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Where the gentle Avon flows And a trailing rambler grows There’s a window shining into the night And a casement curtain flutters and blows in candle light And a girl sits listening there To a haunting old world air As if someone played so softly below All entranced, she hears that sweet serenade of long ago All the while her wonder grows As that music comes and goes Ah, what magic makes this rare delight? Her calling awakes the midsummer night Who can it be playing out there Playing for me such a sweet air? Clavicord bells tinkling in time Why do you chime? Why do you ring, ding ding? Tell me, minstrel, tell me the tale of love you sing! Phantom answer came there none But she waited on and on Till her window grew bright with dawn’s early glow And that bygone lover haunting the night was silent below He no longer played that sweet serenade of long ago The sweet serenade of long ago Ronald Binge 1951 1599 English author Shakespeare publishes Romeo and Juliet. 1524 Italian author da Porto names Romeo Montecchi in a novella Giulietta e Romeo. 1321 Italian author Dante creates Romeo of Villanova in an epic poem Paradiso. gentle father, gentle man, gentle ghost
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American Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald 1896-1940 First published in The Smart Set magazine in June 1922, it was later included in his collection Tales of the Jazz Age. Plangent is loud, reverberating melancholy: "the plangent sound of a harpsichord".  Columbia University's English department does not officially ban Western literature, but it has shifted heavily toward a "multicultural" approach, with critics and students saying that the department actively devalues or frames the traditional Western canon as "racist" and "Eurocentric". The department has increasingly emphasized diverse, anti-colonial narratives. The teachers are radical Marxists and require politically correct pronouns: Ze / Hir / Hirs; Xe / Xem / Xyr. An example is ENGL UN1100 Intro to Latinx Literature and Culture Carlos Alonso Nugent.
Gemini Columbia University is named in honor of Christopher Columbus, a widely used poetic, personified name for America. Originally founded as King's College in 1754, the institution was renamed Columbia College in 1784, following the American War of Independence (9/3/1783) to reflect patriotic pride in the nation. NYC Azaan My reading lists are not Eurocentric. Before a road trip, American boys might exclaim, “I call shotgun.” The idea of a shotgun seat dates to the Wild West, when an armed man rode beside the driver on a stagecoach to protect passengers from possible bandits. Hollywood Westerns popularized the phrase, and by the 1950s, it was common slang.
Gemini has totaled the robberies, designated as such because they occurred outside the coach. Four to six horses pulled a standard stagecoach. The number depended on the terrain, weight of the coach, including passengers, and required speed for the journey. In the United States between 1850 and 1900, very few people were obese compared to modern standards. While obesity existed, it was rare, and average body weights were significantly lower than today. Wells Fargo 350 (1870 to 1884) California 457 (1856 to 1913) Arizona 130 (1875 to 1903) The most common stagecoach shotgun, a strictly defensive firearm, was a short-barreled (18–24 inch), side-by-side, double-barreled shotgun, referred to as a coach gun, messenger gun, or scattergun. These were favored for their reliability, high close-range stopping power, and compact maneuverability in tight spaces. 4/9/2026
The Vatican rejected Ciszek's cause for beatification. Life Father Walter Joseph Ciszek, SJ, 1904-1984, was a Polish American priest and missionary in the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1963. President John F. Kennedy negotiated his release one month before being assassinated. Born in 1904 in Shenandoah, PA, to Polish immigrants, Ciszek entered the Society of Jesus in 1928. The following year, he learned that Pope Pius XI was calling on seminarians to enter a new Russian center in Rome to prepare priests for work in Russia. He was ordained in 1937. He was assigned to work in Poland. When war broke out in 1939, Ciszek was able to enter Russia with false identification papers. He worked as an unskilled laborer until June 1941 when the secret police arrested him as a suspected spy. Lubyanka Ciszek was sent to the infamous Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, where he was interrogated as a Vatican spy and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in Siberia. Although forced to work in a Gulag coal mine, Ciszek found ways to hear confessions and say Mass. In 1955, his sentence ended early because he had surpassed his work quotas, and he was freed from the forced labor camp but forced to live in the Gulag city of Norilsk, where he worked in a chemical factory. In Norilsk, he and other priests cared for a growing parish but, before too long, the KGB threatened to arrest him if he continued. Missioned to another city, the KGB quickly shut him down again. Release In 1963, Fr. Ciszek learned that he was going home. In a release negotiated by JFK, he and an American student were returned to the United States in exchange for two Soviet agents. Syncretism Following his return, Fr. Ciszek worked at the syncretic John XXIII Center at Fordham University, now the syncretic Center for Eastern Christian Studies at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, until his death in 1984. Syncretic refers to the blending or merging of different, often contradictory, beliefs, cultures, or philosophies into a new, unified system, such as Haitian Voodoo, African + Catholic. Vatican 2 He believed that the Council's actual documents were sound but objected when fundamental Catholic teachings were questioned in its name. He concluded that many had used the Council to justify heterodoxy, beliefs at odds with established doctrine, through misinterpretation. He was thunderstruck by the indifference to religion in the West. Having suffered for the faith in a country where it was suppressed, he found it jarring to see many Americans treat faith as a mere formality that could be easily discarded. Ciszek did not participate in the theological debates of the 1960s—having been cut off from them for decades—and he remained a staunch defender of the Catholic faith, urging believers to follow God's will and accept the work of God rather than succumbing to the anti-clerical temptations of the era. Sabotage The New Order church killed his cause. Hamlet by William Shakespeare She's aware of Bernadette Soubirous. figures of speech: allusion; metaphor; simile rhetorical devices: double entendre; imagery; irony; rhyme Can you find Catholic math in one of the dresses? The boat displays the Fibonacci Sequence, uncovered by Catholic Leonardo Bonacci. He introduced the sequence to Western Europe in his 1202 book, Liber Abaci, where he used it to calculate the growth of a rabbit population. Beyond the sequence, he is responsible for introducing the Hindu Arabic numeral system (0-9), replacing Roman numerals. Swift wrote and produced the track alongside Max Martin and Shellback, The Life of a Showgirl. Lyrics I heard you calling On the megaphone You wanna see me all alone As legend has it you Are quite the pyro You light the match to watch it blow And if you'd never come for me I might've drowned in the melancholy I swore my loyalty to me, myself, and I Right before you lit my sky up [lit up my sky] All that time I sat alone in my tower You were just honing your powers Now I can see it all (see it all) Late one night You dug me out of my grave and Saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia Keep it one hundred On the land, the sea, the sky Pledge allegiance to your hands Your team, your vibes Don't care where the hell you been 'Cause now you're mine It's 'bout to be the sleepless night You've been dreaming of The fate of Ophelia The eldest daughter of a nobleman Ophelia lived in fantasy But love was a cold bed full of scorpions The venom stole her sanity And if you'd never come for me I might've lingered in purgatory You wrap around me like a chain, a crown, a vine Pulling me into the fire All that time I sat alone in my tower You were just honing your powers Now I can see it all (see it all) Late one night You dug me out of my grave and Saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia Keep it one hundred On the land, the sea, the sky Pledge allegiance to your hands Your team, your vibes Don't care where the hell you been 'Cause now you're mine It's 'bout to be the sleepless night You've been dreaming of The fate of Ophelia 'Tis locked inside my memory And only you possess the key No longer drowning and deceived All because you came for me Locked inside my memory And only you possess the key No longer drowning and deceived All because you came for me All that time I sat alone in my tower You were just honing your powers Now I can see it all (I can see it all) Late one night You dug me out of my grave and Saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia Keep it one hundred On the land, the sea, the sky Pledge allegiance to your hands Your team, your vibes Don't care where the hell you been 'Cause now you're mine It's 'bout to be the sleepless night You've been dreaming of The fate of Ophelia You saved my heart from the fate of Ophelia the thinking of a woman Marilyn Monroe The Birth of Venus Italian: Nascita di Venere Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli 1484-1486  Updike
John Updike (1932-2009), author of Rabbit, Run, published 1960, was an antinomian WASP and closet Jew. An antinomian believes that Christians are released by grace from the obligation of observing the moral law. The last Rabbit novel, Rabbit at Rest, published 1990, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The founder of the Pulitzer Prize, Joseph Pulitzer, was born to Jewish parents in Hungary in 1847. While he was of Magyar Jewish origin and raised in a Jewish home, he married a protestant, did not raise his children as Jews, and did not publicly identify with Judaism in later life. Pritzker Jay Robert Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, born 1965, is a Jew.
He has been a prominent voice against rising antisemitism [misspelled], often linking this work to his and his family's history, with the Holocaust, WTTW +6 (end of Gemini AI) Prevost Robert Francis Prevost, born Chicago 1955, aka Leo, is the same. I made a decision in my Jesuit high school between Rabbit, Run and The Grapes of Wrath and correctly chose the latter, the Holy Ghost at work. Don't be fooled.  Recommendation
I highly recommend this AD 1999 book, an anthology of short stories set in India and New England and written by Jhumpa Lahiri. My student brought me up to date: Urdu is a combination of Arabic, Farsi, and Punjabi, an Indo-Aryan language spoken by as many as 150 million people and in India's Punjab state. Doomscrolling (Gemini) The book is an antidote to doomscrolling, the compulsive, habitual consumption of negative news on social media, often leading to anxiety, depression, and poor sleep, widely practiced with 31% of American adults doing it daily. It is especially prevalent among Gen Z (51%) and Gen Y (46%), often driven by anxiety, boredom, and the need to feel in control. Women and people with trauma histories are also highly vulnerable. Even Gen A is doing it, leading to children who don't know how to read or do simple math. Gen Y 1981-1996 Gen Z 1997-2012 Gen A 2010-2024 Consult my Reading List. Jack London b. 1/12/1876 San Francisco d. 11/22/1916 Glen Ellen, 50 miles north, age 40 death cert: uremic poisoning following renal colic, kidney failure/stones His most famous novels are The Call of the Wild and White Fang, set in the Yukon. Published in 1909 when he was 33, Martin Eden is focused on the life, struggles, and inner world of a single man. It follows a working-class sailor's obsessive pursuit of education, fame as a writer, and high-society love, which ultimately leads to profound disillusionment and isolation. Chapter 1 1893 Sealing Voyage At age 17, London signed on to the sealing schooner Sophie Sutherland. After spending time in the Bering Sea, the ship stopped in Yokohama, where London spent time exploring the city and surrounding areas. 1904 War Correspondent London returned to Yokohama, arriving 1/25/1904 aboard the steam ship Siberia to cover the Russo-Japanese War for the Hearst syndicate. The Japanese military placed restrictions on journalists, resulting in multiple arrests and confrontations with officials. He documented the conflict before being forced to leave. Teddy Roosevelt, who visited San Francisco in 1903, had intervened. https://www.loc.gov/item/00694419/ Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
It is a chronic autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks the body's own tissues and organs, including skin, joints, kidneys, and brain. God spared Mary Flannery O'Connor by giving her that. He spared her of all the changes, for she died 1964, on the brink of an apostatic church, but he didn't spare me, baptized just three years before. He works in strange ways, don't He? "Temple of the Holy Ghost" and "Revelation" are numbers 68 and 69. Detective Jeff O'Driscoll
Summit County Utah Sheriff's Office Notice the unusual shape on his forehead, cup/chalice. George B. Severson The Jew, ABC4 Utah, has a truly diabolical name. KPCW KPCW of NPR had its federal funding slashed. https://www.kpcw.org/ Lisa Darden The mother of Richins had a female lover. https://townlift.com/2024/03/mother-of-kouri-richins-under-investigation-for-2006-death-of-her-partner/ The Indian tribe in Catholic Ernest Hemingway's short story "Indian Camp" is not explicitly named within the text, but they are understood to be Ojibwe, aka Ojibway or Chippewa. Based on his upbringing in Northern Michigan, Hemingway’s portrayal is rooted in his experiences with the Ojibwe and Ottawa tribes in that region. David Publishing +1 Ernest died at 61 from a self-inflicted gunshot. It is true that my dad killed himself in a much worse way, and you will never know how, and I loved him more. By the end I realized that the Latino thug dreamt up in the novel was the character I loved most. Poe 1809-1849 wrote and first published "The Fall of the House of Usher" in 1839. It appeared in the September issue of Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and was later included in his collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. So sophisticated a short story, I would not place it in my list, until now. He died on October 7, 1849, at 40. This is what happened. After being found delirious and in distress on a street near a tavern four days earlier, he died unconscious at Washington College Hospital, 100 N. Broadway, Baltimore, MD, cause of death a blood alcohol level that led to delirium (DTs), as noted in 2024 by University of Mary Washington. It is my opinion that Edgar was considering Catholicism as a result of contact with the Jesuits at Fordham, but we will never know until the Final Judgment. BTW, I hate all my electronics and would rather read the story to you in person. What is a Luddite?
A new moon is the first lunar phase occurring when the Moon is positioned directly between the Earth and the Sun, rendering it invisible to the naked eye. You might think that I'm anti-Semitic. Wrong. I know none more ill-willed than Catholics. Stoicism is appropriate in their presence. 10/13/1882
Gerard caught typhoid fever and died at 44. I look forward to meeting him, and I don't know what that meeting would be like. My prayer life isn't yours. I'd rather listen to a man reading the poetry or story of another man than hear recited prayers droned, and so-called mysteries aren't. "Stories Around the Opium Lamp" refers to the original, gritty pulp fiction stories of Boston Blackie created by Jack Boyle in the 1910s, published in The American Magazine. These tales portrayed the character as a reformed, expert thief who frequented opium dens, setting a dark, atmospheric tone far different from later, sanitized radio, and film adaptations. fictional character Blackie safecracker, Boston/California newspaperman and detective Opium: The raw, dried latex (resin) is taken from the poppy plant. Opiates are natural drugs derived directly from opium (e.g., morphine, codeine, thebaine). Opioids is a broader term that includes natural opiates, as well as semi-synthetic (e.g., oxycodone) and fully synthetic drugs (e.g., fentanyl). Jack Boyle b. 1881 San Francisco, d. 1928 Portland, OR, 46 My uncle's beat: Chinatown 40s/50s (Sgt. John Leahy, SFPD) Opening Day, GG Bridge 5/27/1937 "Pedestrian Day" That is probably Matson's Lurline.  Definition
Merriam-Webster Dictionary adjective, of or relating to human beings or the period of their existence on Earth Use of the word With natural habitats disappearing all the time, finding a way to shelter within anthropic culture might be a good strategy.--Rebecca Giggs, The New Yorker, 2/19/2024 OpenAI OpenAI was founded in 2015 by a group including Sam Alman, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Greg Brockman, Wojciech Zaremba, and others as a non-profit aimed at developing safe, beneficial Artificial General Intelligence. Sam Altman currently serves as CEO, having led its transition to a capped-profit entity, while Elon Musk departed in 2018. Anthropic Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, including Dario Amodei, who is the current CEO. The two companies are competitors in the AI industry. Anthropic Public Benefit Corporation is an American artificial intelligence company headquartered in San Francisco. It has developed a family of large language models named Claude. Claude Shannon Claude Shannon was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer widely recognized as the "father of information theory". His 1948 paper, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", established the foundations for digital communication and the concept of the "bit". Amazon & Google In September 2023, Amazon announced an investment of up to $4 billion. Google committed $2 billion the next month. Elon Musk He says that Anthropic is evil and misanthropic, believing the worst of human nature and motives and having a sneering disbelief in the selflessness of others. Mrinank Sharma Announcing that he would return to writing poetry and become invisible, he resigned from Anthropic 2/9/2026. Silicon Satan 1925 convex like a cup Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ, 1844-1889   One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
The novella follows Ivan Denisovich Shukov over the course of a day during his internment at a Soviet Gulag labor camp. The book was banned for its horrific portrayal of totalitarianism and the Soviet regime, and the author was exiled. First published in November 1962, the novella was written by Russian writer and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, based on Solzhenitsyn's own experiences as a prisoner. The novella was removed for objectionable language at the Milton High School library (New Hampshire) 1976. It was challenged by Mahwah, New Jersey, 1976; Omak, Washington, 1979; and Mohawk Trail Regional High School, Buckland, Massachusetts, 1981. All are blue Democratic strongholds. The 1970 film with English subtitles is on YouTube. Dates matter: 1962, the last edition of the Latin Mass Missal is published; 1970, the New Mass is in full swing, and French Archbishop Marcel François Marie Joseph Lefebvre FSSPX founds the Society of Saint Pius X. Ivan Denisovich is the odd one out, as are Solzhenitsyn and Lefebvre. I'm just connecting the iotas and periods. GAIVS IVLIVS CAESAR RŌMA Gaius Cassius to Marcus Brutus I have not from your eyes that gentleness And show of love as I was wont to have. You bear too stubborn and too strange a hand Over your friend that loves you. Marcus Brutus Brutus responds to Cassius poor Brutus, with himself at war, Forgets the shows of love to other men. Marcus Antonius Friends am I with you all and love you all. It is not meet you know how Caesar loved you. You are not wood, you are not stones, but men. (All the conspirators were men.)  Google AI Overview Q. Did China buy oil from Venezuela? A. Yes, China has been a major buyer of Venezuelan oil, often through complex deals involving debt repayment and purchases by independent refiners, despite U.S. sanctions, though the volume has fluctuated and recent events (early Jan 2026) have created uncertainty, with China seeking alternative suppliers like Iran and Russia to fill gaps. Key Details:
oil tanker seized The answer is as independent as can be, but they use due to incorrectly. Use due to after the eight forms of the infinitive to be (be, am, is, are, was, were, being, and been).
Baa, baa, black sheep,
Have you any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir, Three bags full. One for the master, And one for the dame, And one for the little boy Who lives down the lane. All right, so here an animal answers. Isolation and loneliness cause the imagination to invent. In the 13th century, King Edward I of England imposes a "sheep tax", requiring a portion of all wool produced be handed over. The master and the dame overreach, and the mob is angry. Recite it meekly until the last line. The verb adumbrate comes from Latin, combining the prefix ad- ("to, toward") with umbra ("shade, shadow") to form the verb adumbrāre ("to cast a shadow on, shade, outline"), and from umbra we get umbrella. English borrowed the past participle adumbrātus around the 1530s-1580s, giving us adumbrate, meaning to sketch in outline, foreshadow, or prefigure, like casting a faint shadow or outline of something larger. What qualities in Christ are adumbrated by the farmer, the winegrower, the king, the servant, the martyr, the shepherd, and the fisherman? Every convert or revert can adumbrate Christ, but it takes time and thought and the realization that you are the outsider.
California San Bruno YouTube YouTube, owed by Alphabet/Google, never released any video of Nasim Aghdam approaching the YT building or killing herself and injuring three employees inside. Aghdam, 39, an Iranian American, went by the online name of Yeşil Nasim (which translates to Green Nasim) and had four YouTube channels: three for English, Turkish, Farsi, and one for "hand art". She described herself as a vegan bodybuilder and animal rights activist. Other news agencies from around the world, police departments, and the Mountain View Police Department released footage. Google bought YouTube on October 9, 2006, for $1.65 billion in stock, with the deal closing in November. YouTube then became part of Google, and subsequently part of Google's parent company, Alphabet, after Alphabet's formation in 2015. Alphabet The monolith owns 1) DoubleClick; 2) Fitbit; 3) Looker; 4) Mandiant; 5) Nest; and 6) Waze. Google (Alphabet) has acquired about 262 companies. These acquisitions are used to eliminate competition, increase the number of products and services that Google can market to consumers, and improve or expand existing Google products. Some recent acquisitions have set the stage for the company's journey into artificial intelligence, robotics, cybersecurity, and more. Mountain View Mountain View is HQ for Googleplex
Mountain View is a hub for tech, finance, education, AI, and software development. It is very cost-prohibitive to live there, even for Google employees. Google's Own AI Real-World Silicon Valley
If you search billionaire Peter Thiel, you will be astounded at what he owns and does. He is "married" to Matt Danzeisen, and they have children together. Charles Matthew Danzeisen is an American financier and investor and was vice president of BlackRock before becoming portfolio manager at Thiel Capital in 2008. His surname has strong roots in Baden, Germany. Microsoft Much stronger and more vociferous comments and mass exits from Windows 11, which replaces Windows 10, are occurring. Apple Take a close look at the logo. The logo is directly related to the Greek word logos, meaning "word", "reason", or "speech". Who bit the apple? Eve. Who is the second Eve? Mary. Who is the second Adam and the logos? Christ. Founders Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, now in his 90s, are Jews. Steve Jobs, deceased, was adopted, and his biological father was Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian Muslim immigrant to the US. Three figures The three figures of speech of Greek derivation, as defined by Aristotle, whose philosophy was incorporated into Catholic philosophy by Thomas Aquinas, and that form the bedrock of effective persuasion by appealing to an audience's trust, feelings, and intellect, and must be faced by every writer are
Dante's Inferno 지옥 CA elec car defeat Silicon Valley Silicon Satan  Googleplex Mountain View photo courtesy of Clio  Apple Park
Cupertino Getty levitating Saint Joseph of Cupertino, Italian Franciscan friar 1603-1663 |
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