Saturday, March 31, 2018

Photo of the Day: Cadman Plaza Park, Brooklyn, NY


Hard to believe, but it’s been almost a year and a half since I took this image of Cadman Plaza Park, on the border between Brooklyn Heights and downtown Brooklyn. So much has happened since then, and opportunities for photos—particularly since late last summer—have been fleeting.

Well, maybe more this spring…

Quote of the Day (Nathaniel Hawthorne, on the Imprisonment of the Heart)


“What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!”—American novelist/short-story writer Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864), The House of the Seven Gables (1851)

Friday, March 30, 2018

Quote of the Day (W. H. Auden, on the Way From ‘Miraculous Birth’ to ‘Dreadful Martyrdom’)


“About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.”—English poet W. H. Auden (1907-1973), “Musee des Beaux Arts,” in Another Time (1940)

W.H. Auden was inspired to write these verses by a December 1938 visit to the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique in Brussels. Among the “masters” he might have been struck by would have been Dutch painter Cornelis Engebrechtsz (ca. 1461–1527), whose oil-and-wood painting The Crucifixion with Donors and Saints Peter and Margaret hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Thursday, March 29, 2018

Quote of the Day (Admiral Byrd, on People’s Unused ‘Deep Wells of Strength’)


“Few men during their lifetime come anywhere near exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strength that are never used.”—Polar explorer Admiral Richard E. Byrd (1888-1957), Alone (1938)

Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Quote of the Day (Roger Kahn, on Baseball’s Opening Day)


“Every baseball season begins with hope. Winter has passed. We have all survived, and even in the Northeast the ice is gone. Willows show a hint of color. The spirit quickens with the promise of June roses. Besides, on opening day, even the worst team has not yet lost a game.” —Sportswriter Roger Kahn, Good Enough to Dream (2014)

This post is for those of us who feel that one of the most beautiful sights in the world is a baseball diamond. Play ball!

(I took the photo accompanying this post in August 2016, at my company's summer outing to Yankee Stadium. The season was pretty well over then, but, looking back now, it seemed like we were seeing the dawn of a new hope, as the then-"Baby Bombers" Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez hit home runs.)