Chicago, Land of Enchantment

John Houseman by Fran Gregory

At 23 in 1926, John Houseman — born in Bucharest, raised in Paris and London and already tempered on the lonely plains of Argentina — was excited to be traveling on the Twentieth Century Limited to what he regarded as the center of a “vast, enchanted land,” a place we would call Chicago.

He was eager to experience “…the America of Whitman and Sandburg, and Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Frank Norris and Sherwood Anderson — of which I had already formed such a vivid literary image and which I was now impatient to discover for myself.”

Through the dining-car window, Houseman caught his first sight of “…the Loop, deserted on that Sunday morning, the air tainted with a faint, sickening smell of putrefaction from the stockyards. There was a motion-picture convention at the Drake Hotel when I arrived and the lobby was jammed with men in Western hats and cigars and girls who looked like Clara Bow, with pillboxes on their shingled heads. When I got to my room, I could see the vast expanse of Lake Michigan through my window, its shimmering, wind-swept water stretching out beyond the breakwater for what seemed like an infinite distance into the sky."

So your viewpoint always depends on your perspective, my friend. And romance and adventure remain, like beauty, in the beholder’s eyes.

Source: “Run-Through” by John Houseman

Dust of Snow

Photo by Kirby Pringle

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part 
Of a day I had rued.

— Robert Frost

The Crow in the Know

I first became fascinated by crows and the family Corvidae one bright winter’s morning when I was looking out the solarium window at the tree where we feed the birds.

Painting by Jacqueline McIntryre

We had tossed out bread crumbs, nuts and other goodies, and I noticed that while the silly sparrows were just hopping around pecking, a crow was carefully selecting each bread crumb, flying away fast southeast into the trees with it and then returning for another. I could see that swift black beauty planning for the future, and I was duly impressed.

Oddly, the experience made me realize how much I admire the exercise of intelligence in all its forms.

And I’m not their only admirer. “Corvids like crows and ravens have been known for their intelligence long before much research was given to the subject,” wrote Lisa Winter. “In addition to being one of the few animals capable of using tools to find food and solve problems, they have complex social structures. Information is shared within the murder so that group decisions can be made. They have incredible memories which allow them to recognize human faces. This is bad news for the people that aren’t well liked by the birds, because word can spread and the crows will dive and attack faces.”

My Favorite Aphorisms: Khalil Gibran

The next line is, "Yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers."

Property of a Gentleman

Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor

Still in his early fifties, Ian Fleming nevertheless knew that he had less than five years to live, thanks to all those vodka martinis and specially made Turkish cigarettes.

Having recently visited Japan to research his novel “You Only Live Twice,” Fleming decided to adopt a quasi-Buddhist attitude toward the luxuries Bond had bought.

So he gave his friend Patrick Leigh Fermor a navy blue vicuna overcoat. A BBC journalist once described the travel writer, scholar and soldier Fermor as “a cross between Indiana Jones, James Bond and Graham Greene.”

Years later, when the IRA was regularly bombing London, Fermor was stopped by a police officer while walking. The officer asked for proof of his identity, joking that people frequently liked to claim they were James Bond.

Fermor casually opened his vicuna coat and displayed the label, which read, “Benson, Perry & Whitley, Cork St W1 7.9.1956 Ian Fleming Esq.” The policeman immediately summoned a car to take Fermor home.

Source: “Ian Fleming” by Andrew Lycett

The Zen-Stoic Lexicon: Sophrosyne

It's the opposite of hubris, and here's how to pronounce it. 

Six Feet Under Your Ground

Kill a kid

Kill for a fee

Kill an n-word

Hell, kill me

Yell “stand your ground!”

And go scot free.