Roiled

December132011

4. Favorite Christmas Music: Judy Garland singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” from Meet Me in St. Louis. I can’t say anything this song doesn’t.

Christmas Music Judy Garland Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas Meet Me in St. Louis

1PM

3. Favorite Christmas Music: Trans-Siberian Orchestra plays “Christmas in Sarajevo.” This arrangement comes at “peace on earth” in a different way, by putting an ideal of peace and the horrible reality of war side by side, shredding dreams, but retaining hope. Who says Christmas music can’t make a powerful statement?

Trans-Siberian Orchestra Sarajevo Christmas Music

1PM

2. More Favorite Christmas Music: The Hallelujah Chorus, in this case performed in Macy’s as a “random act of culture” by 600-plus members of Opera Company of Philadelphia and other community members. I remember singing it in college choir. It always makes me cry. In a good way.

Handel The Messiah Opera Company of Philadelphia Hallelujah Chorus Christmas music

December122011

“I want to hypnotize you, baby, on the telephone.”—Jack White

Hypnotize Jack White Meg White The White Stripes

12AM

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”—William Shakespeare

Civil War South soldiers Shakespeare Parting is such

12AM

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.—Oscar Wilde

Victorian monsters photos Oscar Wilde

12AM

Mothman Visits the Neighbors

“Mrs. Bennett drove to the Thomas house a few minutes later and got out of the car with her baby. Suddenly, a figure stirred near the automobile. “It seemed as though it had been lying down,” she later recalled. “It rose up slowly from the ground. A big gray thing. Bigger than a man with terrible glowing eyes.”

Mrs. Bennett was so horrified that she dropped her little girl! She quickly recovered, picked up her child and ran to the house. The family locked everyone inside but hysteria gripped them as the creature shuffled onto the porch and peered into the windows. The police were summoned, but the Mothman had vanished by the time the authorities had arrived.”—From Mothman: The Enigma of Point Pleasant

Mothman Point Pleasant Monsters Unexplained Victorian photos

12AM

“With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to the truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Chapter 10

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson

12AM

Queen Anne’s Lace

Her body is not so white as
anemone petals nor so smooth—nor
so remote a thing. It is a field
of the wild carrot taking
thefield by force; the grass
does not raise above it.
Here is no question of whiteness,
white as can be, with a purple mole
at the center of each flower.
Each flower is a hand’s span
of her whiteness. Wherever
his hand has lain there is
a tiny purple blossom under his touch
to which the fibres of her being

stem one by one, each to its end,
until the whole field is a
white desire, empty, a single stem,
a cluster, flower by flower,
a pious wish to whiteness gone over—
or nothing.—William Carlos Williams

wildflowers flowers Queen Anne Queen Anne's Lace William Carlos Williams

September152011