I got through my first day at work with a cast (I guess it’s technically a splint) all right. The big nuisance is shifting my car.
Andrew Klavan (you probably weren’t aware, but I’m a fan of his) writes a tribute to Mark Steyn today at Pajamas Media:
But perhaps I wasn’t made to be a doomsayer. The dying of things—of art forms and civilizations as well as people—seems to me the inevitable and steady state of the world: a point of view that leaves me prone more to melancholy than to panic. What I really care about now is the immortal parts of mortal enterprise. I want to get at the spirit of human business: the wisdom and vitality of a culture’s Great Moment preserved in the artifacts it leaves behind. The irrelevant—the stuff that doesn’t matter but is simply beautiful—the music, the poetry, the pictures and storytelling—the arts—that’s where all the joy is, and it’s the joy that seems more urgent to me as the years pass.
“The irrelevant—the stuff that doesn’t matter but is simply beautiful—the music, the poetry, the pictures and storytelling—the arts—that’s where all the joy is, and it’s the joy that seems more urgent to me as the years pass.”
Exactly, Lars, and one of the great hallmarks of evil is that it loves to destroy both the artifacts and the memories and written records of the Great Moments. It’s how I finally figured out *for myself* that Mao’s Communism was evil, hearing the stories of destruction, ridicule and even murder of Great Moments.