Compliments on interlineating this scene of your old stomping grounds in an especially well lighted moment. Down here in Charlottesville, where I did not attend the University, we have just gone through convulsions of an event of ill-judged management, occasioned by concerns for the future of these great establishments in the age of online scholarship. Most of us, I would guess, are very happy to reflect with this picture that they have a place, and we were fortunate in possibly vanishing ways, to have grown where they are. Did you not extract a better understanding in your study of Henry James there, than you might have done, at a distance and by yourself? I think we know his answer.
Laurent, thank you for your kind comments. The uproar at U VA is confusing to me, though I suppose not surprising. The problems of money, technology, mission -- and politics. I completely agree with you about the great value of cultivating learning in a great, vital community -- Cornell was, indeed, that kind of place, especially during a period of great political and social turmoil. (One small, personal detail: I actually studied James a couple of years later, in graduate school at Johns Hopkins. And, luckily, I was rejected by the University of Virginia.)
Unless one says goodbye to what one loves, and unless one travels to completely new territories, one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself. - Jean Dubuffet
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. . . Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
-- His Holiness the Dalai Lama . . .
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The Slabber
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If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; build anyway.
~ Mother Theresa
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. A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run. -- Elbert Hubbard .
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.My call for a spiritual revolution is thus not a call for a religious revolution. Nor is it a reference to a way of life that is somehow other-worldly, still less to something magical or mysterious. Rather, it is a call for a radical re-orientation away from our habitual preoccupation with self towards concern for the wider community of beings with whom we are connected, and for conduct which recognizes others' interests alongside our own.
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama
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Great men are they who see that the spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
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. . . Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters. -- José de Sousa Saramago
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Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold. -- William Shakespeare
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Fighting Against Neglect
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Our problems, both those we experience externally such as wars, crime and violence and those we experience internally as emotional and psychological suffering will not be solved until we address this underlying neglect of our inner dimension. That is why the great movements of the last hundred years and more--democracy, liberalism, socialism, and Communism--have all failed to deliver the universal benefits they were supposed to provide, despite many wonderful ideas. A revolution is called for, certainly, but not a political, an economic, or a technical revolution. We have had enough experience of these during the past century to know that a purely external approach will not suffice. What I propose is a spiritual revolution.
In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician but of the man with the best bedside manner. It is the decoration conferred on mediocrity by ignorance.
Is this where you went to school? I graduated there in '81.
ReplyDeleteCompliments on interlineating this scene of your old stomping grounds in an especially well lighted moment. Down here in Charlottesville, where I did not attend the University, we have just gone through convulsions of an event of ill-judged management, occasioned by concerns for the future of these great establishments in the age of online scholarship. Most of us, I would guess, are very happy to reflect with this picture that they have a place, and we were fortunate in possibly vanishing ways, to have grown where they are. Did you not extract a better understanding in your study of Henry James there, than you might have done, at a distance and by yourself? I think we know his answer.
ReplyDeleteDiogenes, yes, it's my alma mater. Always great to have a Cornellian visit this blog!
ReplyDeleteLaurent, thank you for your kind comments. The uproar at U VA is confusing to me, though I suppose not surprising. The problems of money, technology, mission -- and politics. I completely agree with you about the great value of cultivating learning in a great, vital community -- Cornell was, indeed, that kind of place, especially during a period of great political and social turmoil. (One small, personal detail: I actually studied James a couple of years later, in graduate school at Johns Hopkins. And, luckily, I was rejected by the University of Virginia.)
ReplyDeleteI am also a Cornell alum. Beautiful pic. Your pics tend to be quite beautiful.
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