The Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal): July 2019

July 22, 2019

Art Neville (December 17, 1937 – July 22, 2019)

July 16, 2019

Musicological Note

Here's a recent conversation (accessible for the next few weeks) on Tom Mazzollini's long-running Blues By The Bay radio program about Paul Oliver and Mack McCormick and their great, unfinished project meant to document the rise and spread of African American vernacular musics in Texas. It is now available, for a price, in the recently published Blues Comes To Texas.

Hearing Chris Strachwitz (who has never been too far wrong about American vernacular music) enthuse about this book is all the convincing I need.

July 11, 2019

Did Epstein Ever Put The Make On Ivanka?

It would be irresponsible not to speculate. She was just the right age.

July 08, 2019

Critics Corner

World War II did not lead to a wave of great literature, especially given its overwhelming importance in the twentieth century. But it sure led to a wave of great film.

Eric Loomis, Lawyers, Guns & Money

Loomis is right. In spite of attempts by commenters to compile a list of great WWII literature, there was no wave of great literature conveying those events equivalent to the wave of great film produced over the course of the past sixty years.

A list, even a big list, is not a wave.

Nevertheless I searched in vain for a comment mentioning Gravity's Rainbow, which is great and literature and seems to be about WWII, more or less, as I recall. Strange that it doesn't immediately come to mind.

July 06, 2019

João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira (June 10, 1931-July 6, 2019)

July 04, 2019

Van Morrison Almost

Independence Day

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For some years now I've travelled bumptiously about the internet commenting on other people's blogs under the pseudonym "peter ramus," pointedly and I regret to say at times heatedly disclosing the general shape my own intricately devised misapprehension of current events in contradistinction to the remarkable torrent of misapprehensions made known daily on that medium by everyone else.

Nominally I associate myself as much as possible with the views of those who seem to know what they're talking about, but often enough I find myself obliged, like so many others, to go on about things I'm not in the least qualified to address simply because it is my way when the opportunity presents itself. I find this shortcoming as personally irritating as it is to those I've favored it with over the years, an as yet irrepressible feature of my discourse. Thus the admittedly defensive assumption of the nom de blog, "peter ramus."

"peter ramus" isn't to be confused with Peter Ramus, another fellow entirely, who lived and died a long time ago around the sad times leading up to the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in France, an event which saw his own undoing in the chaotic days that followed.

He was a zeolot, Peter Ramus was. He had a particular bone to pick with Aristotle over the stuff and substance of rhetoric, which led him to propose revolutionary changes in the subject and manner of teaching which prevailed in higher education in those times. A quaestio was convened, a solemn gathering of all the branches of civil society, to see what was to be done about him. The King sent a man, and the Church sent a man, and of course the University of Paris couldn't help but send one, too. Unsurprisingly, they found overwhelmingly in favor of Aristotle and against Peter Ramus. In addition, it pleased the members of the assembled body to pronounce Peter Ramus personally disagreeable and notably ugly to boot. Strictly as an aside.

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The ideas expressed here, and the words used to express them here, are the ideas and words of the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), which is to say "peter ramus," which is to say, me. Naturally, given their ultimate source, the ideas are half-formed at times, provisional always, and subject on mature reflection to substantial revision and, often enough, to outright repudiation by the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), by "peter ramus," and by me.

The words themselves, however, in the precise carnival train order in which they appear, and such original images which may from time to time be displayed here, excepting of course for those attributed materials the provenance of which, as duly noted, originate elsewhere, are owned by and are the property of the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), "peter ramus," or me, and are subject to the terms of Creative Commons License 2.5 , by which license (in the unlikely event that such words and original images appearing here are taken up and displayed elsewhere) clear attribution must be attached to those words or images indicating their ownership, to wit: the Quotidian (formerly the Diurnal Journal), "peter ramus," but not me.