maîtres artisans

I always hated smoking, since the time I was a kid, partly because cigarettes are noxious and perhaps even more so because I watched two uncles suffer (one fatally) from the effects of cigarettes. Aside from an occassional cigar, most of my adult life has been as distant from tobacco as I could manage. There was always one exception - the sweet smell of pipe tobacco, which is like incense in the nostrils of God.

Two American classic blenders still at work:

Peretti and Wilke, both in Massachusetts.

https://ljperetti.com/product-category/l-j-peretti-tobacco-cat/

https://www.wilkepipetobacco.com/history

Where to start? Where to end?

Prayer to St. Michael

 

O great and holy Michael, Archangel of God, standing at the head of the angels before the everlasting Trinity, O advocate and preserver of mankind, who – with your hosts – has broken in heaven the head of the daystar, Satan, the exceedingly proud one, and who always puts to shame his evil and cunning servants on earth, we run to you with faith and pray to you with love: be an unbreakable shield and firm bastion for the Holy Church and for our nation, protecting them with your lightning sword. Be for us a guardian angel, a wise counselor and helper of our land bringing to it from the throne of the Eternal Ruling King and Lord our God enlightenment and strength, joy, peace and comfort. Be for us the chief captain and fellow-fighter of our honorable country, crowning it with glory and victory over unjust adversaries, that all who oppose us may know that God and His holy angels stand ready to defend us. Be the physician and healer of those wounded. Be the pillar and defender of those children of the Church of God that are in captivity. And forsake not, O Archangel of God, with your help and protection, those of us who today glorify your holy name. For, behold, though we are great sinners, yet we desire not to perish in our iniquities but to turn to the Lord and be made by Him to live for good works. Illuminate our minds with the light of the Countenance of God that shines without ceasing on the lightning-like forehead, that we may understand that the will of God concerning us is good and perfect and knows all that is right for us to do, and even that which is right to omit and overlook. Strengthen by the grace of the Lord, our weak and feeble purpose, that made firm in the commandments of the Lord we may cease to wallow in earthly thoughts drawn by the lusts of the flesh as senseless children through the perishable beauties of the world. Above all these things, ask from on high for us the true spirit of repentance, true sorrow and contrition for our sins before God, that we may spend the remaining number of our days in this temporal life, not in the satisfying of our feelings and in the bondage to our passions, but in the blotting out of the evil we have done by tears of faith and heartfelt compunction, by works of charity, chastity, and holy acts of loving mercy. When the hour of our end and of our liberation from the earthly bonds of our own bodies draws near, O Archangel of God, leave us not without defense against the earthly spirits of evil who try to hinder the entry of man into the heavenly places. Preserved by you, may we, without hindrance, reach those all-glorious dwelling-places of Paradise where there is neither sorrow nor sighing but only life without end. May we be made worthy to behold the Face of our all-gracious Lord and Master, and falling at His feet with tears may we cry out in joy and tender feeling: Glory to You, our most tender, dear Redeemer, who, because of Your great love for us, your unworthy servants and handmaidens, have been pleased to send Your angels in the service of our salvation! For all the powers of heaven praise You, and we give glory, honor and thanksgiving to You, Father , Son and Holy Spirit, now and ever and forever. Amen.

Pineville Plan

 Photo from the Pineville Inn in Bucks County, PA, which served as a meeting place for Gen. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. Here was drafted the plan to cross the Delaware and launch the daring attack on Hessian troops. 

Its a wild place to sit in many respects, not least as it raises the observation that Americans are oddly alienated not just from the culture, but the details of their history. Washington and Hamilton are now portrayed as mild and democratic "founding fathers" of our present order. That perspective from the standpoint of our fourth Republic is borderline mad, as each of the Republics have been a radically new form of government that arose under the specific sociological and economic conditions of its era. But none so unusual to today than the first.

Washington himself is best understood as a warlord who took Cinncinatus as his template (as his contemporaries often noted). And I think we fail to note how he looked at war - Washington was noted for pushing for government payment for scalpers. He waged war not just on the British and their proxies but also on American reticent over whiskey taxes. Those Americans, by the way, burnt down homes and tarred and feathered government officials over the taxes. Look up what that entails....

As for Hamilton: an elitist nationalist who called democracy a "disease" and "great beast". He would have deplored nothing so much as MAGA-ism, but also the bizarre managerial liberalism that is hegemonic in the West.

Some observations over lunch, which wasn't half bad...

Superstition

The most captivating superstitions are the specific mythologies that inform any contemporary world-view - they are always wrong, usually look ridiculous in retrospect, and are the hardest to identify and view for what they are. What little insight we can gain into the actual, really human condition is rooted in the language of poetry - analogic and metaphoric - rather than syllogism; those insights are often obscured by the rigidity of dominant thought-forms. Do we know where myth ends and truth begins? Of course not: anyone who tells you they do is either a liar or under extraordinary self-delusion. I'll give you a very honest opinion: I don't think there is a time in history that has been so thoroughly dominated by groundless and ignorant opinions marching under the banner of certainty and absolutism as we have before us now. Whatever creative, imaginative, and probing flashes of insight or even brilliance we've had as a collective species about ourselves in the past, we seem to be locked in a deep and abiding period of regression marked by furious self-congratulation and mostly pointless activities. But as Thomas Carlyle noted, "Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight."

Eis Polla Eti Despota

 

Spermatikos Logos

Homer, Thucydides, Aristotle, Plato and Plutarch

Searle gone

Fun fact: with zero qualifications other than interest and some undergrad courses in philosophy and intellectual history (shout out to some stellar professors for stimulating my interest including Ellen Kennedy, Charles Kahn and Alan Kors), I applied to do my doctorate under Searle at Berkeley. Apparently my enthusiasm was insufficient grounds for induction and I was not accepted. Such is life. I did however find Searle's work stimulating for decades after and often raise the Chinese Room argument with colleagues in the AI space.

Memory eternal.

Maine Rodents

 

Porcupines everywhere "down east."

stikhar iz rossii

 

The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.

This present moment

 I sat upon the shore

Fishing, with the arid plain behind me

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon—O swallow swallow

Le Prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie

These framents I have shored against my ruins

MacIntyre, Memory Eternal

 There are a handful of living thinkers that have made me re-think fundamental presuppositions that I held consciously (or not) for some time in my early life. Each, in his own way, a genius - but in particular a genius in re-shaping the conceptualization of an intellectual space for me. Until yesterday they were in no particular order, Noam Chomsky, David Bentley Hart, John Milbank, Michael Hudson, Alain de Benoist and Alasdair MacIntyre. We recently lost Rene Girard. Now MacIntyre is no longer with us. His precise analytics, pulling insights from thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Marx, was rarely matched in the contemporary world. The hammer blow that After Virtue was to so many of my assumptions and beliefs is hard to describe - my entire view of the modern project, especially around ethics, was undone. But it was also his wisdom about the human animal and what really mattered in terms of being a human being that set him apart.

A sad day for humanity.

To the servant of God, Alasdair, Vichnaya Pamyat': may your memory be eternal!

Fate and the Individual

 

Doing God's Work

This old, old technique of barrel curing tobacco in Louisiana - making perique - just produces some of the most interesting fig-meets-plum-meets-pepper tastes imaginable. Blend that with some bright virginias and there's something super special that results. 

Rarity

Rarely do I want to purchase every book a publisher puts out. But there are exceptions to every rule.

I bow to Denise Harvey publishers for their excellent work.

Merry Christmas

 C Рождеством Христовым! Славим Его!

 Some new books to read for the Feast.

Something to warm the body and delight the soul.

An Appalachian Nativity

Christmas is almost upon us and during the preceding fast this year I've been drawn to the folk sounds of Appalachia. America has real culture, its just been hidden from us.

This beautiful - and really, I mean beautiful - folk carol And The Trees Do Moan is about as soulful as it gets. I don't know who these people are, but holy smokes are they good:

In the valley of Judea,

Cold and wintry blown,

Christ was born one frosty morning,

And the trees do moan.

Darkened skies, and men a-stumbling;

High above there shone One bright star a-moving Eastward,

Where the trees do moan.

Herod and the ruling Romans Stately sat upon the throne,

Sent the soldiers out a-looking,

And the trees do moan,  and the trees do moan.

Mary took her little baby,

Set out all alone;

Down in Egypt land they tarried,

Where the trees do moan.

Jesus then became a carpenter,

Worked with wood and stone;

Nails he drove and cross-arms fashioned,

And the trees do moan.

There one day while in the forest black,

One tree he picked for his own,

A Christmas tree,

an evergreen one,

And the trees do moan, and the trees do moan.

Now I want to say the next one genuinely surprised me - an Appalachian setting of the Byzantine hymn God Is With Us. In the Eastern Orthodox Typikon, the hymn is prescribed for compline during Great Lent, but more to the point - used in both the Nativity and Theophany Vesper services for Christmas. 

I will let the music speak for itself, except to say this is absolutely haunting.

The original text:

God is with us. Understand, all ye nations, and submit yourselves: For
God is with us.
Hear ye, even unto the uttermost ends of the earth: For God is with us.
Submit yourselves, ye mighty ones: For God is with us.
If again ye shall rise up in your might, again shall ye be overthrown:
For God is with us.
If any take counsel together, them shall the Lord destroy: For God is with us.
And the word which ye shall speak shall not abide in you: For God is with us.
For we fear not your terror, neither are we troubled: For God is with us.
But the Lord our God, He it is to Whom we will ascribe holiness, and
Him shall we fear: For God is with us.
And if I put my trust in Him, He shall be my sanctification: For God is with us.
I will set my hope on Him, and through Him shall I be saved: For God is with us.
Lo, I and the children whom God hath given me: For God is with us.
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: For God is with us.
And they that dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, on them hath
the light shined: For God is with us.
For unto us a Son is born, unto us a Child is given: For God is with us.
And the government shall be upon His shoulder: For God is with us.
And of His peace there shall be no end: For God is with us.
And his name shall be called the Angel of Great Council: For God is with us.
Wonderful, Counsellor: For God is with us.
The Mighty God, the Highest Power, the Prince of Peace: For God is with us.
The Father of the world to come: For God is with us.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: For God is with us.
Both now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen. For God is with us.
God is with us.

Understand, all ye nations, and submit yourselves: For
God is with us.

(If you haven't heard a slavic redaction of the Byzantine chant, another amazing setting from my friends at St Elizabeth convent in Belarus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7-Ph3lwbcI )

And one more: The World Is Old. Far less of that bluegrass spirit, this is just another example of high culture in a land that gets snubbed unjustly in much of America. Hard to believe, in fact inconceivable when you listen to these voices.

The world is old tonight,

The world is old;

The stars around the fold

Do show their light.

And so they did, and so,

A thousand years ago,

And so will do, my love,

When we lie cold.

The world is still tonight,

The world is still;

The snow on vale and hill

Like wool like white.

And so it did, and so,

A thousand years ago,

And so will do, my love,

When we lie still.

Whether you have come to understand that the Logos is the center of everything yet or not, these are surely carols that will be a balm for the soul.

Underground Americana

Mainstream label music is almost entirely so awful that it drives me to despair to hear most popular music these days - let alone realize it is willingly consumed by anyone. Here I offer three bands that are both a complete "fuck you" to popular music in form and function, but tie into something deep within the American cultural dna that makes them something special:

1 Grave Pilgrim, The Bigotry of Purpose. Raw riffing rock, barked vocals meditating on American and European history (plus other stuff). Tagline: chivalric violence and hideous cruelty. Best rock album of 2023 in my opinion. Best song, Rhiannon's Wake.

Their prior EP Molten Hands Reach West was just as good.

2 Panopticon, ...And Again, into the Light. Bluegrass meets atmospheric black metal on a journey through American geographies, old style anarchist complaints and the trials of life. Austin Lunn, the one man genius behind Panopticon, definitely uses music to exorcise his inner daemons (come to Divine Liturgy my friend to really get them out...). I have a lot of time for this guy. My favorite parts are the gravelly bluegrass ones, like....

Special mention for Panopticon's Kentucky. My forebears were coal miners. 

3 Pan-Amerikan Native Front, Little Turtle's War. Indigenous metal meditating on past battles in the bloody unfolding of the American nation. We probably can stop screwing over natives in this country now.

Also, their split Immortal Ceremonies: someone must have thought "go hard or go home" on that one.

The Turning of Lot's Wife

The Turning of Lot's Wife

Scott Cairns

Genesis 19. 23-26

First of all, she had a name, and she had a history. She was Marah, and long before the breath of death's angel turned her to bitter dust, she had slipped from her mother's womb with remarkable ease, had moved in due time from infancy to womanhood with a manner of grace that came to be the sole blessing of her aging parents. She was beloved.

And like most daughters who are beloved by both a mother and a father, Marah moved about her city with unflinching compassion, tending to the dispossessed as if they were her own. And they became her own. In a city given to all species of excess, there were a great many in agony--abandoned men, abandoned women, abandoned children. Upon these she poured out her substance and her care.

Her first taste of despair was at the directive of the messengers, who announced without apparent sentiment what was to come, and what was to be done. With surprising banality, they stood and spoke. One coughed dryly into his fist and would not meet her eyes. And one took a sip from the cup she offered before he handed it back and the two disappeared into the night.

Unlike her husband--coward and sycophant--the woman remained faithful unto death. For even as the man fled the horrors of a city's conflagration, outrunning Marah and both girls as they all rushed into the desert, the woman stopped. She looked ahead briefly to the flat expanse, seeing her tall daughters, whose strong legs and churning arms were taking them safely to the hills; she saw, farther ahead, the old man whom she had served and comforted for twenty years. In the impossible interval where she stood, Marah saw that she could not turn her back on even one doomed child of the city, but must turn her back instead upon the saved.

Analects 7:6

The Master said, “Set your heart upon the Way, rely upon Virtue, lean upon Goodness, and explore widely in your cultivation of the arts.”

Musk Ox

 Musk Ox is a fantastic instrumental chamber folk project from up in Canada. I recently stumbled on these guys and their guitarist Nathanael Larochette from some collaborations he did with the (now defunct, but often brilliant) Oregon-based post metal/neofolk band Agalloch. Here's a neat documentary on the making of their album Woodfall.

Another cool project is the acoustic spin off that Nathanael did from the last Agalloch album.

His solo stuff is great. Music about trees and such.