Philosophy's never been my thing, mostly because I'm not good at it.
What I took away from Intro to Philosophy at Northwestern was the Allegory of the Cave, how much philosophy majors liked to blather and how Zooey Deschanel — in our class study group before she dropped out to pursue acting full-time — was cute and smart and unobtainable.
But every once in a while, when an explanation happens well enough, or maybe when I'm in a clear enough mind to grasp meaning, I do like the field. "How to be Good," about Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit, 68, meets that requirement. The best lines come in summary near the end:
He sees that we have the ability to make the future much better than the past, or much worse, and he knows that he will not live to discover which turns out to be the case. He knows that the way we act toward future generations will be partly determined by our beliefs about what matters in life, and whether we believe that anything matters at all. This is why he continues to try to desperately to prove that there is such a thing as moral truth.
Goat cheese and butternut squash ravioli, in a basil and pesto sauce. With roasted Brussels sprouts (not brussel sprouts, apparently) and a salad of beets, arugula and feta. With challah bread, real butter, sage cheese, apples, hummus, and more cheese. With a Prince Michel 2006 Barrel Select Chardonnay. With the making of roasted pumpkin seeds and pie from this great gourd below. I am a happy Halloween camper.
Halloween brunch This morning's brunch involved a candy corn mimosa (courtesy candy corn-infused vodka, which tasted as cheerful and seasonal as you'd hope), crawfish cakes Benedict (my first time eating crawfish, a win), and an it's-a-small-world-after-all-singalong-worthy group of friends, whom I met 12 years ago, two years ago, and two months ago, and who have met each other through other wonderful routes entirely.
In the fall issue of Northwestern, the "Class Notes" and time march on.
From the class of 1940: "At 91, she now is a widow, and she writes, 'It is just me and the squirrels!' " And from 1960: Grad student grad "last November married [Ms. First Last], whom he had dated nearly 60 years ago when they attended Nebraska Wesleyan University together. [And in] 2008 they reunited, spent time together and rediscovered a special relationship." Last, a 1963 alum "of San Francisco sent a haiku: 'Living alone now / Forty-five years of law books / Pan still plays his pipes.' "
The company considered donating to the University a portion of the proceeds from sales of the suit to alumni. Unfortunately, demand was lower than expected, Dunn says, "I'll stick with selling khakis and and white oxfords for now," he quips.
Bonobos still has jackets for sale, and I'm so tempted. But let's face it. The jacket would look ridiculous without the pants. With purple, I do believe it's go big or go home. Go Eagles. Go Wildcats. Go purple.
Someday, maybe not today, I will own — and don — a purple suit.
Taken with a variety of phones by a variety of people as we consumed a variety of beers and sugar-filled, pumpkin-flavored desserts outside. Thanks to friend Beth as always for hospitality and good times. Thanks also to Blue Moon for making vaguely pumpkin beer. Happy Halloween weekend, people! And, yes, a pumpkin drinking his relatives is spooky.
Was fortunate to hear new Folger Library chief Michael Witmore give a great talk Wednesday night, "Data-Mining Shakespeare." Among other research, he's collaborated with fellow profs in using the text-analysis tool Docuscope for illuminating word-by-word scans of the Bard's plays.
What did the scans turn up? Insights into genre. Software was able to group the plays relatively into comedies, tragedies and histories, all by looking at words and phrases. Not the expected ones either, mind you, not just "I love you," "I die," "Hey, you get to be the king now." On the far end of the comedy scale was The Merry Wives of Windsor because it scored highly for use of the first person and interior thought. This word choice made sense for a plot about two people trying to get together.
With the histories, you see more descriptive writing and comparatively less of the comedy qualities. With the tragedies, they fall somewhat in the middle but with exceptions. Witmore cited Othello as dastardly that way. Othello's word choices score almost as high as The Merry Wives for comedy qualities. But the effect is Shakespeare leading you into a trap, lulling you into a peaceful spirit at the most basic — practically innate — language levels, even as plot suggests otherwise, then shanking you.
Witmore ended with a metaphor of Eadweard Muybridge's early series of photos of a horse gallop. One of the first times film captured motion, Muybridge proved there was a point in the gallop where the horse had no hooves touching the ground. Before the shots, we couldn't see that moment, too distracted by the horse's greater movement, the obvious dramatic attraction of the legs and the head, and even if we tried, too slow with our own motion-capture to keep up. But a repeated moment of flying through the air did occur, part of the horse's great propulsion.
The same happened with Shakespeare. While the acting and plot stole our attention, as soliloquies held our emotions, the playwright worked the language all the way down, every word taking us toward his ends.
On a different measure, Witmore did well at explaining how technology and traditional text analysis can complement each other, alternating in unlocking new avenues for examination. A bunch of us from NPR Digital Media went: two coders, two librarians, myself from product dev. After the talk, we each appeared to have a good deal of mulling going on. I also enjoyed seeing Witmore at full speed. He struck me as interesting yet somewhat nervous when I saw him interview Robert Pinsky at the Folger last month. But Wednesday night he was a natural lecturer and promising for the city's culture in how he mixed arts, tech and emotion.
Hoping to do some catch-up tonight amid catch-up on laundry, dishes, and the general state of my currently chaotic home. To come: pictures from Jeff and Mollie's wedding, pictures from an amazing maize maze adventure, a report from a terrific play in D.C., the latest on Date Lab encounters, and a stack of other things sitting next to my keyboard.
Headed to wedding prep shortly. If you know Jeff, this song works great.
The other night, I was struggling with what to say at Jeff and Mollie's rehearsal dinner. Jonny was speaking too, and he and I went round and round on how to approach it. We considered writing a ridiculous song together. We considered being the good angel and bad angel over Jeff's shoulders. (Guess who would have been which.) We then went solo, but I was still stuck until Lori texted some advice Thursday night. She described giving a toast at her sister's wedding and told me, "You will do well because you care about him and that is all that matters." I was grateful. A few minutes later, words began to flow.
…
How long have I known Jeff? I’ve known Jeff so long… that when we were first friends, in grade school, our principal would confuse us. We looked that similar. Then he got a different haircut! And what a long, strange trip that haircut would be. But when Jeff commits, he commits.
For instance, to friendship.
Like, when you met Jeff at the picnic before kindergarten, at Blessed Sacrament, you were clearly going to spend the next nine years of grade school in your funny blue uniforms, sitting together at lunch.
Or on the field trip to the amusement park at the end of eighth grade, when you weren’t a fan of the roller coasters, and he hung out with you all day. Or in high school, waiting in the cold outside the Metro stop for you and the rest of the gang to arrive, even when he lived the closest and had gotten there first. Or senior year, when prom didn’t go well, and he cheered you up the whole next week. “I am like Peter,” he wrote in an email. “The rock upon which you build your social life.”
Or in college when you came back for break and weren’t really sure what was what anymore, and he said to come out to Maryland for the night. Meet some people, he said, get out there. And you had a great night. Or still later in life, this past winter, when you were still a little lost, he basically said the same thing, and next thing you knew you were on vacation with him, Mollie and their friends in the mountains.
Jeff has never been afraid to put himself out there. He has never been afraid to commit. Or maybe more accurately, when he has been afraid — you see it in his eyes ever now and then — he’s typically, eventually, pushed that feeling aside and moved ahead. This trait has brought him a good, great, life, and it’s something I’ve always looked up to him for.
He will commit — to friendship, to haircuts, to football every day after school in the neighborhood park, to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day, to pools, in particular to Speedos, to music, to volume, to so many things and people for whom he truly cares — like now, in more life-changing scale, to Mollie. When he fell hard for her, it was easy to see, at the very beginning, how right it was. This was the haircut. This was the Speedo. This was the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And as wonderful as she is, she proved right his belief in commitment.
That’s why we’ll always love Jeff. And why he’ll always love us. And love Mollie, most especially. Congratulations on this happy day.
Jeff's wedding is near, very near — groomsman tux on my closet door, rehearsal dinner tomorrow night (or, at this late hour, tonight) — so I enjoyed this recent New Yorker passage (abstract) I ran across today.
In what is probably Simenon's most poignant book, "Maigret's Memoirs" (1851), our hero remembers a time when he was an apprentice policeman, on a bike. A friend invites him to a party given by some government people. He goes, but he feels awkward and ill-dressed. At one point, he is standing next to a full plate of petits fours. He reaches out for one, then, without thinking, another and another. Eventually, he looks down and sees, to his mortification, that he has eaten every last one of the little cakes. Furthermore, other guests have noticed and are staring at him in disbelief. At that moment, a girl in a blue dress comes up to him with another plate of petits fours. Would he like one? she asks, and advises him that the ones with the candied fruit on top are the best. This is the niece of the hosts, and what she is saying is that Maigret should have all the cake he wants. Her name is Louise, but she is almost never called that again, because she is soon Mme. Maigret.
Remember 
