Limestone Roof

D202/W2326

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(1) Recording 15 by Shannon Lay

This is a beautiful song and YES I was walking around blustery and soggy London listening to this like I was in an old video from the 80s.

The thought that you’re out there somewhere
Comforts and confuses my mind
I know we both got things to do here
I just want to dream with you

There’s a sign in my neighborhood coffee shop that says “better days ahead” and the veil is definitely lifting. I saw a red fox last week near the rails on the District line and now there’s rail travel in my future.

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There’s a huge difference between Hoyt and Noonan. The latter sounded the trumpet in 2005 but she was putting her faith in the very “elites” tearing the nation (and world) apart. She joins a group, which includes the likes of Jonah Goldberg and David French, who are blindly obedient to our betters because of sinecures, ego, superiority complex, and/or naivete?

The photo is from a lockdown protest today in London. I think the image of Nipper (from RCA) with “His Master’s Voice” complements the post from Sarah Hoyt almost perfectly.

(1) INSTRUMENTS by Sarah Hoyt:

“He was betrayed by our deeply infiltrated governmental apparatus, reviled by all our organs of communication, survived two coup attempts, and over the last year has presided over a nation that the media and the left (but I repeat myself) have driven insane, deliberately and with malice aforethought. They’ve done this for the sake of no greater good than taking control of us, and our wealth, and hiding their own deep evil and shame. He’s survived at least two coup attempts engineered by his own government, and the deployment of Antifa, Obama’s own brown shirts, in an attempt to destroy everything he accomplished.”

(2) A Separate Peace by Peggy Noonan:

“Our elites, our educated and successful professionals, are the ones who are supposed to dig us out and lead us. I refer specifically to the elites of journalism and politics, the elites of the Hill and at Foggy Bottom and the agencies, the elites of our state capitals, the rich and accomplished and successful of Washington, and elsewhere. I have a nagging sense, and think I have accurately observed, that many of these people have made a separate peace. That they’re living their lives and taking their pleasures and pursuing their agendas; that they’re going forward each day with the knowledge, which they hold more securely and with greater reason than nonelites, that the wheels are off the trolley and the trolley’s off the tracks, and with a conviction, a certainty, that there is nothing they can do about it.”

(3) Donald Trump is a symptom of a new kind of class warfare raging at home and abroad by Glenn Reynolds:

“Around the world in the postwar era, power was taken up by unelected professional and managerial elites. To understand what’s going on with President Donald Trump and his opposition, and in other countries as diverse as France, Hungary, Italy and Brazil, it’s important to realize that the post-World War II institutional arrangements of the Western democracies are being renegotiated, and that those democracies’ professional and managerial elites don’t like that very much, because they have done very well under those arrangements. And, like all elites who are doing very well, they don’t want that to change.”

(4) Archbishop Viganò sees evidence ‘that the end times are now approaching before our eyes’ by Maike Hickson:

“Thus he can now say: ‘We now find ourselves in this doctrinal, moral, liturgical, and disciplinary cone of shadow.’ But, we are not yet at the end stage of this disastrous development. ‘It is not yet the total eclipse that we will see at the end of time, under the reign of the Antichrist,” the prelate adds. “But it is a partial eclipse, which lets us see the luminous crown of the sun encircling the black disk of the moon.'”

(5) Russell Kirk’s Conception of Decadence: Kirk Thought the Road to Avernus Captured America’s Downward Descent by Gleaves Whitney:

“Yet Kirk was not without hope. He used to quote a line from St. Gregory the Great, who lived in the wake of the collapse of the Western Empire. Rome lay about him in ruin. A dark age had descended upon the West. But Gregory, in one of his more famous sermons, said: See how the world now withers in itself; yet still flowers in our heart.”

“Oh, and while the king was looking down
The jester stole his thorny crown
The courtroom was adjourned
No verdict was returned
And while Lenin read a book on Marx
A quartet practiced in the park
And we sang dirges in the dark
The day the music died”

*Quote is from American Pie, Pt. 1 by Don McLean

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(1) There’s a Chinese restaurant in Hammersmith that looks like it belongs in Twilight Town or San Fransokyo.

(2) History:

(3) Don’t Defend Columbus—Celebrate Him (City Journal)

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Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. – Genesis 11:3

(1) How Bricks Are Made (YouTube)

(2) Brick from Meaux Abbey (British Museum)

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My post on Walt Disney (August 2nd) was interrupted by some pretty significant changes in my personal life but there’s still a crude draft taking shape in my notes.

I’m currently reading Brick: A Social History by Carolyne Haynes. I found this title at the London Transport Museum and it’s a page-turner! Did you know there’s a museum dedicated to the humble brick? The Brickworks Museum at Bursledon is close to Southampton and on my can’t miss list.

I also want to write a post about 2020. I’m certain everyone has a story of hardship to share. My story isn’t necessarily unique, but a departure from my usual list of eclectic interests will be cathartic.

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(1) A quote from Brick A Social History by Carolyne Haynes:

“Bricks do not stand alone, they work best with a sticky material to bind them together. So, wound into this story of bricks is an exploration of the use of lime. If bricks are mostly ignored, lime is rarely mentioned at all. Even the literature about it is thin on the ground, and yet arguably it is right up there as one of the most important chemicals in our history. Still widely used today, lime was the material that allowed us to build our houses, fortifications, churches and other structures for hundreds of years. Without lime it would have been very much harder to make brick walls strong. There are alternatives. We could have stuck them together using clay, but lime is long lasting, versatile, relatively easy to use and surprisingly strong. It’s an unsung hero that played a huge part in our history and I think it is time that we took a bit more notice of it.”

“The stones for these early churches were rarely freshly quarried out. With Roman ruins near to many monastic settlements there was generally a rich source of materials to plunder. Scavenging building materials from these ruined settlements was easy. The builders were able to bring in dressed stone, window and door surrounds that were already carved and ready to be fitted into the new buildings.”

“The first monastic settlement there had been built using timber, but as the abbey grew in importance so did the buildings. In the tenth century, the church [St Albans Abbey] was reconstructed using stone and bricks. With a dearth of available new stone in the area, the Roman ruins of Verulamium became the adopted ‘quarry’. Probably in part because of the lack of stone, the Romans here had used bricks extensively and as these were still in good condition they were used alongside the stone.”

(2) Poems on the Underground: Note by Leanne O’Sullivan

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Test

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Do you remember being younger and hearing old geezers tell you things like ‘that’s a slippery slope?’ What happens if we’ve slipped and are now in the midst of a mudslide? What does this have to do with Walt? Quite a bit actually and this post involves a cast of heroes like Mary Blair and Ray Bradbury.

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Obedience Leads to Heaven
God has promised to lead us safely heavenward in spite of all things being against us. But the infirmities which beset us, these He still ordains should try us and humble us and should bring us day by day to the foot of His Cross for pardon. Let us simply obey God’s will whatever may befall us. He can turn all things to our eternal good. He can bless and sanctify even our infirmities.

Prayer
Dear Jesus, ever assist me, by Your grace, to accept whatever hardships come my way. For they will lead me to you.

Lead, Kindly Light: Minute Meditations for Every Day Taken from the Works of Cardinal Newman

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A quote from Out Of A Fair, A City by Ada Louise Huxtable:

“It is a formidable tradition, for the achievements of the nineteenth-century International Expositions were unique. In art, architecture, industry, and culture, they were the common exchange around of all that was interesting and new. Intensely competitive, each successive exhibition attempted to cap its predecessors in the daring of its progressive constructions and the magnificence of its artistic displays. As industry leaped forward, its advances were proudly advertised, and the world came to see and learn. If industry frequently outran art, the Fairs still were the showcase of all the important technical and aesthetic experiments of the age. Today, the mementos of their prestige are collectors’ curios, but the most important souvenir of the World’s Fair was ideas.”

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“The danger of these expeditions was no doubt very great, but the spoils were in proportion, and there was not a boy or man of the seafaring population of Devon who would not gladly have gone with the adventorous captain.” — Under Drake’s Flag by G.A. Henty

(1) Scan from ‘American Historical Playing Cards’ with portraits from Douglas Gorsline.

(2) A lost Maxis “Sim” game has been discovered by an Ars reader, uploaded for all (Ars Technica)

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“The real artist’s work is a surprise to himself. The big painter is the one who has something to say. He thus does not paint men, landscape, or furniture, but an idea.” — Robert Henri

A couple of YouTube videos with a common thread (it’s a riddle).

(1) La Petite Ceinture: What Happened to Paris’s Lost Railway? (The Tim Traveller)

(2) Yesterworld: The Troubled History of Epcot’s Abandoned World Showcase – Part 1 (Yesterworld Entertainment)

(3) The CED: RCA Selectavision Videodisc (Technology Connections)

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(1) France to pay 50 euros per person for bike repairs to boost cycling post-lockdown (Reuters)

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(1) Boston Symphony Orchestra Launches HEROIC PERFORMANCES to Honor Front-Line Workers

May 3 @ 3:00 PM EST: Seiji Ozawa, in his final Symphony Hall concert as BSO Music Director (April 20, 2002), leading Mahler’s Symphony No. 9.

>>> BSO at Home

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