"Which side runs the Village?"

Emanations 8 editing progress (and delays)

There have been some delays in editing. Last week, I moved my classes on-line, and I have since learned that teaching on-line is time-consuming. Next week, I expect things to slow somewhat, and I'll get back to the project of reading submissions and communicating with contributors.

I've sent out a number of emails already, and several stories have gone out to illustrators, so things are moving.

"We'll send armed police, and we'll be sending them with flamethrowers."

Please click the following image for videos of Italian mayors seeking to protect their citizens:

I sympathize with the mayors' sense of responsibility. They are trying to save people.

And you can see why Italian literature, art, architecture and design are so wonderful. The ability to connect to feelings and to convictions and to circumstances... the appropriate application of irony in a difficult situation.

Though he was working with theological materials and themes, seeking to both restore and reinvent Classical consciousness, and developing the metaphysics and anthropology of a new political philosophy, when it came to the exploration of new possibilities for the representation of new subject matter, Milton turned to Italian poetry.

Coagulatio

From Compendium Alchymist, 1706

Atlas descends as we turn through the heavens

Never mind foolish superstitions and folkloric fears concerning the portents of menacing comets encroaching through the ether, the advent of comet Atlas promises to be quite a show. 

There is a Dutch website, in English, that provides ample tracking maps and data tables to facilitate a detailed over-view of the course of the visitor. The diversion should prove welcome as we sit out the latest terrestrial folly. Please click HERE to examine the information.

Meanwhile, below (click for a high-resolution image) is a cosmic map representing Atlas's grand and sweeping itinerary as it enters and departs our solar system.

"Fog Tropes" by Ingram Marshall

The Art of Description: Professor Hodges is reading My Servant the Wind by Michael Butterworth

The other day in his blog Gypsy Scholar, my international Authors colleague Horace Jeffery Hodges posted a short but nevertheless engaging description of Michael Butterworth's hybrid memoir-novel My Servant the Wind. In my response to Professor Hodges' note, I remarked, "It is an excellent work, and your selection from the text and your succinct and insightful description do the book good service."

Please click HERE to view Professor Hodges' description.

And click HERE to visit the Amazon description of My Servant the Wind.

Some Levity

Emanations 8 update: the editorial team is reading submissions and organizing the manuscript

Pushing the Data General Eclipse M/600 to the limit.

Professor Hodges is Reading Emanations: Chorus Pleiades

 Please click HERE.

The Survival of Obsolescent Intermutual Obligations

HMS ships Neptune, King George V, Hercules, Colossus, Marlborough and Iron Duke

Such names evoke all the ignominy that we properly associate with imperialism, militarism, and the hegemony of state-defined identities. It might be observed, however, that we rather too automatically draw this association, and in this rapid censure we could overlook the deeper truths of our universe and our place in it. As mythical expressions of human aspirations placed in historical contexts that together express the meaning of the human condition, such names configure appropriately to the world in which we used to live; and, one wonders, the world in which we yet live; or--should we abandon an appreciation for the deeper emotional qualities of our mythologies--a world we might stumble into again?

"0.3-50 r/hr" Hmmm...

Katrina Van Tassel

Among the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each week, to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe and melting and rosy cheeked as one of her father’s peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time; and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.

 --Washington Irving, "The Legend of Sleepy  Hollow"

Bestiary of Philosophical Conceptions: #473 Cognitive Appearance (phantasia kataleptike)

Entry of the Affirmations

Managed Middlebrow Mimesis

Successful "art packaging" can exercise the dynamics of peer-defined normative mimetic reinforcements. The peer-normative symbols are focused though an archetype-model (an author in this case) and the cultural artifacts (books) created by that model, which are packaged, transmitted, and regulated through the media promotional apparatus. The symbol of the media promotional apparatus (Steve Allen in this case) patterns the archetypal behaviors of involvement, veneration and deference that consumers are encouraged to imitate.

Working it Out...

I'm In Love With The Ooo-Ooo Man

Homo lingulacus (what hath thou wrought?)