I think … I am … does
not preclude us from morning
prayer of thank you

Last night was Robert Burns Night.

According to Wikipedia, Burn’s Night is when Scots eat a Burn’s Night Supper or the traditional meal of haggis, neeps (turnips) and tatties (potatoes).

Never had haggis.

Maybe never will.

Does anyone know if sheeps stomach tastes like bacon?

Haggis is just one of those things I doubt I will ever grasp.

I think the secret of eating haggis must lie in the what renowned Chef Paul Bocuse said in an interview you can watch on YouTube.

Chef Paul was asked when being a chef was the most fun.

“1946, 1947,” Chef Paul said, “People ate anything!”

The post World War 2 era in France and the over all lack of food and those French cooking dishes that were created helped me understand much about French post-war cooking.

That, I think, the amount of available food in Scotland, might explain Haggis.

As they used to say about Chicago, Hog Butcher for the World, “We use everything but the squeal.”

I, as I said, cannot grasp haggis and I also, truth be told, cannot grasp the poetry of Robert Burns.

Alistair Cooke, in his book/show, America, when writing about the word skills of Abraham Lincoln said, “We know that he steeped himself in the subtleties of Shakespeare, the cadences of the Bible, and the hard humanity of Robert Burns.”

Because of this line in the show which I watched when I was 12, I felt I needed to steep myself in the hard humanity of Robert Burns.

I just can’t get there.

Not sure why.

Wikipedia states, “Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, the National Bard, Bard of Ayrshire, the Ploughman Poet and various other names and epithets, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide.“

One of his poems starts out:

Wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim’rous beastie,
O, what a pannic’s in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee,
Wi’ murd’ring pattle!

I don’t see the roots of the Gettysburg Address here.

I remember reading about William Shirer (CBS Radio Commentator and author of “Rise and Fall of the 3rd Reich“) that he could never, ever understand the attraction of James Joyce until he was at a bookshop in Dublin and happened to catch a reading of James Joyce BY James Joyce.

I may have the reverse affect here as whenever I try to read Robert Burns, I imagine the Michael Palin/Monty Python sketch of a scots poet send up of Burns and it is all over for me and Mr. Burns.

But listening to London Radio, I am made aware of Burn’s Night.

Which brings to mind the famous Selkirk Grace.

Some hae meat an canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.

Which, in english, says:

Some have meat but cannot eat,
some have none that want it;
But we have meat and we can eat,
So let the Lord be thanked.

And the last line, And sae the Lord be thankit, got me to thinking about giving thanks.

And thinking about giving thanks got me to thinking about this clip from the movie, St. Vincent.

Cannot watch this clip or even think of this clip, that I do not feel better.

I like the IT Crowd.

I like Moone Boy.

Chris O’Dowd, in this 90 second moment, does his best work from the movie St. Vincent.

The way he rolls with the classroom and maintains control reminds me so much of the way so many of my teachers rolled with me in class and still kept control.

I take my hat off to them and thank God for their presence in my life at that time.

God, Thank You.

For those teachers.

And for so much more.

Neither here nor there, but Katherine Parkinson’s (IT Crowd) jaw dropping performance in the movie, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society made my jaw drop.

Yes I know, O’Dowd is Irish.

paradoxically
succeeded in curtailing
concern for others

Adapted from the book, “The pleasures and sorrows of work” by Alain de Botton, (Random House – 2009) and the passage:

In New York Movie (1939), an usherette stands by the stairwell of an ornate pre-war theatre. Whereas the audience is sunk in semidarkness, she is bathed in a rich pool of yellow light. As often in Hopper’s work, her expression suggests that her thoughts have carried her elsewhere. She is beautiful and young, with carefully curled blond hair, and there are a touching fragility and an anxiety about her which elicit both care and desire. Despite her lowly job, she is the painting’s guardian of integrity and intelligence, the Cinderella of the cinema. Hopper seems to be delivering a subtle commentary on, and indictment of, the medium itself, implying that a technological invention associated with communal excitement has paradoxically succeeded in curtailing our concern for others. The painting’s power hangs on the juxtaposition of two ideas: first, that the woman is more interesting than the film, and second, that she is being ignored because of the film. In their haste to take their seats, the members of the audience have omitted to notice that they have in their midst a heroine more sympathetic and compelling than any character Hollywood could offer up. It is left to the painter, working in a quieter, more observant idiom, to rescue what the film has encouraged its viewers not to see.

And the painting, New York Movie by Ed Hopper.

Reading the history of the painting on Wikipedia I was struck by three things.

One was the note that “Hopper was fascinated by film, and it is said that, when experiencing creative block, he would stay at the theater all day.“

So much community has been lost due to covid and high on that list is the movie theater experience of the big room and the screen, alone in the darkness, surrounded by many.

Though much of this was already lost due to the person next to you or behind you who could not handle the idea that any message they might receive required an immediate response and of course their phone would not be turned off.

Another was the note that fans of the painting and Mr. Hopper have long tried to identify the movie in the painting.

On the one hand easily this is just oh-come-on and just-enjoy-the-painting.

But on the other, for example, when I read an obscure novel and come across an address that lodges in my brain so that years, decades later, reading another novel and this author, for no reason at all that anyone might think, uses that same address and I suspect some form of ‘homage‘ yet one that I may among the few people that get it, I feel I am sitting at a table with both authors.

Picturing yourself at a table with Compton Mackenzie and Jim Harrison is a pleasant picture.

It is a silent picture because if ever I found myself at that table, I am sure that about all the conversation I could come up with would be, “Yes it is warm for this time of year.”

The last thing, I as I read the discussion, was that I noticed that what Mr. de Botton wrote about the painting, that “communal excitement has paradoxically succeeded in curtailing our concern for others” that shows up in the painting, shows up in the discussion as well.

There was one comment though.

Others claim that New York Movie and other paintings of city life are Hopper’s ode to the warmth and endurance of the human spirit in the midst of the dehumanizing existence that is mass living.

Somehow these two statements come can come together as:

While communal excitement has paradoxically succeeded in curtailing our concern for others, the warmth and endurance of the human spirit in the midst of the dehumanizing existence endures.

I like that.

Almost like being at the table with Alain de Botton and Ed Hopper.

And me talking about the cold rain outside my window.

PS – According to Wikipedia, “Josephine Hopper (Mrs. Ed Hopper) wrote in her notes on New York Movie that the image represents fragments of snow-covered mountains.” Which makes me think that the movie must be Lost Horizons which came out in 1937/.