An Unknown Beauty

Question Marked

Google Images

Not just beautiful, she's feudable!

And so as to avoid a feud, I'll not post her image here . . .

Roaming Around and About

Road's End

Ozark Wilderness

Google Images

All roads lead to roam . . .

A Blessing in Disguise

Eucharist?

Google Images

Eucharist Bound?

All's Christ for the mill . . .

. . . or so they say.

A Rolling Stone, etc.

Moose

Wikipedia

A rolling stone gathers no moose!

I've tried it. It doesn't work. It does tend to angrify their blood, though, and I take refuge with the great Satchel Paige on this point.

Swell!

Swell

Google Images

From a morbid swelling of the ocean in around 1200 . . .

. . . to an expression of satisfaction around 1930:

All's swell that ends swell.

Swell!

Spoonerists on Aminals

Leopard
Google Images

In the great race of life,

a leopard cannot change sit stops . . . .

Prodigal Pounding of Cubit Cure: Place Head in Bowl

The Pounding Cure

Prodigal

Google Humor

An ouch of prevention is worth the pounding cure!

Adversity makes strange . . .

League of Nations
Google Images

Adversity makes strange bad fellows.

This Proverb is Only Proverbially True?

Generalizations

Only Generally True?

Is the following self-reflexive assertion true:

This proverb is only proverbially true.

And what makes it a proverb, anyway?

Nonce upon a time . . .

Nonce
Google Images

Dead men tell no tales, so no more storytelling, or else . . .

Joyful Treat

For all the help I'd received this past semester, I treated the office staff to something special yesterday:

The box held mysteries to be revealed:

Six mysteries, in fact! Obtaining the cakes was well worth the effort, for everyone looked very happy, and they later sent me an email:

Dear Jeffery Hodges +_+

Hello. This is GLEO.

We wanna say Thank you very much for your beautiful cake. We are so touched. Happy Summer!

See you soon^^

Best,

GLEO

I don't know what +_+ and ^^ mean, but I assume they don't mean "drunk" and "even drunker"! Whatever these hieroglyphic marks might depict, I'm looking forward to one relaxing month . . .

Coming as a Vision of Light

Angel or Devil

Google Images

Better the Devil you know than the Angel you don't know him from Adam.

A Doggy-Dog World

Vampire Dog?

Google Images

So, you wanna get a dog, and why not:

A dog is a man's best friend forever!

Until 15 years pass, and old age takes your BFF away forever . . .

Happy Ending?

"Bad Dog!"

Google Images

A good beginning makes a good ending too seldom to adopt as a proverb!

Don't let hitters walk all over you!

Wound Up

Injury Down

Google Images

In all things, recall your hitters, and:

"Count your blessures" (commands one proverb):

Name them one by one . . .

Best College English Advertisement Spam Ever!

Sliced Spam

Wikipedia

Here's the sort of ad-spam I like to receive:

Brandy Lehmann has left a new comment on your post "Still spinning my wheels...":

If you are in college, you need to know how to write an introduction for a research essay cause if you fail first sentences no one gonna cares about your essay.

Posted by Brandy Lehmann to Gypsy Scholar at 7:25 PM

More of this, please . . .

Monkey Shines

Mr. Macaque
Hat Tip to TBH

LA Times

Maura Dolan, reporting for the LA Times (July 12, 2017), tells us: "'He is a monkey': Federal appeals court appears doubtful that a monkey who took a selfie can sue." Is this a serious case? Or a waste of time? And money? And humor? (Or Photoshopped?) At any rate, "Monkey see, monkey sue?" is a question raised recently in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals:

A federal appeals court appeared highly skeptical Wednesday that a monkey had standing to sue for copyright protection.

During a hearing, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals considered a lawsuit by an Indonesian macaque named Naruto. The animal allegedly grabbed a photographer's camera in 2011 and snapped a self-portrait.

Photographer David Slater included the photo in a book. An animal rights group sued on behalf of Naruto, contending the photographer infringed on the monkey's rights.

If the monkey has rights, then the creature can also be held accountable for its actions. Can't it be charged with theft and unauthorized use of someone else's property?

Rolling Stone Proverb

Google Images

A rolling stone gathers no mass.

Indeed, such a stone would tend to lose mass while rolling, but no stone rolls forever, so mass remains in its future.

Ronald Granieri
Executive Director
FPRI
Center for the Study
of
America and the West

For the FPRI, in The American Review of Books, Blogs, and Bull, Ronald J. Granieri, writing "Whose West is Best?" (July 10, 2017) in response to President Trump's pro-Western speech in Poland, offers some criticism of Western nationalism and some praise for the EU. This excerpt will give you a sense of his argument:

The intensity of the disagreement on the Trump speech obscures a larger point that bears repeating. The difference here is not about the value of the West per se, but rather about which West is best - the West built on a specific Euro-centric Christian vision, which seeks to build walls around itself to preserve its purity, or one based on the Enlightenment principles of individual freedom, secularism, equality before the law and democracy, which is ready to learn from the world and grow stronger with the new knowledge. One could of course embrace both, recognizing the universal appeal of ideas that were originally nurtured in the West, and celebrating the culture that produced them within the eternal triangle of Jerusalem (representing monotheism and the ancient biblical heritage), Athens (representing Greek philosophy and the humanism at the root of Western thought), and Rome (representing the Christian and European political/cultural synthesis). For all the angry rhetorical jabs on both sides, this debate is taking place on terms that are themselves the product of Western civilization - the tension between local identity and intellectual freedom, between the universal and the particular. The West is not on one side or the other in this debate, it is the very arena within which the debate occurs.

I'm also skeptical of European ethnic nationalism. While this nationalism may be a source of strength at our current juncture, Europe's nationalisms will one day turn on each other over historical claims to territory that has belonged to different 'nations' at different times. Remember the Balkans in the early 1990s? That's what it will be like . . .

Vindication on Catcher in the Rye!

A. Scott Berg

Wikipedia

In the NYT weekend edition for July 8-9 (2017), A. Scott Berg gives his answers in "By the Book," and I feel vindicated, for when he was asked this question:

Disappointing, overrated, just not good: What book did you feel you were supposed to like, and didn't? Do you remember the last book you put down without finishing?

He answered:

"The Catcher in the Rye." I don't want to sound like a "phony," but I didn't like it when I was 16; and I didn't like it when I picked it up again 50 years later . . . and couldn't finish it.

As readers of my blog know, I also dislike the book, so much so that I wrote this poem when Salinger died:

Requiem for J. D. S.

It came to me the other day,
Just when you died -- I had to say --
"Hmm, that's a shame. Not young, but full
Of unkept promise plumbable."

With that, a shrug, and tearless eyes,
I met your overdue demise;
My wife's response was just, you know,
"I thought he died a while ago."

Your life, a shabby subterfuge,
Your death, unreal, not dark or huge,
No shock of it to register --
Except but where it did occur.

You'll also find this poem in my recent book of poems, Radiant Snow. And yes, I'm borrowing from Updike.

Carter Kaplan on Truth and Free Speech

Attentive Audience

In a talk at the WAH Center on John Milton, Carter Kaplan discusses such things as truth, free speech, freedom of the press, rationality, and the like, then segues into a paragraph on the conflict between, ultimately, modernity and postmodernity:

Countering these [modern] views are the assertions of the German idealists, who, for various historical and political reasons, have managed to transplant their influence to Britain and North America. In brief, we can collectively call this influence "postmodernism", but more specifically we can construe this phenomenon along the lines of Hobbes, Berkeley, Rousseau, and the German idealists; and I suggest two data points neatly describe the phenomenon: First, Nietzsche advances a perspective theory of truth: Truth, like morality, is a relative affair: there are no facts, only interpretations. Nietzsche says, "Language falsifies reality, and therefore we will not be rid of God [that is, 'truth'] until we are rid of grammar." Second, and following along these lines, is the Marxist view. Far from being a philosophy of revolution and social justice, I take Marxism to be an ideology of power. Thus the Marxists say "truth" is a "bourgeois" value, and the "Revolution" must overcome the truth and the idea that stands behind it. Although I view the postmodern position as little more than the propaganda of the authoritarian corporate-statists, the idea is strong currency among intellectuals who see themselves ushering in a world government. I should remark that criticizing this project can be unpopular.

I'm finally beginning to understand what's meant by "cultural Marxism" - it's Marx minus his rational critique of capitalism (e.g., the quantified, if illusory, labor theory of value) - and as the Left with its 'leftover' Marxism distances itself from truth and reason, it naturally gravitates toward violence to settle issues, whether external or internal.

Hence leftist groups like Antifa . . .

Beauty

Beautiful Parrot Skeleton?

Google Images

Beauty is only bone shallow.

Puzzling Ream of Paper Proverb

Reams

(And No Horsing Around)

Wikipedia

Good advice:

Don't change horses in midst ream!

So, if you're counting out 250 sheets of paper, make certain not to get a notion to jump off one horse and hop onto another. It's bad luck or something.

Blue Enchantment . . .

Blue are the Mounts

Blue lends enchantment to the hills that are far away.

(That sounds almost proverbial!)

Terrance Talk Touts Text

Terrance Lindall

July 4, 2017

The date was actually July 2 in New York, but July 3 had already arrived here in Seoul, and my own private world of the mind is a day further ahead, hence July 4!

I don't know precisely what Terrance said, but I doubt it was denunciation, e.g., "This book is a sham, not even an ounce of poetry in it!" Rather, he will have said something more positive, e.g., "This book is not a sham, for it has up to an ounce of poetry in it!"

Just kidding. Here's the video.

And here is the transcript:

"Our dear friend Professor Horace Jeffery Hodges in South Korea wrote a great new book of poetry, which we  highly recommend that you buy and read. You can do this through International Authors, as with Emanations, published by Carter Kaplan."

You can reach the book through Amazon.

Stormy Weather

A Tawny Port

Aged Ten Years

Wikipedia

Any port in a storm, preferably a dry one, though a semi-dry is acceptable, whereas the typically sweet port is merely tolerable to my tastes, but any of them, in a storm, will serve to fortify my spirit.

Charity, a Proverb Reconsidered

Best Facebook Timeline Covers

Charity covers a multitude at home.

Charity, a Proverb

Congress

Google Images

Charity begins a multitude of sins . . . or something like that.

Always Be Extra Concise

Wit

Brevity, which means conciseness, is said to be the very soul of good wit.

Apprncs cn b dcptv.

Drn Gry

Nenya Undomiel

Apprncs cn b dcptv.

Apprncs cn b dcptv.