Bulletin of the Deccan College Post-Graduate and Research Institute, Vol. 54/55 (1994-1995), pp. xi, xiii, xv-xxxv
Sir William Jones (1746-April 1794) was a British philologist known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among European and Indo-Aryan languages (later known as the Indo-European languages).
I have similar feelings (some of which I have shared before) of discontent with baseball today.
“With no clock, no regulation of seconds, minutes, and hours, baseball need not submit to the inexorability of temporal limitation. … [A] team cannot stall, or run the ball into the line to kill the clock, or manipulate the clock in order to score. A tie game does not exist — all games must end in a victory and a defeat, and a tied game could conceivably go on forever. The game succeeds in creating a temporary timelessness perfectly appropriate to its richly cyclical nature.” — George Grella, “Baseball and the American Dream,” The Massachusetts Review
sister of the late John Bosanquet, my classmate, who died in a tragic accident in my sophomore year
a neighbor and close friend
Jeff Coady, Brad’s brother, was a good friend. So was Dawn Gardner, sister of my classmate Billy Gardner.
Fosdick (Dyke) Harrison was a good friend of Brad Coady and me.
my best friend Johnny Harris, who was a year ahead of me
Arthur Contois was a good friend with whom I liked to discuss classical music.
I knew Ricky Hagberg and his older sister Karen well.
I knew Bob Seavey well. Jim Russell was in all my classes.
Shown are my classmates (from Mr. Badoian’s class) Peter McWilliams and Russ Minkwitz; as well as Ricky Hagberg.
This a photo of the Mirror staff, Carlton Sancoucy, who I believe was the editor, is in the front row. I am in the back row, third from left.
In the second row are Mrs. Haines, the librarian; and Linda Haines, her daughter and my classmate (in every course). Also my classmate Jean Moore, daughter of the science department chairman. And, in the same row, a popular student and friend of mine, Eiaine Joyce; as well as Arthur Contois. Priscilia Marotta, a good friend of mine and classmate, is in the third row; as well as Carlton Sansoucy.
My friend and classmate Carol Soule, who married Russ Minkwitz, is in the first row. Elaine Joyce and Jim Russell are in the second row. And my neighbor and friend Jeff Coady is in the back row (second from right).
I had Miss Bertrand for Latin and French.
I had Mr. Tedesco two straight years for American and European history. Mr. Bowyer for civics sophomore year
For emotional power, for direct expression, it is hard to match Vivaldi, in my opinion.
Dvořák’s Stabat Mater has always affected me greatly since I first heard it, live (in rehearsal in a church in Paris) in 1972. It begins very differently than the other three posted here, with a long introduction before we hear the words
Stabat Mater dolorosa
iuxta Crucem lacrimosa,
dum pendebat Filius.
The opening chords convey magnificently the searing emotional pain of the grieving mother, witness to her son’s crucifixion.
… in the sixth grade, an attractive unmarried parish member organized a boys’ choir for us Sunday school students at the North Church (Congregational) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, The choir director, Miss Nancy Barnard, was an avid Red Sox fan, a season ticket holder. As an inducement, she promised that any boy who joined the choir would get to go to a Red Sox game at the end of the school year. I joined the choir, and because I was a monotone (as was so determined), I was relegated with other monotone boys to the back row. The first hymn that we performed was “Fairest Lord Jesus.”
We were duly taken, as promised, to a Red Sox game at the end of the school year and were in box seats right behind the Red Sox dugout. We got an autographed ball with team members’ signatures on it. (I stupidly took it out to play with a friend when I was a teenager and ruined it.) The choir director knew the players, and several came over before the game to talk with us. One was the tall pitcher Frank Sullivan. I was very excited.
“Frank,” I said, “did you get hurt the other day when you fell into the seats?” He seemed a little confused and hesitated.
“Oh,” he said, laughing, “that was the other Frank!”
I had seen a photo in the Boston Herald of third baseman Frank Malzone, one of my favorite players, diving into the seats in pursuit of a foul ball.
My Civil War ancestor John Congdon Hart (1829-1883) was James Bunker Congdon’s nephew. And, as I have noted before, the Congdon name was one my relatives were proud of. These relatives included:
John Congdon Hart, my maternal grandmother’s grandfather
Annie Congdon Hart (1856-1909), my maternal grandmother’s aunt
Annie Congdon Hart, my grandmother (niece of the above Annie Congdon Hart)
“Few now read the many letters of Dr. Johnson. None at all, it is fairly safe to say, read the analyses of his books and the lists of variant readings. … that for which every reader turns to is Boswell. …
“It is only by his conversations that Johnson is now remembered.*
“Macaulay* many years ago commented upon [Johnson’s] ‘singular destiny—to be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion.’ His Dictionary has long ago been superseded, his Shakespeare is never consulted, very few people open the files of The Rambler or The Idler, his verse is neglected, Rasselas unread, and it is chiefly students who still turn to his Lives of the Poets.”
— Raymond Postgate, Preface to The Conversations of Dr. Johnson: Extracted from the Life by James Boswell (New York Taplinger Publishing Company, 1930)
This is completely erroneous — from the perspective of today. But it reflects a common view of Johnson that prevailed until not that long ago — I would say into the 1980s or 90s.
Publication of the Yele Edition of Johnson’s works (now in its twentieth volume) has helped. And — most importantly — biographies and studies by writers such as James L. Clifford, W. Jackson Bate, and Donald Greene.
When I began reading Johnson, along with Boswell, in depth, I had discussions about him with my therapist, Dr. Ralph Colp Jr.
Dr. Colp had belonged to a book club in the past where, presumably, the book under discussion was Boswell’s Life of Johnosn. Reacting to my comments about Johnson — I believe I was reading the essays then — he said that a member of the discussion group had said, “The only reason Dr. Johnson is of any interest nowadays is because of Boswell,”
“I guess he was wrong,” Dr Colp said.
I told Dr. Colp that the best thing about Boswell’s Life was the conversations: Johnson’s. They are indeed marvelous. But I can attest, having read many of the essays and other works, that Johnson himself — his works, that is — is very much worth reading, for writers as well as scholars.
