A Review of Civilization in Little Songs: You, friend, ascend from many victories. All who read these words shall know we won, that we through three millennia have won upon the bloody fields of contest; that through rolls of papyrus, through vellum folios, through books stitched in hard-covered paper we won the sharp battle of…
The dancing step, the telling gesture, memory in movement; we can imagine the joy, the ritual, the sacrifice to God in our days cave-safe, firelit some 40,000 years before this day, creatures as now we are yet without advantage, without these past millennia of humane tradition, the gift of thought, the accumulation of wisdom that…
Reality is a mundane enchantment, a make-believe typical to creatures of our type, to sensate creatures who cannot see over the horizon, who cannot hear through walls, who feel but by direct touch, whose peculiar quality of taste can be known only to the self, alone. We are pretty creatures, flesh alike pearl, geometric in…
Words, in their way, might help us see the objects of creation, those creations which grow in beauty from the mind of man. Statues, pictures, et cetera, we understand by words, those vessels of ideas before, beyond the things themselves. Words contain the universe, a universe which knows itself by the mind of man. We…
Perhaps, while on tour through what has become Europe, or perhaps in close study of history, or maybe upon the occasion of visits to museums of art and of curiosity you have discovered the diligent, passionate work of the cudgel men, those who knock the heads off of Pagans, off fellow Christians, off the body…
Book III of “Eden to Ohio” Indians, Johnny Appleseed, U.S. * * * What was the appearance of this Ohio when first by Chapman seen. This “Ohio” translated from the Seneca, Ohi:yo [oh-hee-yoh], “continuously spilling creek” was a crisscross of rivers, a glaciated bottom-land, a land set-to-flame by the pre-Columbian residents (the Indians) who burned…
Book III of “Eden to Ohio” Colonization, Eden, Apples, Apple Cider * * * Aristotle composed many books, many lectures, most now lost. Among those lost, the dialogue “Alexander, ‘On Colonization’”. You might remember that an eager occupation of Aristotle’s Lyceum and of Plato’s Academy was the production of constitutions for those Greek colonies which…
Book III of “Eden to Ohio” Chapman, Appleseed, Swedenborg, Colonization * * * At memory’s farthest reach, my people touch Ohio, Appleseed country, before that, none now living can say. We have photographs, well, drawings, really, most of what was photograph has faded leaving the outlined highlight of handsome, strong willed citizens. One such picture,…
