School of Athens

 

From The Greek Reporter:

Several of the most influential Greek philosophers and thinkers are portrayed in Raphael’s masterpiece the School of Athens which adorns the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.

Painted between 1509 and 1511, it depicts a congregation of philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists from Ancient Greece, including Plato and Aristotle. But did you know that, in addition to the two philosophers in the center of the painting, there are six more “hiding”?

In his work, Raphael desired to pay his deepest tribute to the greatest philosophers in history, several of whom had tried throughout their lives to discover the prime mover, or cause, in the universe, a branch of thought called the “knowledge of the first causes.” It also shows sculptures of the Greek gods Athena (portrayed as the Roman goddess Minerva), representing Wisdom, and Apollo, representing Light and Music, in a direct nod to the greatness of Greek mythology and its contributions to the western world.

In short, Raphael’s painting is the Who is Who of ancient Greek culture. (Read more.)

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Cartels Turn Los Angeles into Top Hub

 From New York Post:

Violent Mexican drug cartels that traffic fentanyl and counterfeit pills have turned Los Angeles into one of the top distribution hubs in the country, federal officials said. Los Angeles County has become ground zero in the trafficking pipeline as the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels have increased their distribution of the cheaply manufactured pills that look like prescription drugs.

The fentanyl crisis hitting the country is “unprecedented,” US Attorney Martin Estrada said at a press conference about the drug crisis Monday.

“This drug has taken the lives of too many young people, many who are not addicts but took counterfeit pills not knowing they contain fentanyl,” Estrada said. “Many of these pills are sold using social media, targeting our young people.” (Read more.)

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The Immense Beauty of the Very Small

 From The Marginalian:

Nothing shapes our experience of reality, and nothing limits it, more than our frames of reference. Every transcendent achievement of perspective is the product of a shift in the frame of reference, as is the hard-earned glory of maturity. Few artists have recognized this more clearly and made of that recognition a more enchanting plaything than M.C. Escher (June 17, 1898–March 17, 1972).

[...]

He questioned our “rigid faith in our senses” — the sense-perception we take for the ultimate proof of reality, yet which has so often mislead us: the flatness of the Earth, the geocentric universe, the myriad self-referential subjectivities that have blinded us to the real reality. In consonance with the Nobel-winning quantum theory founding father Niels Bohr’s reckoning with subjective vs. objective reality, Escher observed:

All of our senses reveal only a subjective world to us; all we can do is think and possibly mean that therefore we can conclude the existence of an objective world.

For Escher, deducing an objective world was a matter of training our senses to pay closer and closer attention — a way of grasping the largest mystery by attending ever more acutely to the very small. A century before the bryologist Robin Wall Kimmerer made her exquisite case for moss as a lens on attentiveness to wonder at all scales and years before the great nature writer Henry Beston (who inspired Rachel Carson, who inspired Escher) made his soulful case for the sacredness of smallness, the twenty-five-year-old Escher wrote in a letter:

I want to delight in the smallest of small things, a bit of moss 2 centimeters in diameter on a little piece of rock, and I want to try here what I have been wishing for so long, namely to copy these tiniest bits of nothing as accurately as possible just to realize how great they are. I’ve already started that but it is so dreadfully difficult. With your nose right on top of it, you see all of its beauty and all of its simplicity, but when you start drawing, only then do you realize how terribly complicated and shapeless that beauty really is. 

(Read more.)

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Living With Morals: A Review of 'The Fall of Gondolin'

The Fall of Gondolin

Glorfiindel and the Balrog

 

Since watching The Rings of Power I have been reading up on Tolkien's legendarium and seeing where the creators of the new series found their ideas. The Fall of Gondolin is magnificent and tragic if repetitive, and by repetitive I mean that the same story is told over and over again, with slight variations, in the same volume. But for Middle-earth lovers there are loads of tidbits of details that add to the understanding of the lore. It is interesting that Tolkien originally referred to the Noldorian elves as "gnomes." From The Public Discourse:

J.R.R. Tolkien’s first tale of Middle-earth was of ruin, written “in hospital and on leave after surviving the Battle of the Somme.” His “first real story of this imaginary world” told of the destruction of the hidden city of Gondolin, greatest of Elven cities in mortal lands and the last stronghold against Morgoth, the Great Enemy. The story was never completed in mature form, but it was referenced in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. This saga of disaster and hope underlies the tone and setting of Tolkien’s creation. His tales of monsters and heroes illuminate the moral condition of mankind better than the works of our current adolescent popular culture. The problem is less moral ambiguity than a lack of moral will.

The various fragments and versions of the story have now been published together. In The Fall of Gondolin, the venerable Christopher Tolkien has edited his father’s unfinished work for the last time. He had described his previous effort, Beren and Lúthien, as “presumably” the last; now he writes, “in my ninety-fourth year The Fall of Gondolin is (indubitably) the last.” Only the first iteration of the story presented the complete narrative in detail, but that version is rough, with Tolkien having not yet settled on the material or style. Over subsequent years he wrote condensed or partial versions of the story, and in the incomplete final version of the tale he approaches his mature best—writing in the high prose style that he had mastered.

This book also includes materials that place the tale in context of Tolkien’s larger creation. These additional fragments are worth reading, even for those already familiar with the history of the Elder Days contained in The Silmarillion, as The Fall of Gondolin contains bits of elven mythology, history, and even eschatology not found in that volume. Overall, the collected texts and commentary by Christopher Tolkien, plus the masterly illustrations by Alan Lee, make this book a worthy final addition to the Tolkien canon.

Publication of The Fall of Gondolin follows last year’s announcement that control of the Tolkien Estate has passed to a new generation, which seems more willing to exploit its lucrative licensing potential than Christopher and his father were. And the captains of the entertainment industry, who lack Tolkien’s moral vision and imagination, are unlikely to produce good adaptations.

But we will always have the books. (Read more.)

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‘Republican’ Billionaires Tied to Chinese Communist Finance

 From The National Pulse:

Perhaps it isn’t a surprise that ruling class members with China links are lining up against a populist that says he wants to “launch an all-out campaign to eliminate America’s dependence on China.” Take the Murdochs, for example. Their New York Post mocked President Trump’s campaign roll-out with the headline: “Florida Man Makes Announcement.” Perhaps Trump should respond by highlighting a more shocking headline – this one from Crikey in Australia, “Murdoch empire borrows US$100m from state-owned Bank of China.” The article details how News Corp, the parent of the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, took a 9-figure loan from a Chinese Communist-owned bank. And that’s just the beginning of it. Perhaps Murdoch’s ex-wife, alleged Chinese Communist spy Wendi Deng, could shed more light on the matter.

Then there’s Ken Griffin. Two days before the midterms, the financier spoke to Politico about how he wants to spend his billions to get Gov. Ron DeSantis in the White House. Keen observers will note Trump’s first salvo against DeSantis came hours before this Politico puff piece which had been in the works for some time. It’s no stretch to connect the dots: Trump heard about the piece. Perhaps he was even asked for comment on the fact that a China-linked billionaire was now one of Ron DeSantis’s largest donors.

Surely, he gave one.

Griffin himself became massively wealthy – an estimated net worth of $22 billion – through his investment firm Citadel. A report this year revealed that in 2006, Citadel “loaned $110 million to China Security & Surveillance Technology. The company used the funds to acquire ‘10 of the 50 biggest surveillance companies in China.’” Citadel is also partly owned now by Sequoia Capital, which is the venture capital firm that “has produced more investment gains from China” than any other firm and has close ties to the CCP. Sequoia’s China division even employed a daughter of a politburo member.

Griffin and Murdoch are not alone. As Murdoch’s New York Post reported Wednesday, “GOP megadonors ditch Donald Trump’s 2024 White House run.” One of those megadonors is Stephen Schwarzman. The day after Trump’s announcement speech attacking Chinese dependence, Schwarzman let Axios know that he will back any other Republican than the former president in the 2024 primary. It shouldn’t surprise you that Schwarzman has deep ties to the Chinese Communist regime. Schwarzman is the chairman and CEO of Blackstone Group, that’s the company that was partly owned for over a decade by the Chinese sovereign wealth fund. Between 2013-2018, his firm did $32 billion of Chinese deals, according to the Financial Times. If you were the CEO of a company that’s done tens of billions of dollars worth of deals in China, would you want a populist that wants to punish Xi Jinping for the “China virus” in office? Probably not. (Read more.)

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The Secret Origins of the Musical Conductor

 From Ted Gioia at The Honest Broker:

As soon as you put aside your books of ‘literature’ and listen to stories as a kind of music, everything starts to change. We all knew that back as kindergarten students, when we sang many of our stories and lessons, but somehow we lose touch with these mind-expanding musical experiences as we grow older.

That’s not true everywhere—in some societies, sung performances of epics and cultural lore have survived into modern times. And here we find irrefutable evidence of the bard or conductor’s rhythmical powers, which border on the supernatural. In such settings, the ground beat underpinning a quest story is entrancing and inescapable. It is the engine that drives the story forward. And—as we will learn in the next chapter—our brains are hardwired to embrace this kind of music.

For example, The Mwindo Epic, a great masterpiece of Bantu culture, is mostly read as a text nowadays. But when Kahombo Mateene and Daniel Biebuyck encountered it among the Nyanga more than a half century ago, the bard was accompanied by three percussionists—and their role was so important, that one of them would eventually get selected as the singer’s successor.

The bard, enlivened by their rhythms, actually dances and mimes parts of the tale. This is more than mere storytelling or narrative enhancement, but a ritualistic transformation built on rhythm. And the story itself is transformative. “In this dramatic representation,” the observers noted, “the bard takes the role of the hero.” Here as elsewhere, the quest is embodied, and moves to the beat. (Read more.)

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Benghazi Terrorists Who Killed Americans Could Easily Enter the U.S.

 From Sara Carter:

Former CIA analyst Sarah Adams joins Sara to discuss her work in Pakistan, Libya, and elsewhere during the war on terrorism. Adams is also the co-author of “Benghazi: Know Thy Enemy,” and takes us inside the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. Adams offers new details on how U.S. forces were ordered to stand down while the attack was underway and how many of the terrorists responsible for killing four Americans are not only free but the U.S. government isn’t even trying to find them or putting them on any terror watch list. She also reveals how President Obama ignored the ISIS threat at the time and refused to read reports on the subject. Adams also fears terrorist networks are quickly reforming in Afghanistan and will soon be more dangerous than ever before. (Read more.)

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Plague, Religion, and Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England

 From The Many-Headed Monster:

In 1348, the Black Death reached the shores of England, killing about a third of the country’s population. The plague became endemic, staying in the country for another three hundred years before dying out in the seventeenth century. Outbreaks became less and less common over time and by the seventeenth century, major outbreaks were relatively rare, yet for some unknown reason, particularly severe. There were major outbreaks in 1603, 1625, 1636, and finally, 1665. These instances of plague created circumstances with lasting effects and contributed to immense societal change. One of these changes had to do with the place of religion and medicine in society.

The seventeenth century was a transformative period for England. In addition to civil war, the country was dealing with the aftermath of the English Reformation and the beginnings of a medical revolution. Advancements in print also had significant impact. Texts in England had largely been printed in Latin up until the sixteenth century. The average person, however, could not read Latin and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw an increase in texts published in English for a general audience.

These circumstances led to both the medical and religious sectors publishing an abundance of texts for the public concerning the plague. The Church of England, as well as various religious officials, published an array of sermons and prayers while the Royal College of Physicians, as well as various medical professionals, published medical tracts focussed on the causes, symptoms, and remedies of the plague. While the country had been dealing with plague for centuries, they had never had so many resources available to consult. It was the same disease as previous centuries, but under vastly different circumstances. (Read more.)

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Thanksgiving in the Midst of the Fall

 From Beyond These Stone Walls:

Ten years ago this week, I wrote a post that was to become one of the most read and cited from behind these stone walls. It was the story of the real unsung hero behind the account of the first Thanksgiving that you thought you knew. It is a story that was kept hidden in plain sight for centuries while the story of the bravery and resourcefulness of the Mayflower Pilgrims of 1620 prevailed. Don't miss, "The True Story of Thanksgiving: Squanto, the Pi1grims, and the Pope."

This story became a Thanksgiving tradition for our readers over the last decade. It is a remarkable story of human crisis and redemption told in the odyssey of Squanto, a Native American who, like our friend, Pornchai, was stolen from his home, taken to a foreign land, rescued from slavery by a Catholic priest, and then, in the end, restored to his homeland only to find it nearly devastated from a global pandemic. He arrived just before the Mayflower pilgrims did 400 years ago this week. Squanto became one of history's great emissaries of Divine Mercy.

My version of the story has appeared in numerous sources including a pair of history books. One of them is 1620: The True Story of Thanksgiving by Rick Gregory (2015) and an essay, "A Eucharistic Thanksgiving" by Adam N. Crawford.

I hope you will read and share that story anew to mark Thanksgiving 400 years later as the Pilgrims did, in uncertain times and surrounded in darkness. And please pray for us as we do for you. There is cause for Thanksgiving here! (Read more.)

About Squanto. From the Cape Cod Times:

His is such a seminal backstory to Plimoth Colony that the lack of historical reference to it is conspicuous. While Squanto avoided the Great Dying — an epidemic from 1616 to 1619 that wiped out tens of thousands of Natives from Maine to Cape Cod — his life was nonetheless tragic. 

As a young man he was among 20 unfortunate men of Patuxet lured aboard the ship of Thomas Hunt in 1614 to be sold into slavery in Spain. He spent at least six weeks in the dank, dark belly of a ship, chained to his brothers, given just enough fresh water, raw fish and stale bread to keep them alive. 

In Malaga, Spain, Hunt attempted to unload his cargo of stunned and bewildered Wampanoag men in the slave market with little success, due to uninterested brokers and the intervention of a religious order of friars. Squanto ultimately made his way to London, where he found himself living with John Slaney, a man who had great potential to afford him passage home. He likely did all he could to appease Slaney, who was a merchant and shipbuilder and also a grantee of the land patent issued to the Newfoundland Company. Squanto bided his time, charming his host and earning celebrity as a novelty. The presence of a Native man fascinated Londoners. Not only were Native men set apart by their bronze skin, chiseled features and dark eyes, but they were virtual giants to the small-statured Englishmen. Squanto’s faithfulness paid off. Slaney allowed Squanto to travel as a guide to Newfoundland, where he met Thomas Dermer, an English explorer who brought him home in 1619.

Very few personal details of Squanto’s life are known, not even his age or if he had a wife or children, and with the exception of a brief remark in Dermer’s notes, nothing is said about his homecoming. However, as news of the Great Dying had reached England, he almost certainly had been forewarned. But could Squanto have possibly been prepared for the stark stillness to the hum of life overtaken by weeds, windswept by neglect, abandoned but for the bones and rotting flesh of the dead, his loved ones, left as they clung to their last breath in gruesome repose? This defining moment was described by Dermer in remarkably few words: “We arrived at my savage's native country (finding all dead).” 

If the reality of Patuxet was mortifying — and despite the lack of descriptive text on the occasion, there is little doubt of that — the welcome home, or lack thereof, must have been a crushing anticlimax after Squanto’s five-year absence. (Read more.)

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