~Tatranka Folkloric Group Subor Tribute to Marta Chamilova... - Media Dragon
In the sixth poem of the first movement, “Rosedale Theater, 1938,” he captures what I remember as the romance of movies. In it, he sees the original production of Mutiny on the Bounty, with Charles Laughton, which won Best Picture in 1935:
“Waves
Of raw sensation break upon each white
Face that reflects the action, and our ears
Eavesdrop upon the commerce of a more
Real world than ours.”
On April 23, 1851, Annie Darwin dies in her father’s arms. Eight years later, On the Origin of Species would subvert the elemental human instinct with its argument for natural selection — the survival and improvement of the species through the demise of the individual. Death, Darwin would imply, is not unjust but inherently natural — part of the impartial laws holding the universe together, mortality unshackled from morality and metaphysics, leaving no room for charges of blame and pleas for mercy. “There is grandeur in this view of life,” Darwin would write, speaking perhaps to himself. Across the Atlantic, Emily Dickinson would ponder this cycle — “circuit,” she called it — of life and death:
Seed, summer, tomb.
Who’s doom —
To whom?
With Annie’s body still warm beside him, Darwin drags the pen across the letter paper, across the British archipelago, across his lacerated consciousness, to deliver to Emma the most undeliverable news in the universe.
“I am so thankful for the daguerreotype,” he writes.
Getting Behind The Real Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom occasionally shades into Saint Tom, thanks to a notably ample collection of friends who remark on his generosity and kindness. He remembers birthdays, he lends money when others are in need, his wit always beguiles. He is an unstoppable correspondent, keeping in touch with everyone, including long-ago landladies, and for 50 years he wrote once or twice a week to his mother. But Hermione Lee astutely observes that his charm can be a form of concealment, a means of detachment. Overall, a “familial feel” characterizes his working relationships, yet his four sons encountered a frazzled man at breakfast who’d worked half the night. – The Atlantic
Why Some Are Inclined To Be Seduced By Conspiracy Theories
In the face of complicated events, bewildering new technologies, and sometimes contradictory information, the explanatory power of some occult yet totalizing narrative easily overmasters more prosaic explanations of the world. To those in thrall to such conspiracy beliefs, observable reality conceals plots that are hatched in secret by powerful people and organizations with malevolent purpose—to control, harm, or kill us. – New York Review of Books
