AnimaMundi

Library of Alexandria

Some years before I had even heard of the Library of Alexandria, I had a big dream about its contents and its wealth as "the place of the cure of the soul". The books and manuscipts were displayed before me in a special light. It was a humbling dream. It only was years later through reading the works of Carl Jung and E.M. Forster that I learned of the biblioteke, which term actually refers to the Collection of Books rather than the building itself, and its importance in the history of western civilization. In light of the dream, the print copy book versus the ebook is at an interesting nexus right about now.

Ancient Rites and Wine

Grist for a future post and nothing to do with the Sarah Plain turkey video:

"At Rome it appears certain that the deity was conceived to be "increased" or "strengthened" (mactus) by the wine or other offering. There was a tradition that originally the offering was not the animal but with grain with salt and wine or milk. Animal sacrifices there almost certainly were on occasion, and in the later period they are familiar; the god received not only the fat (omentum) but also the parts concerned in consciousness---heart, lungs, liverand gall---perhaps in connection with extispicium (prophecy by entrail examination). Grain with salt and wine were before the slaughter sprinkled over the victim, and there was a preliminary offering of incense (i.e. the exudations, sap of trees) and wine. Incense had apparently replaced native grain or aromatic leaves, as e.g. of the laurel with their gum and and oil, pinguis verbena, of which, as we have seen, the "heads of the gods" consisted. "Incense and wine" appear to have been the customary offering in a supplicatio, and we hear that they were applied by the state to private citizens for that purpose at the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. They were also what the dead received, not in vapour as to the gods but directly, as the grease and wine to the bones and the grease to the stones in Homer. Roman deities also received unguent directly. Thus the Arval Brothers "anointed the goddesses"; Lar was anointed; Terminus (the boundary stone) was anointed; upon Pales milk was poured etc."

Richard Onians "Origins of European Thought"

P.S. Onians is best read on the toilet. Keep it in or near the bathroom.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929

Dick Cavett once told a story of Groucho Marx and the crash of 1929. Reportedly Groucho lost about $250,000 buckeroos in the crash. At one point in the hapless trading, he got up and sang "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" to total silence on the floor.

Chicago Summer 1968

Mark at Toulouse Street recalls some of what went down in the 60's and the aftermath. With the ubiquitous Internets, the whole world is watching takes on a different cast. Pun intended. I do like his Dictator of the Stonertariat, though. It might not have been a bad idea afterall.

Who Are Those People?

Johnny Morris was the house pianist at Jimmy Ryan's on 52nd St in NYC for seven years, appearing with trumpeter Roy Eldridge and later with Spanky Davis. In the latest newsletter from A Place For Jazz, Johnny Morris tells this anecdote. The waiters at Jimmy Ryan's were a surly bunch. No food minimum, only snacks. There was a drink minimum, but only dinky sized bottles of beer. The waiters would refill and wait for people to order more. One waiter in particular really just wanted to make money and didn't care about what was going on in the place. One night some people came by to say hello to Roy Eldridge and gathered up a bunch of the tiny cocktail tables in a corner so they could all sit together. This waiter was very pissed off that these tables were taken from his station. The people who came buy to see Roy Eldridge were: Tommy Flanagan pianist, Bobby Durham dummer, Keter Betts bass,(i.e. Ella Fitzgerald's rhythm section), Connie Kay from MJQ, Benny Carter and Oscar Peterson. It was like a surrealist dream, all these jazz greats in a corner. The clueless waiter asks me "Who are those people with Roy and who do they think they are?" So I said to the waiter, "Please don't say anything. Those are some very famous people. I really feel I'm in a dream, here."

December 1947

The following article appeared in Time Magazine on December 15, 1947, about 8 months after I was born.

"By last week, this peculiar state of mind had not only sucked thousands of American oil wells dry, stripped the rubber groves of Malaya, produced the world's most inhuman industry and its most recalcitrant labor union, but had filled U.S. streets with so many automobiles that it was almost impossible to drive one. In some big cities, vast traffic jams never really got untangled from dawn to midnight; the bray of horns, the stink of exhaust fumes, and the crunch of crumpling metal eddied up from them as insistently as the vaporous roar of Niagara."

Does anyone really need a Hummer?

Ancient Americas

P.J. O'Rourke on Ancient Americans:

"The ancient Americans weren't regular folks. They lived strange, spectacular lives on strange, spectacular continents untrod by man and more remote for them than Mars--or the world of museum curation--is for us. The ancient Americans were tough as hell. They did their share of nasty stuff. But even the Aztec don't deserve to be patronized, demeaned, and insulted by what is--or is supposed to be, or once was--one of the white man's great institutions of learning."

"There is nothing inside the man but jelly!"

A few days ago Garrison Keillor's Almanac mentioned the anniversary in June 1932 of an act of that remarkable humanitarian President Herbert Heever... I mean Hoover. That act was the calling out of the police and Armed Forces on the "Bonus Army".  I particularly like General Douglas MacArthur's reaction. I had forgotten about this despicable act against people who had fought in WWI. This happened in Washington, D.C. during the Depression before TV and the Internets. But there were radio and photographers. They should have shipped his ass to Hooverville.

Florent NYC

Another piece of authentic NYC is going, going...

DARINKA CHASE (beehive-coiffed hostess who has worked at the restaurant for more than two decades): In the front hallway there was a cigarette machine and a pay phone. That was the time. There was no Internet. There was a cigarette machine and a pay phone, O.K.?

MS. CHASE: I had lived in France for a year or so in the late ’90s, and when I came back to the restaurant, that’s when I started seeing what I called the New People. And those were people in their 20s, so they were not born or not doing much when Florent had opened. And they were never part of an economy that wasn’t booming and about money and about “I want what I want now.”

“What do you mean the grilled cheese isn’t on the menu right now, I want a grilled cheese! Can I go talk to the chef?” You know, that kind of attitude.

It changed after “Sex and the City.” I mean, people who were kind of clueless would come to the neighborhood in their stilettos and trip around.

The Royal Library of Alexandria

My "watch the dance" dream brought to mind another. Many moons ago or about 40 plus years ago, long before I had ever learned of the Library of Alexandria, I had an intriguing dream about the library. I don't have many dreams like this that I can re-member. How many have I had that I don't recall? The dream was mysteriously haunting and its images have faded over the years, much like the scrolls and lecture halls under the waters of the Mediterranean. I do remember a woman guide who showed me the brilliantly colorful display of the wisdom of the ancients emanating in waves from different levels/rooms of the library. The dream of this grand repository of muse inspired knowledge is branded on my memory. Years later, I learned about the existence of the library through reading Carl Jung and from E.M. Forster's book Alexandria: A History and Guide. In the introduction, Lawrence Durell calls this book a small work of art containing some Forster's best prose. For four centuries Alexandria was the center of learning in the Western world. On October 16, 2002, the New Library of Alexandria was opened. Later in the 13th century, Palermo became another great focus of intercultural exchange. The city and Frederick II, Stupor Mundi , were not so distant in time and space from the nexus of Alexandria. However, Frederick's legacy is unjustly tempered by his lack of allegiance to the Pope and interest in Islam. Anti-Papism and pro-Islam was never good for publicity.