Correspondence: Good-bye to Prince Philip

Otherwise, Hello to Same-old Same-old

Edited by Moristotle

[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]

“Authentic stoicism.” This article is great: “Prince Philip’s Death and the Last Embers of British Stoicism” [Anthony Lane, New Yorker, April 9] Excerpt:

The Joy in the Journey: Ode to Beethoven

By Geoffrey Dean

December 17, 2020, marks the 250th birth anniversary of the composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827). Among the most-cherished experiences of my musical career are the opportunities I have had to perform Beethoven’s complete string quartets and cello sonatas, and revisiting his compositions always yields new insights that often extend far beyond the music itself.

Movie Review: Lateness in Art and Life

A late review of Late Quartet (2012)

By Jonathan Price

This film foregrounds music in ways that are rarely done in American cinema, though it uses the focus to trace the elaboration of a 4-way intimacy. It’s a quartet, not a tercet, so it’s not the traditional romantic triangle, but there are three men in various involvements with a single woman, all of them playing classical music together for 25 years as a group designated “The Fugue.” This one woman is in various stages and types of love with the three men; however, we don’t see a great deal of bedroom antics onscreen – a brief fling by the married man with a much younger woman; a longer affair between the one offspring generated by the two married members of the quartet and its chief violinist. So the focus is primarily on relationships and music rather than bedroom acrobatics.

Boldt Words & Images: Transformation (video)

By Bob Boldt

[Editor’s Note: The text of the author’s talk delivered on April 9 to his local Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, in Jefferson, Missouri, was published on March 26.]

Boldt Words & Images: Transformation

By Bob Boldt

[From a talk to be delivered on April 9 (two weeks from today) to the author’s local Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, in Jefferson, Missouri.]

From Maxim Gorky’s anecdote about Lenin listening to Beethoven’s Appassionata:

Second Monday Music: Something special

U.S. cover

Beethoven's Archduke Trio

By Morris Dean

In Colm Tóibín's latest novel, Nora Webster, the title character pulls a new life together during the three years immediately following the death of her husband [Maurice] of twenty years. The perhaps most significant strand of her new life is her deeper discovery of music, beautifully told narratively as a series of accidents and benevolent interventions of friends and others who care about her, or take pity on a widow with children.

Ask Wednesday: Susan C. Price of Morris Dean on various very interesting things

By Susan C. Price

When you were hard up for an interview to publish, you might have interviewed yourself…but perhaps it’s time for one of us (namely me, cus i de bes riter) to inteview YOU.
    Hmm, what might you propose to interview me on or about...? And could you whip up a drawing or painting of me (from a photo) as my “mug shot”?


I get to decide and you can edit out or not answer as you like :-) and oh, what a Cheshire cat grin THAT is! Yes, I could do a line drawing, except that “whip up” means on command, fast, and looks like you…I can ensure they look like humans...but can’t guarantee a likeness. And I find “commission” work...real stressful...but you can give me a photo and I will get around tuit...Looking like I will be “free” before mid April...methinks.
    I understand about “commission”....Look at my Facebook profile photos to see whether there’s one there that “inspires”you?

I did download about 4-6 of your portraits from Facebook and they are on my table in my painting “studio.” But…there are many things on that table and much dust…We will see...if I get actually into that studio by April.
    Okay. I trust that you would ask excellent questions for my interview. Fire away any time.

Happy my birthday!

A BEATLES birthday song:

Thanks, Geoff, for the fabulous idea!

And thanks especially for your own blog post today!

Praise God!

In my kitchen this evening I found myself praising God. And doing it so spontaneously I was rather surprised and had to wonder at myself. The immediate occasion was listening to some exalted string music performed by Julian Lloyd Webber and broadcast by our local classical music station, WCPE 89.7 FM, in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Praise God, indeed! Why don't I listen to more such music? Friday I had been affected similarly by a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto ("The Emperor") by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, under the direction of Herbert von Karajan, broadcast by the University of Southern California's KUSC over the World Wide Web.

Today was special. In the morning, out in the yard raking leaves, I felt I was in church, exciting thoughts "about God" flowing through my mind, words flowing from my muse, but nothing manic feeling about it, so stately and calm and strong.

If Jesus had ever been going to come again,
I wish He had already done it in
    A year before the one
    My parents my life begun,
So I'd not now be in the slump I'm in,
To choose Christian or other cognomen—

For God exists, and Jesus His Son,
And Prophet Muhammad's not to shun.

But how thrilling, envigorating, and inspiring the whole week! Special on several fronts. Because of the blessed approach of spring, I walked four times up and down the hill from my office to the Carolina campus (a little over a mile one way). My body has been renewed and charged, especially sexually. (In springtime a young man's fancy—and an old man's too—turns not to baseball, but to sex! Throughout my life, whenever sexual energy has been flowing, so have my mental and spiritual energy, which is the secret, if anything is, why Youie was/is for me feminine.)

And I mustn't overlook another front: the provocative comments I've received from (and made back to) Brandon and Tom and Maliha, especially when I've put into the mix with them, quite by accident (or serendipity), my beginning to read a little book by Garry Wills: What Jesus Meant. [Wills is the author also of Papal Sin, Why I Am a Catholic, Saint Augustine, Saint Augustine's Childhood, Saint Augustine's Memory, Saint Augustine's Sin, Saint Augustine's Conversion, The Rosary, and What Paul Meant.]

Reading just Wills's foreword, "Christ Not a Christian," has shaken my world.

While you may know that I need to confess that I can be overly affected by the reading of a new book (as I suppose I was by my reading of Sam Harris's The End of Faith), I do have the sense already that I (and how many millions more of humans?) have been on the wrong track in trying to whittle Jesus Christ (or, as Wills says, "Jesus-Messiah") down as just a man like us. How many times have I written on this blog lately that I didn't believe that Jesus was the son of God in some way that you and I are not?

And I've been hopping about like St. Vitus seeming to agonize over the question of God's existence. Hey, God exists. I affirm it. Jesus was His son. (I'm even going along with God's being the Father rather than the Mother.) And I affirm that Muhammad was God's authentic Messenger, maybe even (as he claimed) the Final One.

So, now, the more interesting inquiry begins:

What, if anything, are we to do in the face of the existence of God, the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and God's message through Muhammad?