On Secular Saints and Sinners, Plus Miscellany

Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers- "What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is the caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."

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Che Guevara, complicated figure. He left us on this day in 1967, with the words, “I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, you are only going to kill a man.”

He knew that you can't kill an idea, and that he was more than some of his parts. 

James Hopgood featured him in his book, The Making of Saints- Contesting Sacred Ground, examining the "secular sainthood" of those like Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Guevera, and even Elvis and James Dean. 

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Speaking of secular saints, the Taliban attempted to assassinate Malala 10 years ago today. For going to school. This is the type of belief system that changed my mind into accepting targeted drone strikes. If you know you are killing the bad guys, kill them. They are enemies of humanity.

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John Lennon was born on this day in 1940. He is also featured in Hopgood's book, a symbol of peace.

At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame I saw one of his early report cards in which a school official wrote something like, "Mr. Lennon might actually make something of himself one day if he ever learns to be serious instead of spending his time devising witty things to say."

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Philosopher Nick Castellanos, on the Phillies chances of winning tonight to force a deciding game 5: 

"Closest to death we’re ever gonna get, so in a way we should feel the most alive."

October 9, 2024

*Then the next day, they died.

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Zuzu and I looked for shooting stars last night. Emma came down later from putting her to sleep and said Zuzu had some questions for me. Huh, ok. I waited 15 minutes to see if she'd drift off, but the second I walked in she asked, "Daddy, when is the earth going to be sucked into a black hole?" I thought looking for shooting stars would be a nice activity before bed, but apparently it made her question the existence of everything she's ever known. 

October 9, 2022

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Roger Ebert Blog- A Quintessence of Dust

"Living things must die. That I can plainly see. That we are aware of our inevitable death is the price we must pay for being aware at all. On the whole, I think we're getting a good deal."

https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/a-quintessence-of-dust

October 9, 2011

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The bad news- the president wasn't awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The good news- he still has an excellent shot at the Nobel Discord Prize. Either he wins the election or it was RIGGED!

October 9, 2020

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In his book What Unites Us, Dan Rather writes about the virtues of patriotism and the flaws of nationalism. Trumpism is worse than nationalism... doesn't even see us a country. All of us have to resist all forms of us versus them.

"It is important not to confuse “patriotism” with “nationalism.” As I define it, nationalism is a monologue in which you place your country in a position of moral and cultural supremacy over others. Patriotism, while deeply personal, is a dialogue with your fellow citizens, and a larger world, about not only what you love about your country but also how it can be improved. Unchecked nationalism leads to conflict and war. Unbridled patriotism can lead to the betterment of society. Patriotism is rooted in humility. Nationalism is rooted in arrogance."

October 9, 2020

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You know what crosses my mind often? When Trump was a young teenager he was misbehaving at school and his parents sent him to a military academy. His whole psychology can be understood in terms of unresolved parent issues- anti-authority yet yearns for praise from authoritarian strongmen, never asks for advice, wants love but can't help lashing out, deep-seated anger, sees everything as a conspiracy against him the way his parents conspired against him, rages against those who don't show love for him, convinced himself of his own unfallibility, etc, etc, etc.

October 9, 2019

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Hitler turned up in a Bugs Bunny cartoon yesterday, so I had to explain to Gretel who he was. He turned up again today and she asked, "Who was Squitler?"

October 9, 2018

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Funny to think that at the time it was a such a universally absurd notion that Trump would run that he had to pay people to cheer!

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To paraphrase James Baldwin- The most dangerous creation of any society is the self-proclaimed billionaire with nothing to lose.

October 9, 2016

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Wow! I just woke up to this email from Sam Harris:

Dear Reader--

If you are receiving this email, it means that you made some suggestion for my book Lying that caused me to revise the text for the hardcover edition. I greatly appreciate your help!

Please send me your address so I can send you a set of signed books.

Best,

Sam

October 9, 2013

Postscript: My claim to fame!

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Ikiru was released on this day in 1952.

"I can't afford to hate people. I haven't got that kind of time."

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The National Guard was called in on this day in 1969, as demonstrations continued over the trial of the "Chicago Eight"

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Guillermo del Toro was born on this day in 1964.

"What makes a man a man? A friend of mine once wondered. Is it his origins? The way he comes to life? I don't think so. It's the choices he makes. Not how he starts things, but how he decides to end them."

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We lost U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson on this day in 1954.

“Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. ... It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings. … To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous, instead of a compulsory routine, is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds. We can have intellectual individualism and the rich cultural diversities that we owe to exceptional minds only at the price of occasional eccentricity and abnormal attitudes. When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."

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We lost Oskar Schindler on this day in 1974. Proof that you can do good within an evil machine? What is it with this thing in the secular saints?

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French-Algerian philosopher, Jacques Derrida, left us on this day in 2004.

"Such a caring for death, an awakening that keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks death in the face, is another name for freedom."

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Other notable birthdays- Aimee Semple McPherson (1890), Jacques Tati (1907)

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Yahoo Sports- Another playoff blown call dooms Reds

Chase Utley- “I felt like I thought it hit me, so I put my head down and I ran to first.” 

I felt like I thought it hit me... instantly one of the all-time great baseball quotes. I love each of the Reds' reactions to it in the article.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=lc-redsphillies100810

October 9, 2010

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Sir Lancelot- Atomic Energy (in part)

Some men with brains in their cranium

Took a piece of uranium

They did what other men couldn't do

They split the atom right in two

Now it's up to the people to crusade

To see that no more bombs are made

That it's great force should only be used

For peace and democracy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_eY1W7Ezw4

October 9, 2013

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The auction of Kurt Cobain's Unplugged sweater:

During the set he mentions someone wanting to sell him Leadbelly's guitar for $500k. Could have he conceived of the fact that 25 years later his 25 cent Goodwill sweater he was wearing at the time would go for up to $300k, more valuable because it was never washed. (Actually yeah, I bet he could conceive of that.)

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kurt-cobain-unplugged-sweater-auction-896937/

October 9, 2019

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Anybody who thinks Steve Scully is biased... clearly has not seen this.

https://youtu.be/2wrji0XLoFU

October 9, 2020

Postscript- Apparently he was!

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Picasso- "Art is the lie that tells the truth."

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Socrates- "I don't care what people say about me. I do care about my mistakes."

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Henry Miller- "The song of creation springs from the ruins of earthly endeavor. The outer man dies away in order to reveal the golden bird which is winging its way toward divinity.”

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Del Toro again- "You only find yourself when you disobey. Disobedience is the beginning of responsibility, I think."

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Confucius- "Study the past if you would define the future."

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Groucho Marx- "I don't have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They're upstairs in my socks."

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Diderot- "Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them."

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Sigmund Freud- "What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books."

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Gore Vidal- "There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise."

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John McWhorter, Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter — Then, Now, and Forever- "To wit, profanity first involved the holy, and only later the holes."

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Stephen King- "If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented."

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Edgar Allan Poe- "Sleep, those little slices of death- how I loathe them."

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Rodney Dangerfield:

-I’m so ugly, one time I stuck my head out the window. The police charged me for mooning.

-My father carries around the picture of the kid who came with his wallet.

-When I was born the doctor came out to the waiting room and said to my father, “I’m very sorry. We did everything we could, but he pulled through.”

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