Flutterings

Sunday's services at my church were profoundly moving: the opening hymn was Let There Be Light; the opening words were from an Abraham Lincoln letter ("As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy. . ."); the speakers were three members of the congregation who had served in the military in different eras (World War II, Vietnam, and the 1990s); the closing hymn was "My Country 'Tis of Thee." The responsive reading was a selection from Frederick Douglass (SLT #579):

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. . .

Afterwards, I drove to a friend's place. While waiting for her to wrap up her morning's work, I started readingAlfred A. Knopf: Quarter Century, a slim little hardcover from 1940 celebrating the publisher's career. Oh, it is a delight. It includes tributes by H.L. Mencken and Willa Cather, the latter observing that

When Alfred Knopf began his business in a two-room office for which he paid a rental of forty-five dollars a month, he was a free agent; he had nobody's money to lose but his own, and very little of that, as he frankly told me. He seemed then a daring and reckless figure flashing into a company of grave and experienced competitors. Twenty years ago "caution" was the watchword in all reputable publishing houses, just as "abandon" is the slogan today. Yet Mr. Knopf's daring experiment was soon repeated by other young men who went beyond him in daring. He is now generally regarded as a conservative. He still prefers good writing when he can get it, has a liking for clear syntax, and does not publish the tough girl or the crook for the sole reason that they are tough and crooked. He has a respect for the English language as it was used by the great masters of the past, and for the American language which is being joyously made and remade all the time by every wide-awake office boy and truck driver between the two oceans. He seems to believe that these two languages, the one or the other, or the two skillfully blended, can hold all the intelligence, all the feeling and fun, that any writer can put into them. But in some trifles he is severely conventional; if he has published any books with no commas or periods, I haven't seen them. He has no objection to using an upper-case letter at the beginning of a line of verse. . .

I also had with me a copy of this weekend's Nashville Rage: the cover features Tom Cruise gazing heavenward and the headline "BEAM HIM UP, PLEASE!" My sentiments exactly.

On a cheerier note, the friend and I then went to Bobbie's Dairy Dip for lunch (burger, Co-cola, sweet potato fries; Johnny Cash on the speakers) before heading into the movie theatre to see Paheli (style: think "I Feel Pretty" with saris), followed by cups of tea and an eclair at Provence. The BYM was out of town, so the rest of the weekend consisted mainly of hanging out with the dog, reading, drinking a fair amount of Scotch, tossing together decadent salads (e.g., heaped with slices of strawberries and/or tomatoes, plus salmon, with bacon-onion dressing), and addressing a bit of committee work.

Didn't do anything on the master To Do list, but that's what the rest of the week will be for. . .