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  • RIP WFB

    I finished up my lunchtime emailing and web-browsing and before getting back to work clicked over to a news site just to see if anything major had happened in the last couple of hours, and I see that William F. Buckley, Jr. has died. I'm not surprised; I had read that he was devastated when…

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  • Luminarium

    Ryan C. let me know of the existence of Luminarium, an excellent site devoted mainly to English literature from medieval times to the 18th century. It includes, or links to, works, biographies, criticism, and anything else that seems relevant. There’s a book store with links to Amazon for purchasing books by or about the authors,…

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  • You know, it’s funny how blog discussions go: who’d have thought that a very brief post linking to an article about people who have trouble deciding between their interior decor and their children would have ended up going deep into the question of how we evaluate the authority of a controversial teaching of the Church?…

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  • Desire and Expectation Somewhere in a recent discussion here about music the blogger who calls herself Pentimento noted that popular music is especially focused on emotions of desire and longing that are particularly useful for a consumer society. The first part of that statement is something I’ve noticed for a long time. I’d never thought…

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  • The Jasmine Also Is Too Hasty

    However, there are no freezing temperatures predicted for the next few days, so perhaps they will all survive this time. But I fear they will learn the wrong lesson from their good fortune. Pre-TypePad http://js-kit.com/for/lightondarkwater.com/comments.js

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  • This Plant Is Not Very Smart

    This is an azalea, one of many in our yard. Every year, we have some warm days in February. Every year, the azaleas bloom enthusiastically. Nothing will convince them that the warm weather is not here to stay. And almost every year we get a freeze in late February or early March that reduces these…

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  • …partly because I can’t think of anything to say. Pre-TypePad http://js-kit.com/for/lightondarkwater.com/comments.js

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  • Newman’s Dream of Gerontius I mentioned a week or two ago that one of my aims for Lent is to get to know Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius (not Gerontion, as I keep mistakenly saying—that’s Eliot), based on Newman’s poem of the same name. Thinking I ought to familiarize myself with the poem first,…

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  • Where I’m From

    Over at the Crunchy Con blog, Rod Dreher describes his perfect Valentine’s Day dinner: On the menu: to start, a dozen briny raw oysters, slurped from the shell and washed down with cold Chablis. Then a bottle of Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame. A simple salad with warm, crusted goat cheese. Halibut in an herbaceous…

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  • I’m a little late in linking to this, as the discussion seems to have petered out, at least for the moment, but I thought I’d mention it for those (if any) who might read this blog but not Touchstone’s. It’s a post by Anthony Esolen responding to an article on the question of whether it’s…

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