My friend has gone to his final resting place. There awaits him, so I have hope, a glorious admittance to the place which the Lord had gone beforehand to prepare for him.
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Monuments
The Paradox of Monuments
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’
Continue readingRuth, the Moabitess
Ruth, the Moabitess is an opera.
Continue readingA shameful date
There was no interference
It was a news report this morning that suggested a song with refrain to Auld Lang Syne:
A Striking Image
Sometimes Coco’s posts are far too wordy, so he thought he would keep it simple today. See, there are already far too many words!
Continue readingResolving
Spero meliora?
Thinking about the new year, Coco had been locked in a discussion with a linguistical friend, who could turn your Latin homework into better Latin than ever Pliny’s grandson would have even dreamed he could write, trying to find a better expression of ‘Spero meliora’ than is offered either by Google translate or by the owners of the motto. It seemed to Coco to be far too weak to be a good motto, though Coco had no doubt that to the literate Roman it carried much more weight that Micawber’s ‘Something will turn up’, which is all the poor English language can muster. Coco had hoped for better. ‘Semper ad Meliora’ is hardly an improvement, though ‘Semper meliora’ may be closer to that for which Coco had hoped. It was inevitable that Coco should come out of the discussion with a turnip nose, as in cauliflower ear, of which Coco had learned from the Third Programme’s heir at about 1845 this evening¹. Beware if you have such a thing lest when you use tobacco and blow smoke from it the fire wardens are not called out!
Continue readingThe viola plays again
Special rendition
Just before 11h yestermorn, the BBC played Silent Night by a composer whose skills excelled in the use of the propensity of violas to play in unison with themselves. Alfred Schnittke was a master of the improbable and novel, even taking into account the built in weakness of the tuning system of the instrument. Viola players are well known for overcoming the stiffness of the tuning pegs in their instruments by applying wax rather than chalk to their stems. They are also one of the boldest and most brash of musicians, outdoing even the infamous ‘bonists, in their ability to overcome what may appear to the untrained ear to be a mistake. In a word they are the toreadors of the musical world.
Continue readingBells and whistles
A short collage of bells, whistles and shadows found between the first and last twenty-fifth meridians.
Continue readingBlame
Why look for a scapegoat when the answer is obvious?
Continue readingAfrican slavers
Slave catchers galore
In Nigeria, I remember my grandmother saying that when she was a little girl her great grandmother always said, ‘be careful how you’re behaving, if you’re naughty I’ll give you two the slave catchers’.
That must have been a terrible, terrible thing to tell a child…
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