Colloquies: A Review of Civilization in Little Songs Nations come and nations go, kingdoms are mostly gone, China intends empire, not certain its people do, though they are hungry for wealth, and are willing to consume the world’s resources, including yours. Our nation will be gone, sooner or later; all nations fade away in…
Classical Poets and Expansive Poetry When you come to be my age (God willing, you do) patterns reveal themselves, show themselves more real than real, mutable things. But then, alike you, I have always seen patterns, and this the cause, I suppose, that we are classical poets. Something about the pattern patterning, God’s universe, the…
Summerhouse is the second site of the first chapter of The Classive Tradition, a personal consideration of civilization as revealed in the monuments and memorials, objects and sites of Washington, The District of Columbia. The book is two-thirds complete, and ready for sharing. Hope you enjoy this quaint preview. * * * Trees, bushes, flowers,…
Civic Art: The Progressive or the Classive Remarks Delivered at the Cosmos, Club, Washington, D.C., 14 September, 2021: Progressive, or Classive Civic Art? When asked to join this panel, I wondered: “What might I, an old craftsman, contribute to a discussion of architecture and urbanism. Yes, I’ve tinkered with civic planning, designed some little…
The National Gallery of Art Petting Zoo Here we are on the Acropolis, in the picture gallery, the Pinakotheke, looking from the Propylaea to John Russell Pope’s National Gallery of Art. What a view, 5,125 miles and farther in time, 2,500 years, the distance between Phidias, Pericles, Plato, and you. What a view. Over…
Perhaps your school-desk was alike my school-desk covered edge-to-edge in sketches. The desk surface, as you know, is an almost perfect blank canvas, a clean slate, a tabula rasa*, of sorts, where knowledge acquired might be reflected eye to mind to hand, to nun who might correct wayward drawing knuckles with a smart, wood-ruler, snap,…
From, “The Classive Tradition” (one among several books now being composed), an essay concerning the Thaddeus Kosciuszko Statue, slavery, and Liberty in its three, distinct forms, National, Political, Personal. Pleased we all are at liberty to speak and to act within the realm of reason. Was not always so, you know. The Spartans owned the…
Self-Singing Rainbow People Recently, following nearly a year’s absence from television, I had the opportunity to witness one of those common flatteries, television commercials, vehicles to sell some frivolity by appealing to typical vanities, pride, lust, sloth, et cetera. You have seen them, I am sure, rainbow people, proud, self-selfing, posing by not posing, assuming…
