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John Pritchard, Tragedian: 1830-1868

Seems to have been a rather handsome chap, and rather too obviously proud of it - given that this is the only sculpted head of the deceased in any of the three Jesmond cemeteries.

A "Tragedian" was a (self-styled*) serious actor of the Classics; and this is ...

I've just finished reading When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams -- a good read overall, though perhaps a bit too Creative Writing for some tastes.

I started reading it at about the same time that I started Words of Them Liberated, and in "Breadcrumbs, iron pens, and avian epigraphs" I noted the coincidence ...

The problems of this mortal life are (essentially) evil and entropy. Those who are honest and give the matter thought, acknowledge that these problems are intractable, incurable - they always have been, everywhere.

Some people assert that this is good enough, Life as it is and has-been is basically fine...

But in ...

I had a dream with no visual component, just music: a single cello playing, with great intensity and virtuosity, the Beatles song "With a Little Help from My Friends." It's been in my head all day -- the cello version from my dream, that is, which appears not yet to exist in the waking world, though I did check ...

A lot of poetry sites now append an "AI analysis" to the end of each poem -- as if anyone who loves poetry ever asked them to smear its sacred pages with that filth!

Today, wanting to read Emily Dickinson's "From Blank to Blank" while away from my library, I turned to one of these sites. When I reached the end of the ...

to be a professional writer now you have to be a small business owner. i don’t want to do that. first, i’m not really cut out for business. and whenever i tried to make a job out of things i liked to do i ended up hating the thing (and the effect can last a very long time, depending on how much investment ...

2020 was the year when there was a completely successful coup in which global-totalitarianism took-over all the nations of the world; conclusive evidence for which was that the various previous governance procedures of nations were displaced by diktat - and under such a system the peoples of the whole world were ...

The vast and endless stream of drivel on the subject of the supernatural superpowers of "AI" continues - and it will continue until the funding dries-up.

Those many thousands of propagandists on the "AI" payroll will keep doing what they are being "paid" to do (remembering that "payment" comes in many shapes and ...

All over the media (mass and "alternative") are explanations of how the such-and-such Big Nation has made a Big Bistake, because badly advised, because influenced by X, because over-optimistic, because poor intelligence, because too greedy... or because whatever.

It's all "A Big Mistake" of some kind... supposedly; ...

Free time! -- but how am I supposed To write a half-so-weighty tomeAs Marcus in his head composedWhile waging war and ruling Rome?

Last week my wife and I were the first to celebrate a new festival that we originated: "Aunt Grace Day"...

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JRR Tolkien's Aunt Grace

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Last week, my wife and I decided to establish a new tradition of celebrating the anniversary day of the death of JRR Tolkien's Aunt Grace, by laying some flowers on her grave - this being the most tangible link between JRRT and Newcastle upon Tyne.

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During a break between classes, I was working on my very long (and still unfinished) post trying to reconstruct the hypothetical 1 Zenos document from quotations and allusions in various parts of the Book of Mormon and Bible. When I stopped to teach my evening class (7:50-9:20), I had just been writing about Samuel ...

Michael and I were not the only Europeans living in Yercaud. I mentioned Sofie de Mello from Germany in a previous Indian Story post but there were a few other European residents there as well. One, an Englishman, Vic Tate by name, had been born in India around 1915. I say he was an Englishman because all his ...

I dreamt that there were two colonies in Antarctica. I had first visited the one run by a man named Campbell whose motto was "We must maintain a warlike atmosphere in Antarctica." He talked about this a lot, and about the need for "a war of all against all" in his colony. Members of the colony would compete to be ...

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Assuming that we acknowledge it as a real possibility, and have not pre-decided that it cannot be true; we can know that our soul is is not bounded by mortal life (our conception and death).

We can know this directly and for-ourselves - simply by remembering our past experience.

If we have personal knowledge of ...

The players bow; the watchers rise.The program printed on the pageHas reached its end, and now no eyesBut God's alone are on the stage. The curtain falls; they file away. I have not yet begun to play.

Now comes a dark both thick and deep,And misty paths before me lie.I pray the Lord my soul to keep,And let me ...

Though almost everyone else in my family wears glasses, I have enjoyed excellent visual acuity all my life. Every time I've had it tested, for routine physicals and such, it's been 20/10, placing me in the top 1% of the population. Until recently, my close-range vision has been excellent, too. Back when I was a poor ...

The spiritual is primary, and includes the material.

Therefore every material problem necessarily has a spiritual dimension.

But mainstream modern materialism denies the reality of the spiritual - and insofar as the spiritual is acknowledged (e.g. by churches) it is secondary to the material.

(e.g. Churches ...

Not so much preferring "the lesser of evils" - because how could we really know which was lesser? More like recognizing that one side actively seeks to destroy good wherever possible (at home, and abroad) - and at whatever cost to itself.

Not so much wanting one side to win and the other to lose; as it being ...

I've finally finished The Words of Them Which Have Slumbered. Two new themes are introduced near the end of this 169-page book: breadcrumbs and an iron pen.

On p. 133, we read that "a trail came they upon, as of bread crumb's lighted upon a dark forest lain," and some were "carried by those crumbs to a course ...

I often have unpleasant dreams just before waking; and if I try to go back to sleep after one such, I simply return to the dream.

At one level, I take this to be telling me "You have had enough sleep: time to get-up!"

But if I set aside the specific content of the dreams, and instead consider what the dream makes ...

I posted this image back in August 2024, in "Round leaves and chip monks":

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It's the sign for a restaurant that closed long ago and was called Round Leaves, with a logo depicting golden leaves that aren't particularly round. I was interested in it at the time because of various syncs about "leaves ...

my recent renewed infatuation with music led to calling the series diminished discords (also i liked the name of the last one, Wee Wisdom, the repetition of the W, so i wanted something with the same format; the other option was bizarre babbling, dodged a bullet there, uh). and now i think the name is causing me to ...

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The crew of a Handley Page Halifax heavy bomber - some Sergeant's stripes evident

The extremely high casualties in RAF Bomber Command, throughout the Second World War - with roughly half of crews killed, more than 50,000 men* - was mostly among Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs)

All RAF aircrew ...

People are apparently unable to grasp the very simple fact that the "subfertility*" of all the populations of all the developed nations is a strategic choice of biological extinction.

The peoples of the modern world are willing their own annihilation.

Of course, the averaged population choice in favour of death is ...

The tempest sync theme reminded me of a hymn that confused me as a child:

Master, the tempest is raging!The billows are tossing high!The sky is o'ershadow'd with blackness,No shelter or help is nigh;Carest thou not that we perish?How canst thou lie asleep,When each moment so madly is threat'ning,A grave in the angry ...

I just read J. M. Smith's recent series at the Orthosphere on apocalyptic literature: "Servants of the Saints of the Most High," "Apocalypse is Neither Cryptic History Nor Cryptic News," and "Myth is Cathartic and Not Cryptic."

The second post in the series discusses the meaning of the biblical phrase "son of man," ...

I was listening to a recording of the Book of Isaiah while doing some routine paperwork for my school. At the very moment that I wrote Ariel -- the English name of one of my students -- Isaiah said:

Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt! (Isa. 29:1)

That's all so far, but these minor syncs are often a ...