Here is Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto E Minor OP.64, performed by Hilary Hahn with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra.
This is another book I read while on the plane to Virginia Beach, where my son was graduating a couple of Saturdays ago. I started the book about a year ago and couldn't get into it. This time, I gathered the author's style and intent and found the stories, if not riveting, rather interesting.
Lions, Harts, Leaping Does and Other Stories by J.F. Powers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Interesting collection of stories centered around the day to day lives of priests. I am not Catholic but I found the personalities, thoughts, trials and mundane details of the various priests existence to be interesting. Some of the stories are depressing, but some are quite funny.
One priest feels stuck in a small parish where he has been the underling to a superior priest for years. He dreams and hopes of getting his own parish. Yet he seems to persist in a stubborn unawareness that his ambition is what keeps him back. As well as his carnal and decidedly un-spiritual view of life.
Another priest chaffs under the skin flinty and domineering ways of the priest over him. In fact more than a few stories are about subordinate priests suffering under the authorities of a narrow-minded, old-fashioned and cheapskate priest in charge.
A couple of stories are narrated by a parish cat that is both poignant and humorous.
The final story is about a young man who wanted to become a priest but was not accepted into the seminary. He partners up with a man who is a bit of a con man and sells Catholic supplies to various priests. In this story we go from feeling sorry for the young man to realizing he's a bit of a shyster himself because it appears he was actually trying to avoid the draft.
These stories provide a unique cultural perspective in a certain faith, in the mid-west in the thirties, forties and fifties of the last century.
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And briefly, a free download on my Kindle: a book on poetry...
Modern British Poetry by Louis Untermeyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a collection of poets from the turn of the last century who were leaders in their genre. Untermeyer gives a brief biography and sketch of the development of each poet's craft followed by a couple of examples of their work. This book was written in 1911 so one has to realize that the word "modern" must be used inside that time frame.
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And here's a teaser:
Meet Lt. Foyle
But more about him next time...
The mystery of the Shroud of Turin has always been a source of fascination for me. Is it really the imprint of the crucified Christ? Is it a medieval hoax? How did the imprint come to be manifested on this ancient sheet? How can we tell how old the sheet really is?
Ian Wilson intends to answer these questions in his book The Blood and The Shroud. Personally, I don't have a dog in this fight because it's not important to me whether the shroud is authentic or not, but I do consider it a significant piece of history, even if it does only date back to the Middle Ages.
According to a scientific team headed by British Museum scientific director, Michael Tate, radiocarbon 14 testing resulted in the shroud being dated to the years of the 13th century. This also corroborates with a letter by a Bishop of that time who insisted that the shroud was a hoax. It is also true that the 13th century was the height of relics of all sorts being peddled and revered.
Wilson attempts to debunk this claim in his book as well as other arguments: that the shroud image is a painting, medieval photograph -perhaps even a self portrait made by Leonardo da Vinci- or simply a blood image made by someone wrapping a dead person, albeit crucified, in the shroud, just not Christ.
Frankly, Wilson writes as though he does
have a dog in this fight. Like many scientists I believe that he became
enamored with his project and is not being perfectly objective. While I
found his arguments interesting, he seemed to make quite a few leaps
from fact to fact, inserting formulations and speculations that I did
not find altogether persuasive.
I will admit that I thought the biggest argument against the shroud's authenticity was the simple act of wrapping a crucified body in a sheet and making the same imprints. Of all of his explanations, his reason for why this can't have happened seems plausible. He asserts that the distribution of blood and how it was imprinted onto the sheet could not be contrived to such a degree of accuracy. This gives me pause to think.
Another persuasive argument comes from another source. In 1978 a team of American scientists known as STURPA made a 3D image of the shroud as well as conducted a number of tests on the matter that was on the shroud. Their final conclusion was that they could not trace the photographic image to human origins-even though they are quick to point out that they don't know what caused it.
None of that really matters to me because it is still an excellently written book and Wilson is exhaustive in his background research, tracing the shroud as far back as possible and giving an interesting and informative history of the families and leaders who owned the shroud all the way back to the middle ages, which is as far back as it can be traced.
Not that Wilson doesn't try to reach farther back in time. We receive a good historical account of the times between Christ's time and the 13th century and how it was possible for the shroud to survive all those years as well as who might have been holding onto it during that time. It's just by this time, Wilson is purely speculating as even he admits.
The shroud will be on exhibit next year. It is only allowed out of its vault every so many years. I wish I could be in Turin to see it. Not because I know for a fact it is the shroud of Jesus Christ but because it is still an ancient relic of bygone days. Even the 13th century is a long time ago.
One of my life long interests has been the Middle Ages. I love the myth, legend, art, music and history of that time period. I'm especially interested in how our civilization developed over the approximate thousand year time span that we now label the Medieval Age.
Jacques le Goff is a prominent French researcher in not only the history but the sociology of this time period. He has written many books about Western Medieval culture. This particular book deals with what the title says: How was the concept of time, work and culture developed.
The book is divided into four sections: Time and Labor; Labor and Value Systems; High Culture and Popular Culture; and Toward a Historical Anthropology.
In Time and Culture le Goff discusses the invention of our modern concept of time. It never occurred to me that people counted time any differently. He notes that at first, laborers worked according to the sun but only worked half days. It was the laborers of the land that insisted on working longer hours so they could receive greater pay.
Time was at first measured according to the Church. Clerics regarded time according to Biblical texts and church tradition. Therefore all time is God's time. The day was divided up according to the different hours of the church as well as days, weeks and months in that every day had its own particular time in the Church Year where a particular mass was celebrated. Different masses sung different psalms according to what time of the day or week or month of the year.
The rise of merchants redefined time in many respects but I don't have time to go into it here. But this leads us to the next point of this section: work. The church held some jobs in honor but some in contempt. The laborer was at first held in contempt in the early middle ages although this changed by the time of the high middle ages. The merchant class likewise changed attitudes towards honorable and dishonorable work. At first it was considered sinful to be usurers which is why Jews held that occupation for hundreds of years. This made Jews vulnerable to backlash and persecution when times became unstable and people's minds were easily directed to make scapegoats of the people to whom they owed money. The Bible also speaks of being no man's debter hmmm...
At any rate this whole division goes into much greater detail than I'm able about the rise of labor and merchant classes, the development of time, its origins in the church and later within the merchant community.
The third section describes the development of universities and trades and professions. Certain people were expected to go to universities, primarily clergy which is only natural considering that universities were developed within the church with the primary objective of training clergy. This later expanded to include people who attended trade schools and artisans. Those particular schools were eventually absorbed into the university system.
Still, these schools were primarily schools of theology and exegetical training. Indeed, back then church, learning, and trade were not separated. Secular university systems did not exist and every subject, math, science, language arts etc.. was viewed through the lens of Scripture which was considered the crowning science.
The final chapter tells us how the Public Authorities outside the church gained influence in the Universities during the Renaissance.
The third section is very interesting to me as a musician because it traces the development of high and popular culture in folklore traditions and music. High culture has its roots in religious music and literature while popular culture are those tales and songs people told each other at home and around the fire.
The final chapter was thought provoking because it described the development of symbolic rituals. Even how the hand shake and greeting with a kiss came about, what it meant and how each person performed them according to their station. Medieval Christianity was rife with rites and symbols so naturally these became a part of the culture as a whole.
A lord would take both hands of a vassal in his hands while the vassal always pressed his hands together as in prayer to the Lord. Le Goff maintains that this, coming from inside church tradition was not a symbol of obeisance as a servant but of a son. He asserts that the relationship between feudal lords and the people under their authority was not impersonal but seen by both parties as familial. Just as Christians upon baptism became members of the Christian family, when serfs or villagers ritually show their deference to the knight who promises to protect them, they are publicly proclaiming fidelity to not just their master, but the head of their family.
The knight, in turn, kneels before the Pope, acknowledging the head of his family is Christ. When the King "knights" someone by ritually touching his shoulders with a sword he is making the same statement.
This book is far more involved than what I've written. The most I can hope is to whet someone's appetite to read Le Goff's books for him or herself.
