Brother Heinrick's Christmas

In Dulci Jubilo is attributed to a Dominican Abbot of the fourteenth century, Heinrick Suso. The fable suggests that one night the Abbot heard the angels singing it as he was stabling his donkey Sigismund.

In 1985 John Rutter used the fable to write a narration to accompany the music he wrote (auto play, sorry) based on Brother Heinrick's Christmas.  

In the 1990's Jurgen Gothe, then proprietor of the best radio show in the world: Disc Drive*, made it an Advent tradition in our house. I'm sure many others in Cascadia did the same. When Canada's Tories became the Reee-foorm party, they set their sights on the destruction of the CBC Stereo. As they succeeded in dumbing down everything, I found a copy of Three Fables by John Rutter to add to our collection to continue the tradition.

Some when in this process the idea came to make a mobile illustrative of the tale

Diana created the 'sillies' (as she calls them) over a couple of  years and finally I set up the mobile.

Enter the villain of the piece:

This is Jinx who, when we were all out shopping, somehow acquired one of the angels from the top of the mobile without bringing the mobile down! That is a standing leap of about 8 feet!

Maybe next year we will get Brother Heinrick back in place.
--ml
*CBC Stereo, Vancouver B.C. Canada

Misfiled Vagueries

About this time of year I embark on all the filing I might have done throughout the past year if I had half the brains god gave a crab apple. Among the bills and legal notices I found the following this year:

The tragedy of American medicine is that money buried the ugly fact before it arranged an opportunity to kill the beautiful hypothesis.

And:

As my twin lodestones, Twain and Marquis, might advise, it is a good to write one's own obituary to ensure the salient points are included. Leave the dust mote matter to the depiction of the cub reporter and junior reporter. the process will build their moral fibre by habituating them to their depravity their life offers.

--ml

Oh Yeah, I Remember Her ...

Investigator — not window dressing.

She was Veep for Hillary Clinton in the first term. What a neat trick that was. Made all those radical lefties sit down — in the back of the bus — and shut up while we all did the increment shuffle. Man! Good times. Good times. How those lobbyists strutted their money around.

Hell, NO! I do not want Senator Warren any other place than in the US Senate giving the corporacrats and their lackeys the scrutiny and regulation they too richly deserve. I want her example to draw a lot more liberals, progressives, lefties, folks — what-ever-you-call-’em — into congress by talking sense rather than talking points. That’s how we  make this county as great as we can be — not by putting on a flag pin and saluting a brass pot. Or solving our problems with a baby step forward and a giant step back.
--ml

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At Times The Rain Gods Drive Us Mad ...

Diana gifted me with The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.
I opened the first volume randomly and my eye lit upon:

"Jornada ... An act of a play; a book or canto of a poem. 2. In Mexico etc.: a day's journey; spec. one across a waterless dessert tract with no place to halt."

A more concisely perfect description of many second acts has seldom been penned.
--ml

Quandary #326

As beauty resides in the beholder's eye, so logic belongs to whoever defines its terms.
Your reasons are not mine.
Hence the difficulty of persuading by "reasoned argument."
Logic is a game of mathematics. Follow its rules and there is no escape. The conclusion arises from the premise.
Ventilate the game with reality -- which includes such messy things as passion -- and all changes. Surprising information appears and certainty is shaken beyond its foundation.
Not to worry -- it is all argy-bargy in the end.
--ml

So Far As

Stars drew our eyes until we saw patterns palpable to all.

Stars so far as we could see until we learned to see farther.

Universes! They, too, took form and pattern, so far as we could see.

Now the cosmos awaits our puny wit to find plurality so far as we can see.

So near can we see, we split neutron from proton with a mighty flash and bang

To announce, We Master!, with lots of people killed and stuff blown up,

Then we looked again and, so near as we can see, there's finer yet to see.

Some claim, so near can they see, the scale changes yet again. Many times.

Look near or far the pattern repeats: A fractal universe with no ends.

The creation ever iterates; we part of it and it all of us.

The old man hums a tune into his brass spittoon

Cocks an eye at the old moon and allows a point or two for the metaphor.

But shakes his head at my hopes of passing. Too, too many missed chances,

too few noble deeds, so little simple honesty, so near and far as he has seen.

--ml

Last Night I Committed Poetry – I Think.

Like the vivid hue

Of a young man's blue shirt,

Another's death engulfs me.

And, as promised, diminishes me.

Yet, after ebb,

I return to myself

a little closer

--ml

"Tis the Season

--ml

"Talking about the Poor"

Erik Loomis  is right to question a speakers position: Pro? Con? In? Out? Pay Me? Bless me? or round about?

Brecht said: "First feed the face and then talk right and wrong!"

One's moral worth is best measured after dinner and the Doctor's bill is paid; Not as a ticket of admission to the hall.
--ml

Winter Solstice 2013

 

Mobile: Brother Heinrich

By DJS & ml  

The English composer John Rutter delighted to tell the legend of Heinrich Susso, a 14th-century Dominican Abbot, who is credited with notating In Dulce Jubilo. 

One night, as Heinrich finished trampling the monastery's grapes with the help of Sigismund, the donkey, on the way to Sigismund's stable, they saw angels dancing in the sky and heard their song. Heinrich attempted to notate the song for the choir to sing at Christmas. Sigismund helped him remember the tune at a crucial point in the bridge.

We first heard this on Jurgen Goth's Disc Drive in the '80's on CBC Stereo.  Seven or eight years ago DJS knit Brother Heinrich as one of her Sillies. Now the cast is complete, ml built a mobile to display them all.  Melissa hung the mobile.
--ml