfway back, Paul suddenly manifested a little stomach flu. Needless to say, we toured the restrooms in every rest stop from Pittsburgh to Frederick.

Samuel Johnson

As I write this, I am listening via the internet to the classical station at DR Netradio, out of Denmark. It is the best classical station I've ever listened to.

In other matters, I finally found my Everyman Library edition of Johnson's Rambler essays. I've been wanting to read these because, having finished Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson a couple months ago, and wanting more biographical detail (Boswell is unparallelled on Johnson's "character" but short on events) my evening read lately has been Bates's Samuel Johnson, a paragon of the biographical genre, rightly praised by Dirda as one of the best written biographies in the English language. In any case, I've reached the part in which Bates is discussing Johnson's moral writings and praising the Rambler essays as the masterpiece of the form. So, I'd like to put Bates aside for a few evenings and go directly to Johnson.

I know full well that this is a dangerous strategy. A few months ago, I left off in the middle of Hans Kung's memoirs in order to read his published dissertation on Karl Barth's theology of justification. Reaching the middle of that work, fascinating though it was, I left off to "quickly" get though Dennett's Breaking the spell, and have not gotten back to it. The same thing happened with Kierkegaard. I started reading the new biography biography by Joakim Garff, broke off to peruse Either/Or before Garff left the topic, got into the middle of it, and then got distracted with...who knows what? Maybe Kung.

So you can see, there is a pattern here...and not a healthy one. There was lately an essay in the NYT by a popular writer who wrote about the fact that he reads dozens of books simultaneously. That's me.

Aunt Anne

Paul received word that his Aunt Anne died today. I met her only once. She was a lovely person, gentle and welcoming. Paul may want to go to the funeral. If so, we will drive up to Toronto on Friday, attend the funeral on Saturday, and return to Three Lions on Sunday.

In reading news, I attended the Comparative Religion reading group this afternoon. We are slowly going through Hecht's Doubt. I don't think a whole lot of it -- "doubt" seems merely a hook on which to hang a rather superficial survey of philosophy/religion. Today we began discussion of the third chapter which covers Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism...all in about thirty breezy pages. Someone mentioned how much he prefers reading this philosophy-lite to reading tome after tome of the real nitty-gritty. I didn't tell them I'd only recently purchased the entirety of St. Thomas's Summa Theologica in Latin.

Lion In Winter

First snow of this winter started falling about four hours ago.

Singer red-eye

The big thrill today was bringing home a 1919 Singer red-eye sewing machine. The wholly manual machine works. The seller, One Second Chance, is a real sewing machine aficionado. He sold this to me for $90, showed me how to work it, and has the manual somewhere...But the machine has all the parts and I do have an address for an online version of the manual. It weighs a ton. I brought it up to my mandolin room by resting it on my lap and pushing my butt up the 16 steps to the second floor one step at a time. I threaded the machine, muscle memory from threading my mother's Singer over the years, started to pump, and voila!, sewing happened!

Dennett's Breaking the spell

Finished reading Daniel Dennett's Breaking the spell yesterday. The problem with Dennett and Harris (and probably Dalkins) is that their writing assumes that man is naturally a rational creature. I think this assumption is as open to question as whether man is naturally good or naturally evil. For all of the rational arguments these folks make, it seems to me that they are either preaching to the choir, or lecturing a room full of monkeys--in either case, however well and ordered their writing and thinking, it's useless.

2006 01 18

First day for Blog Bartl. I am doing this to provide Paul an example of what he can do for himself. What will I use this Blog Bartl for? Well, maybe as a place far all Bartls to post their activities, hopes, dreams, chatter, and, yes Danny, jokes and recipies.