Erato's Hideaway

Building a "summer melody."

A summer song always grows gently

and fades as if it was being played on a very small radio on a porch on a summer evening...

PART 4: Play all three parts together.

Thanks to Candace Pierce for "Sunset over Lake" photo

2011-06-27T14:14:00.000-06:00

"Everyone has a place in History; Mine is clouds" - Richard Brautigan

2011-06-25T11:39:00.001-06:00

Azure

2011-06-24T19:26:00.002-06:00

Horace-Bénédict de Saussure’s cyanometer, an instrument that measures the blueness of the sk

2011-06-23T22:17:00.000-06:00

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths----Joseph Campbell

2011-06-23T05:23:00.000-06:00

1633: Catholic authorities forces Galileo to disavow his heliocentric theory of the Solar System

2011-06-22T04:10:00.003-06:00

I've loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
Galileo Galilei

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei

The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.
Galileo Galilei

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
Galileo Galilei

What a Song to wake up to!!!! (Thomas Dorsey's "He Never Failed Me Yet"

2011-06-20T12:25:00.005-06:00

I enjoy discovering pearls that have been hiding from me all this time. Never heard this before this morning and now I can't get it out of my head!

The Cinnamon Peeler

2011-06-20T11:26:00.002-06:00

The poet was born in Sri Lanka, born 1943 but has been a Canadian citizen since teenage years. His work you are most likely to know is a novel which was also filmed: "The English Patient". This poem was written in about 1982.

The picture is of a Rodian girl from Sri Lanka, maybe 70 years ago. The Rodi are a mysterious, beautiful people once treated as untouchables. This poem is about touching.

[Thanx to Alixe, who has exquisite tastes and instincts.]

Let us go into the House of the Nazz... (Lord Buckley)

2011-06-19T21:49:00.002-06:00

"The Nazz had the most beautiful eyes..."

Father's Day

2011-06-19T06:40:00.000-06:00

The Sadness that is Man

2011-06-18T14:14:00.003-06:00

Man begins in zoology
He is the saddest animal
He drives a big red car
Called anxiety
He dreams at night
Of riding all the elevators
Lost in the halls
He never finds the right door

Man is the saddest animal
A flake-eater in the morning
A milk drinker
He fills his skin with coffee
And loses patience
With the rest of the species

He draws his sin on the wall
On all the ads in all the subways
He draws mustaches on all the women
Because he cannot find his joy
Except in zoology

Whenever he goes to the phone
To call joy
He gets the wrong number

Therefore he likes weapons
He knows all guns
By their right names
He droves a big black Cadillac
Called death

Now he is putting anxiety
Into space
He flies his worries
All around Venus
But is does him no good

In space where for a long time
There was only emptiness
He drives a big white globe
Called death

Now dear children you have learned
The first lesson about man
Answer your test

"Man is the saddest animal
He begins in zoology
And gets lost
In his own bad news."

.
~ Thomas Merton
from The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton

The Light That Burns

2011-06-18T14:08:00.000-06:00

"Nature to a saint is sacramental, If we are children of God, we have a tremendous treasure in Nature. In every wind that blows, in every night and day of the year, in every sign of the sky, in every blossoming and in every withering of the earth, there is a real coming of God to us if we will simply use our starved imagination to realize it."------- Oswald Chambers

"All my life has been a relearning to pray---- a letting go of the incantational magic, petition, and the vain repetition "Me Lord, me," instead watching attentively for the light that burns at the center of every star, every cell, every living creature, every human heart."------Chet Raymo

[Cited in tthe book"Water, Wind, Earth and Fire" by Christine Valters Paintner

Truly inspirational....well, sort of. But very funny!

2011-06-17T22:17:00.002-06:00

And now for something not quite so different:

2011-06-16T19:47:00.000-06:00

I shall go the way of the open sea,
to the land I knew before you came,
and the cool ocean breezes shall blow me
from the memory of your name.

Laurence Hope

Nocturne

2011-06-15T03:55:00.007-06:00

It is a little past 3:30 a.m.---- the quietest time in Chicago (on weekdays, anyway)----- and I'm just waking up without alarm and without alarm clock to the sound of the first drops of rain, some rolling thunder still in the distance, and the first birdsong of the day. I know I was dreaming when I awoke, but it is fading fast.

Two days ago I had the most vivid, the most intense dream in seven years, and it took me all of the next day to fully awake from it. It felt like a full-length feature film, and seemed to be at least 3 hours long. The most unusual aspect for me was that I couldn't fully wake up from it. It colored the whole next day.I felt outrage at every mind- controlling attempt by anyone using any media, a feeling of despair and concession, and an enormous sadness with every girl I saw approaching me on the sidewalk only to pass me by and continue on out of my life. A tender soreness for love not completely forgotten, wounds not completely healed. A feeling of being defeated by the world in the last seconds of the seventh game in the best- of-seven challenge by the "Dream Team."

So this morning's stillness even with the approaching weather, is calming.
Peace, be still.

I overlooked Schiele's Birthday two days ago. So sad he lived only 28 years.

2011-06-14T19:45:00.001-06:00

2011-06-13T13:26:00.001-06:00

2011-06-11T11:36:00.001-06:00

Bach on the world's largest marimba. Quite the commercial!

2011-06-10T21:09:00.000-06:00

2011-06-09T19:16:00.000-06:00

A re-post, but if you need a couple of giggles, these should work!

2011-06-08T23:49:00.001-06:00

What a drag it is getting...

2011-06-07T22:54:00.000-06:00

Zeno"s Arrow

2011-06-06T20:00:00.004-06:00

2011-06-06T18:47:00.001-06:00

"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door."

"No Human Being is Illegal"

2011-06-05T18:33:00.001-06:00

On this date in history, the first '39 DeSoto was spotted in Florida...

2011-06-03T15:18:00.002-06:00

NO, NOT THIS ONE:

THIS ONE!!

Hernando De Soto set foot in Florida on June 3, 1539.

‘Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.’ –Arthur Rimbaud

2011-06-02T00:06:00.003-06:00

It's Marilyn's Day!

2011-06-01T21:09:00.000-06:00

A Scary and Also Tender Video

2011-05-31T13:03:00.004-06:00

Regina Spektor posted this video.
"This teacher and little kids are incredible... they are laying down because there's a shoot out outside... they sing a song together." (You can hear the gunshots from drug gangs outside.)

"There's a shooting nearby this kindergarten, and this brave teacher tries to calm the kids The Teacher does an amazing job keeping the kids calm & safe as possible. She tells "you're ok sweetheart, nothing bad is going to happen to any of you, but I need you all to keep your little faced and heads down close to the ground. Then she engages the children in song to distract them from the gun battle that is clearly audible in the background. Five people were killed outside while this is being filmed."

2011-05-30T18:34:00.000-06:00

2011-05-27T21:54:00.000-06:00

Honestly, How does this make you feel?

2011-05-25T17:48:00.002-06:00

Happy 70th Birthday, Bob!

2011-05-24T18:03:00.003-06:00

"House of Glass" (TPM- 2008)

2011-05-23T09:49:00.003-06:00