Owner: Mental multivitamin URL:http://mentalmultivitamin.blogspot.com Join Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2006 17:14:56 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Mental multivitamin was established in October 2003 for readers, thinkers, and autodidacts. Regular features include "On the nightstand" and "The recommended daily allowance." Site statistics:Click here
Fine Art Friday 2007-03-02 15:31:00 Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972)"Three Worlds," 1955From The Mathematical Art of M.C. Escher:Maurits Cornelis Escher, who was born in Leeuwarden, Holland in 1898, created unique and fascinating works of art that explore and exhibit a wide range of mathematical ideas.While he was still in school his family planned for him to follow his father's career of architecture, but poor grades and an aptitude for drawing and design eventually led him to a career in the graphic arts. His work went almost unnoticed until the 1950’s, but by 1956 he had given his first important exhibition, was written up in Time magazine, and acquired a world-wide reputation. Among his greatest admirers were mathematicians, who recognized in his work an extraordinary visualization of mathematical principles. This was the more remarkable in that Escher had no formal mathematics training beyond secondary school.As his work developed, he drew great inspiration from the mathematical ideas he read about, often work Read more:Friday
, Fine Art
Playwright of the Globe 2007-03-02 15:17:00 From all around the globe—from Frankfurt to Tokyo, from Prague to Moscow—we have testimony to Shakespeare's power, his ability to move people of all nations, to inspire them, to shake them out of ingrained modes of thought and feeling, to give them the strength to question and challenge authority. Above all, we see how Shakespeare remains politically relevant to a wide variety of situations around the world; he seems to be taken most seriously by people who find themselves in the middle of a crisis and, in particular, who feel their liberties threatened. Such proof of Shakespeare's enduring relevance flies in the face of the claims made by those scholars who insist his universality is a sham, a kind of cultural myth. We must assume that only a set of theoretical presuppositions could be blinding them to such an obvious truth. (Evidently Shakespeare's art is a classic case of something that works well in practice, but not in theory—at least in literary theory.) These scholars t Read more:Playwright
, Globe
Old news 2007-03-01 16:20:00 Back in December, The Times Union ran a story on the erratic heartbeat of the literary canon. From "Siena opens new chapter in Great Books debate":The literary canon may not be dead across America's college campuses, but its heartbeat has grown weak and erratic. That's the diagnosis of the Siena Research Institute, which has been putting its finger on the pulse of the so-called Great Books debate since 1985.Siena's third and latest national survey shows a steady erosion when it comes to the standing of the classics, according to 4,125 freshmen and 215 faculty who filled out questionnaires.It uses as a baseline a list of 30 Great Books selected in 1984 by William Bennett, then chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities under President Ronald Reagan. Bennett created the list with input from his friends, including the conservative columnist George Will.Siena repeated its survey on the 30 classic titles in 1997 and 2006."In every case, the expectations by faculty what they bel
Party on, stuffed simians! 2007-03-03 15:44:00 The Third Annual Sock Monkey Madness Festival:Primates of the Caribbean! Read more:Party
Did you know daylight saving time will begin next ... 2007-03-05 01:19:00 Did you know daylight saving time will begin
next Sunday? It will end the first Sunday in November. Mark your calendars now. And read the rest of the story here.[US Representative Edward J.] Markey convinced Congress the change would save energy because Americans would not need as many lights in the evening. In 2005, he struck again, tucking a monthlong extension into a massive energy bill that took effect this year. In addition to moving the start of daylight saving time to the second Sunday in March, the law pushes the end back a week, to the first Sunday in November. That will make it safer for children to trick or treat, since it will be lighter on Halloween, Markey said.Related reading: Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time (Michael Downing).
The recommended daily allowance 2007-03-04 17:51:00 From Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences (Kitty Burns Florey):As I started to say a couple of digressions ago, although diagramming a sentence can sometimes expose its structural problems, it doesn't touch the deeper issues. A diagram can't ferret out a lie, correct a lapse in logic, or explain a foray into sheer lunacy. And, for all its tail-wagging cuteness, it can't expose the pitiful state of the speaker's education -- or the problems with an educational system that cuts funding instead of providing our schools with smaller classes, enough textbooks, and well-stocked libraries.If you enjoyed this, you'll like Barking Dog. A lot. Read more:allowance
It's Casimir Pulaski Day again. 2007-03-05 16:20:00 From the short bio at the Chicago Public Library's site:Casimir Pulaski belongs to that select group of heroes, including the Marquis de Lafayefte, Thomas Paine, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Pulaski's fellow countryman, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, who opposed tyranny not only in their homelands, but wherever they found it. We especially honor Pulaski because he paid the ultimate price, having sustained a mortal wound while fighting for American independence at the battle of Savannah in 1779. Today he remains a symbol of the ideal of valiant resistance to oppression everywhere in the world.According the Chicago Trib article (registration required), public schools in the City of Chicago and in many of the suburbs as well as city and county government offices will be closed.But, hey! The mail will be delivered.Celebrate the hero by visiting Fluky's, which -- last time I checked -- still celebrates Casimir Pulaski Day with a giveaway to any customer whose first, last or middle name ends in "ski." F
I don't like Mondays. 2007-03-07 04:28:00 Did you watch "House" tonight? I laughed aloud -- in what? recognition? delight at the familiar? amazement at music's ability to yank us back in time? -- when Hugh Laurie played the opening measures of this old song, and Dave Matthews as the savant repeated the passage.Clap-clap. Clap-clap.You know the story, right? The Boomtown Rats song "I Don't Like Mondays
" was inspired by a deadly school shooting twenty-seven years ago.Another three weeks without the curmudgeon, by the way. "House" returns on March 27.
Devotionals 2007-03-06 15:09:00 From the March 6 entry in A Book of Days for the Literary Year (edited by Neal T. Jones), an RDA way back on 1.07.2004 and a constant companion of mine since October 9, 1986:1806 Elizabeth Barret Browing is born at Coxhoe Hall, Durham. 1885 Ring (Ringgold Wilmer) Lardner, Sr. — "Jupiter on tiptoes" to Ernest Hemingway — is born in Niles, Mich. Known for his comic writing, the author of Gullible's Travels nonetheless will ask: "How can you write if you can't cry?" 1928 Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude) is born in Aracataca, Colombia. He will win the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. 1982 Ayn Rand, author of The Fountainhead, dies in New York City, aged 77.From the Week 9, Day 2 entry in The Intellectual Devotional: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Roam Confidently with the Cultured Class (David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim), an RDA on 10.15.2006:Gabriel García MárquezColombian author Gabriel García Márquez, more than probably any other fi
"If they don’t believe in God, what exactly are they afraid of?" 2007-03-07 18:17:00 From "Darwin's God" (The New York Times Magazine, March 4, 2007):Lost in the hullabaloo over the neo-atheists is a quieter and potentially more illuminating debate. It is taking place not between science and religion but within science itself, specifically among the scientists studying the evolution of religion. These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history. What they disagree about is why a tendency to believe
evolved, whether it was because belief itself was adaptive or because it was just an evolutionary byproduct, a mere consequence of some other adaptation in the evolution of the human brain. Read more:afraid
Fine Art Friday 2007-03-09 20:34:00 Gustav Klimt, 19862-1918"Champ de coquelicot" (Poppy Field), 1907Klimt once said of his own work:I can paint and draw. I believe as much myself and others also say they believe it. But I am not sure that it is true. Only two things are certain:1. I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women. But other subjects interest me even more. I am convinced that I am not particularly interesting as a person. There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning until night. Figures and landscapes, portraits less often.2. I have the gift of neither the spoken nor the written word, especially if I have to say something about myself or my work. Even when I have a simple letter to write I am filled with fear and trembling as though on the verge of being sea-sick. For this reason people must do without an artistic or literary self-portrait. And this should not be regretted. Read more:Friday
, Fine Art
Five Blogs that Make Me Think 2007-03-09 23:05:00 More virus-induced tears! Sheila nominated me for a Thinking Blogger Award. Per the award program instructions, I am delighted to name my five nominees:~ ~The Sheila Variations: Unabashed opinions on books, films, and life.~ ~Magnificent Octopus: Literary responses to good and great books.~ ~Pages Turned: An electronic chapbook, a few cats, and an affinity for towering TBR piles.~ ~Semicolon: Book reviews, "Lost" talk, film recommendations, and a voice I enjoy hearing.~ ~Surface-Mined: A newer blog kept by a reader, thinker, and autodidact.My personal space issues are legendary, but I'm certain I'd enjoy meeting the folks behind these blogs. They make. me. think. And as anyone who reads M-mv knows, that's my highest compliment. Read more:Blogs
Back in December 2004, M-mv was named a finalist i... 2007-03-09 20:30:00 Back in December
2004, M-mv was named
a finalist in the Best of Blogs category "Best Literary/Book Blog." Through the virtual competition I discovered two excellent blogs: Magnificent Octopus and The Sheila Variations. Although I don't keep a blogroll, I have, in the intervening two years, repeatedly recommended and linked these sites because I admire them both.Well, today, in my virus-weakened state, I was reduced to tears by one of the aforementioned bloggers.Many thanks for getting it, Sheila.
"I know of no larger indictment of the world's descent into subliteracy." 2007-03-10 23:17:00 Heh, heh, heh. Our dear Mr. Bloom rants again, this time, in the March 12 issue of Newsweek. From "A Life in Books":I won't say [Shakespeare] "invented" us, because journalists perpetually misunderstand me on that. I'll put it more simply: he contains us. Our ways of thinking and feeling—about ourselves, those we love, those we hate, those we realize are hopelessly "other" to us—are more shaped by Shakespeare than they are by the experience of our own lives.M-mv on Bloom:Book wars (11.30.2003)Harold Bloom (10.28.2005)From The American Religion (Harold Bloom):This book, The American Religion, has lived mostly underground since its original publication fourteen years ago. Out of print, it still circulated steadily among readers increasingly aware of the intensifying strategic alliance between the Republican Party and millions of those I term explicit American Religionists. I bring the book back into print now unrevised, except for this coda to a coda. But then, how much has changed Read more:indictment
Quotidian 2007-03-13 18:50:00 On the last day of January, we finally had the new dryer installed. Its forefather had gone in a noisy, joyless cacaphony of metal scraping on metal. How odd, then, that after only, what, five? six? weeks, this dryer should begin muttering the same mirthless tune.It's nearly seventy degrees here, but the quickly warmed soil hasn't developed that moist, green "We're alive! We're still alive!" scent. No, it sort of smells a little off out there, although the breeze moving through the house is pleasant. Anyway, no clothes on a line for us. They're hanging on the shower curtain rod.Now that's a look.Thank goodness the repairman comes tomorrow.On the other hand, we use a delicious-smelling softener, and the gentle roar of mid-March's lion is moving the scent into all of the wintry corners of the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie.In all things, find what's worth celebrating.
Grammar is fun. 2007-03-14 14:52:00 I read "'Grammar
Girl' sets write course on word use" in yesterday's Sun-Times, but the link is for the online edition of Delaware's News Journal). From John Faherty's profile:Grammar Girl is Mignon Fogarty, a 39-year-old technical writer from Gilbert who has combined her love of language with an online expertise to develop the Grammar Girl character.Her podcasts have been downloaded more than 3 million times since July. There is enough interest that Fogarty was able to quit her day job.Also in yesterday's Sun-Times, "Cicadas bring art of noise" (because I think bugs are fun, too):Though they're expected to emerge in June, a spate of wet, warm weather could prompt the cicadas to appear sooner, Hong said. When the ground temperature hits a consistent 64 degrees, they tunnel out and begin a six-week process of mating and laying eggs in trees, she said. Once the eggs hatch, the young cicadas eat and then crawl into the ground, to next return in 2024.(Note: I employed the word cacop
Fine Art Friday 2007-03-16 12:05:00 George Frederick Watts, 1817-1904"Ophelia," c. 1864Of all of the Ophelia images I studied for this week's Fine ArtFriday
entry, this one -- the elf-like Ophelia -- is my favorite. Watts used Ellen Terry, his young wife, as the model. She left him a year later, Terry did. And in 1878 the actress played Ophelia opposite Sir Henry Irving in his celebrated production of Hamlet at the Lyceum.Isn't life ... wonderfully odd? Especially in the retelling.Narrative is everything, I think.Did you know...?The Ophelia painted by John Everett Millais a decade before Watts painted Terry peering through the reeds is actually the more famous depiction of Shakespeare's suicidal miss.Did you go look? And?Eh.Not my cuppa. Yours?Now this? This next bit? This is my cuppa.Hamlet , Act V, scene 1.First ClownWhy, there thou say'st: and the more pity that great folk should have countenance in this world to drown or hang themselves, more than their even Christian. Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlem
According to the Centers for Disease Control and P... 2007-03-15 17:32:00 According to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), the popular press' claim of a link between suicide and the holidays is unfounded, a myth. "In fact," notes the CDC web site, "suicide rates in the United States are lowest in the winter and highest in the spring."In other words, March and April are the cruelest months.Indeed.Twenty-four years ago yesterday, someone I loved committed suicide. No one talked about it then. No one talks about it now, really. I didn't learn that his was a death by suicide until a couple of years ago.Because someone decided it was time to talk about it.Better late than never, right?Right.Suicide is the eighth leading cause of death for all U.S. men, maintains the CDC (although, interestingly, Reuters Health reports that heavy men may be less apt to commit suicide).Folks spend an awful lot of time fussing over (or at least paying lip service to) healthy hearts and arteries and muscles and teeth. Oh, and the time and money they throw at appea
On the nightstand 2007-03-17 12:21:00 For this edition of "On the nightstand
," I actually took several photos of the piles of books scattered throughout the little house in the tiny woods on the prairie. My idea had been to run several smaller images, but none of the rest had much character, if you know what I mean, so the above must do.It's not such a bad place to start, really.:: Sit & Solve Easy Crosswords (Nancy Cole Stuart)How it ended up on the stack: I discussed that here.:: The Descendants (Kaui Hart Hemmings).How it ended up on the stack: I wrote about this uncorrected proof / advance reader copy here, and, yes, this appeared in the last "On the nightstand" entry. It just hasn't grabbed me by my readerly lapels, you know?:: The Complete Stories (Flannery O'Connor).How it ended up on the stack: Master and I read "Greenleaf" a couple of weeks ago. I suggested he follow our discussion with more O'Connor. We're processing (or, in my case, reprocessing) "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," "Good Country People," and "Ev
It's back! 2007-03-17 04:18:00 Chris' Eastern Screech Owl Nest Box Cam' is up and running.
But what do you do all day? 2007-03-19 17:11:00 Read. Think. Learn.Play.Aside: Did you know that Chris Van Allsburg's The Mysteries of Harris Burdick provides excellent story prompts? Open to any page. Gaze at one of the wonderful images. Wonder at Van Allsburg's single cryptic sentence. And write. (You'll find an anecdote about Family M-mv's encounter with the author/illustrator here.)
Scientists already knew that coffee beans were ric... 2007-03-19 15:44:00 Scientists already knew that coffee beans were rich in dietary fiber—and now Fulgencio Saura-Calixto and Elena Díaz-Rubio, food scientists at the National Research Council in Madrid, have confirmed for the first time that brewed coffee also contains it. Read the complete Scientific American article here.
Wordsmithery 2007-03-19 13:03:00 Over the weekend, I read a passage in which a writer described himself as a wordsmith. Now that's chutzpah, huh?A wordsmith is, yes, one who works with words, but the word is most commonly employed to praise, celebrate, or compliment a skillful writer. For example, I've used it to describe Oscar Wilde and Bill Bryson.But apply it to myself? Oh, yeah. Sure. I also regularly enter Jewel and annnouce, "I am be-YOO-ti-ful!"________________________Last weekend, the Sunday Times reprinted W.H. Auden's scathingly funny 1948 essay about writers. From "So you think you can write?":Among this host of would-be writers, the majority have no literary gift. This is not surprising in itself. A marked gift for anything is not very common.What is surprising is that such a high percentage of those without a marked talent for any particular profession should think of writing as the solution. One would expect that a certain percentage would imagine they had a talent for medicine, a certain percentage f
A word. A day. 2007-03-19 00:23:00 She was heard murmuring disingenuously, "I don't know why this word just popped into my head." POP!
This weekend's Project Feederwatch results 2007-03-18 16:18:00 Mourning Dove (2) Eastern Screech-Owl (1)Red-bellied Woodpecker (1)Downy Woodpecker (1)Blue Jay (3)American Crow (1) Black-capped Chickadee (8) Red-breasted Nuthatch (1) White-breasted Nuthatch (2) Dark-eyed Junco (10) Northern Cardinal (2) Purple Finch (4) House Finch (1) American Goldfinch (4) House Sparrow (8) Read more:Project
, results
Oh, Garry! 2007-03-20 20:01:00 WCKG opening door for Meier's comeback.And here's a link to former partner Steve Dahl's take on the subject. (Thanks, dear Donna.)
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