Somebody Tell Me

Big Sandy & His Fli-Rite Boys, Ashland Coffee & Tea, Ashland, Virginia.

Cry One More Time

Sarah Borges at Ashland Coffee & Tea (Ashland, Virginia)

Moanin' The Blues

Girls Guns & Glory at Ashland Coffee & Tea (Ashland, Virginia).

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Dallas Buyers Club

Don Quixote

... although poetry is less useful than pleasurable, it is not one of those that dishonors the one who knows it. Poetry, Señor, in my opinion, is like an innocent young maiden who is extremely beautiful, and whom many other maidens, who are the other fields of knowledge, are careful to enrich, polish, and adorn, and she must be served by all of them, and all of them must encourage her, but this maiden does not wish to be pawed or dragged through the streets or proclaimed at the corners of the squares or in the corners of the palaces. Her alchemy is such that the person who knows how to treat her will turn her into purest gold of inestimable value; the man who has her must keep her within bounds and not allow her to turn to indecent satires or cruel sonnets; she should never be in the marketplace except in heroic poems, heartfelt tragedies, or joyful, witty comedies; she should not be allowed in the company of scoundrels or the ignorant mob incapable of knowing or appreciating the treasures that lie within her. And do not think, Señor, that when I say mob I mean only humble, plebeian people; for anyone who is ignorant, even a lord and prince, can and should be counted as one of the mob. And so the man who uses and treats poetry in the requisite ways that I that I have mentioned will be famous, and his name esteemed, in all the civilized nations of the world.

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1615)

The Pope and Mussolini

For decades, the Vatican had demonized those it saw as the beneficiaries of the much-vilified Enlightenment: liberals, Masons, Jews, and Protestants. It cast all as doing the devil's work, seeking to undermine people's faith in the one true religion. Throughout Italy, the Catholic press stoked this fear. Pius XI largely shared in this world view. In his 1928 encyclical, Mortalium animos, he forbade Catholics to take part in groups that encouraged interfaith dialogue.

David I. Kertzer, The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism (2014)

Pafko At The Wall

He says, "The Giants win the pennant."

Yes, the voice is excessive with a little tickle of hysteria in the upper register. But it is mainly wham and whomp. He sees Thomson capering around first. The hat of the first-base coach -- the first-base coach has flung his hat straight up. He went for a chin-high pitch and coldcocked it good. The ball started up high and then sank, missing the façade of the upper deck and dipping into the seats below -- pulled in, swallowed up -- and the Dodger players stand looking, already separated from the event, staring flat into the shadows between the decks.

He says, "The Giants win the pennant."

Dom DeLillo, Pafko At The Wall (1992)

A Place In Time

Several slaves, five or six of them, both men and women, were cutting and shocking corn by moonlight out on Bird's Branch Road, not far from the church. In her vision she saw them plainly, working steadily along to the rhythm that their corn knives hacked into the rustling of the dry corn. They were singing. They were singing, "Freedom! Oh, freedom!" That was all the song, but they sang it back and forth among themselves. Sometimes they would fall silent, and then the song continued unsung to the beat of the knives. And then a solitary voice would lift into the moonlight, "Oh, freedom!" and then they would all sing "Freedom! Oh, freedom!" a cry that was old and creaturely and human. Later she would imagine that there had rarely been a time, and in Port William after slavery perhaps never again a time, when the word "freedom" had been so understandingly sounded. As the singers sang, they worked. As they worked, the rows of standing corn slowly became fewer and the rows of shocks increased. Over the striking of the knives and the steady rustling of the corn and the singing, the moonlight fell as if a greater silence were thus made visible.

Wendell Berry, A Place In Time (2012)

Ecstatic Nation

But now, as it had been during the nullification crisis of 1832, the underlying issue was the North's increasing power. And that power endangered slavery. Secessionists worried that if slavery did not expand into the territories, the black population would stay where it was, bottled up and likely to explode. Fear motivated them. That is to say, racial anxiety was as pervasive as economic anxiety when it came to secession, though it was hard to separate the two, for they were threaded together with the rope that bound secessionists and many Southerners to their land, their way of life, their mint juleps, and their pride of race.

Lincoln's election was thus not so much the cause of secession as its excuse: institutional restraints (read: the federal government) had insulted Southerners, imperiled their way of life, and held them in thrall to Northern financiers who had forced planters to buy goods in a protected market. "It's a revolution!" Judah Benjamin cried -- a "prairie fire," unstoppable, unquenchable.

As if in reply, a disconsolate Alexander Stephens observed, "Revolutions are much easier started than controlled."

Brenda Wineapple, Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877 (2013)