Good Friday 2025

 

For contemplation on this holy day...

Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)               Salvador Dali, 1954

Christ of Saint John of the Cross                     Salvador Dali, 1951

For more information on the Christian dimension of Dali's surrealistic interpretation of the Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) go here and here, for Christ of Saint John of the Cross go here and here, and for the Good Friday music(Verwandlungsmusik) from Wagner's opera, Parsifal, go here.

Abraham Lincoln Goes On To Glory

 

Abraham Lincoln Photo Portrait, early 1865 Alexander Gardner

Today marks the 160th anniversary of the assassination (1865) of President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington. He was taken across the street to the home of William and Anna Peterson where died shortly after 7:00 a.m. the following morning (April 15). The theatre remained closed for over a century. It reopened in 1968 as a performance venue and national historic site that included the Peterson House. Today it is owned by the National Park Service and operated through a partnership agreement with the Ford's Theatre Society.

Ford's Theatre 514 10th Street NW, Washington, DC

President Lincoln and his son, Tad. February 5, 1865

For more information on this event, the place where it occurred, and its impact on the American experience explore the Ford's Theatre National Historic Site web page.

Lincoln Memorial, The Mall, Washington

Sources


Photographs and Illustrations:

Ford Theatre photographs, Ford's Theatre National Historic Site
Lincoln photograph, Alexander Gardner. Abraham Lincoln with his son Tad (Thomas), February 5, 1865. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (140) Digital ID # cph-3a05994

Lincoln Memorial, Official White House Photo, Chuck Kennedy, 2013, public domain

Eudora Welty: Distinctly Southern

Today we remember the celebrated Southern writer, Eudora Welty, on what would have been her 116th birthday. She is remembered as one of the finest short story writers in American literary history. Welty lived and died in Jackson, Mississippi. Although she attended college in Wisconsin and New York, and traveled abroad, she always returned to the house and garden on Pinehurst Street that she had called "home" since high school.

Her skill as a writer enabled her to transform observations of life in Mississippi into a body of literature including novels, short stories, reviews, letters, and an autobiography. Over sixty years she received a host of awards including the Pulitzer Prize for her 1973 novel, The Optimist's Daughter.

Here is a short CSPAN BookTV production exploring Welty and her home in Jackson.

For four years toward the end of the Great Depression (1929-1939) Welty was employed by the Works Progress Administration to document everyday life in Mississippi. Her photography from that period has become well known as an expression of her powers of observation. Smithsonian Magazine produced this short documentary on her photography on the occasion of the centennial of her birth in 2009.

For more information on Welty readers should visit the outstanding website maintained by the Euroda Welty Foundation.





Sources

Text:

Eudora Welty entry, Wikipedia.com

Photos and Illustrations:
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington

Palm Sunday 2025

 

The Bible pictured above served my family well beginning in the 1890's. As one of my earliest memories I recall my parents carrying it every Sunday to Mount Calvary Lutheran Church a few blocks from our home. It's too fragile for use these days and now occupies an honored place in our family archive. The book becomes special to me on Palm Sundays. Among the near eighty years of memorabilia inside are a dozen or so treasured palm crosses from my childhood.

Today is Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday, the last Sunday of Lent, and the beginning of Holy Week. On this day, Christians around the world commemorate the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. It is also a time to remember the Passion history as preparation for the Holy Week experience. Readings for the day recall the anointing of Jesus, the institution of the Lord's Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus's trials before Caiaphas and Pilate, the crucifixion of Jesus, and His burial.

All glory, laud, and honor to you Redeemer King,

To whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.

You are the king of Israel and David's royal Son,

Now in the Lord's name coming, our King and Blessed One.

The company of angels are praising you on high;

Creation and all mortals in chorus make reply.

The multitude of pilgrims with palms before you went,

Our praise and prayer and anthems before you we present.

To you, before your Passion, they sang their hymns of praise.

To you, now high exalted, our melody we raise.

Their praises you accepted; accept the prayers we bring,

Great author of all goodness, all good and gracious King.

All glory, laud and honor to you, Redeemer King,

To whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.

                                   Theodulf of Orleans, 750/760-821

On the Sunday following this Passion Week we celebrate a 2000 year-old event that changes everything.





Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
early 20th century postcards from the family archives

Martin Luther King Jr.: Lest We Forget

Each morning after I contemplate the world outside the window wall by my desk my focus shifts to  reviewing Internet news sources. Much like last year it was unsettling on this day to find little more than passing mention of the most significant event in our national history to occur on April 4. That event was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

American society was already divided over our involvement in the Vietnam War. King's assassination, and that of Robert Kennedy two months later, widened that divide and pushed domestic instability on several fronts to unheard of levels in our lifetime. Much of the anger, distrust, and uncertainty rising out of that era has been simmering ever since. As a people we pay a huge price for focusing on what divides us rather than on what unites us. The erosion of political discourse into hatred and violence over the past five years is a daily reminder of that cost. 

I doubt our Founding Fathers ever expected the American experience they created to be an easy one to maintain. Furthermore, I doubt they expected it to evolve outside the freedoms they enshrined in the rule of law. Much of what King did, much of what he said about equality and peaceful change operated within that context. Although there is much debate on whether or not he would have maintained that posture had he lived, his legacy lives on to help us perfect our union. We should take the time to stop talking and listen. 

More about this day, the man, and his legacy can be found at the King Center website and that of the Martin Luther King National Historical Park.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
Public domain photo,  Nobel Foundation (http://nobelprize.org/) and Wikimedia Commons

Bluebird Time In The South

On an early Spring day in 1977 I was hiking one of the small ridges that sits astride the North and South Carolina line near Charlotte. Climbing out of one of the steep ravines and reaching the highest point on the trail, I was suddenly surrounded by thousands of bluebirds moving through the woods and brush. The show continued for twenty minutes as wave after chattering wave passed by. In the 36 years since that encounter, only two events compare with it: seeing nearly a dozen bald eagles relaxing in a tree next to a convenience store in Anchorage We were leaving for a tour and some of the folks wanted to stop for snacks before we left town. As we pulled into the parking lot, someone - obviously a lower 48 type - said, "Hey, are those bald eagles?" The driver said something like, "Yeah, happens all the time here." Amazing. The second event occurred over our patio in Atlanta when hundreds of sand hill cranes "kettled" before continuing on their way north to summer in the Great Plains and Canada.

Today the bluebirds returned to our woods in Atlanta. They have been here before, and in greater numbers, but even sighting a few of them is a sure sign of the coming summer. This year we have several small snags in the rear woods that will make excellent housing for any of those birds seeking to set up housekeeping. If we're lucky, they will be close to the patio where they will provide us with hours of entertainment in both song and behavior. Here's an observation I made in 2009 when a pair of bluebirds decided to inspect the housing potential in our woods:

This pair spent an hour scoping out apartments in a small dead tree trunk about 50 feet from my patio. First, the male would inspect the premises, then look inquiringly toward the female in a nearby branch. After a few minutes, he would fly to a neutral branch; she would inspect, then fly to her neutral branch. They would meet to discuss on yet another branch, then repeat the cycle. Again. And again. The setting sun made it hard to follow their house hunting and soon they disappeared over our ridge. Will the rising sun lead them to return and make a home in our tree?

 

I don't recall if the pair actually moved in. The snag they inspected fell a few years ago. Still plenty of apartments waiting for young families though.

Happy 78th Birthday, Emmylou Harris

 

In fifty years singer-songwriter Emmylou Harris has won fourteen Grammy Awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018. Along the way she's gained many honors including membership in the Grand Ole Opry, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Her career first gained traction in small clubs and coffee houses in Washington and its suburbs. I was only a few miles from most of the venues but sadly never saw her perform. Still, it was impossible not to see and hear the advertising in and around Georgetown in DC and the Maryland suburbs of Bethesda, Chevy Chase and Silver Spring. By the early '70's she moved to Los Angeles to work with Gram Parsons and his band, The Grievous Angels. When Parsons died in 1973 the devastating event led her to focus on Parsons's search for the fusion sound he called "cosmic American music." The sound Harris and Parsons produced in their short time together, in addition to her life-long dance with experimental sounds in folk, blues and country music, would have a significant impact on decades of American music.

Harris continues to produce innovative and award-winning sound. In 2016 a selection of duets with Rodney Crowell - The Traveling Kind - won a Grammy for Best Americana Album. Here is a track from the album:

Today, Emmylou Harris turned 78. Fame has been kind to her given such a long and successful touring and recording career. She's brought quality entertainment to millions of people since the beginning in those early days with Graham Parsons. We'll never know where the two of them would have gone together in the world of music but it's safe to say it would have been far. Here is a song she and Bill Danoff wrote as a tribute to Parsons:

Boulder to Birmingham

I don't want to hear a love song
I got on this airplane just to fly
And I know there's life below
But all that it can show me
Is the prairie and the sky

And I don't want to hear a sad story
Full of heartbreak and desire
The last time I felt like this
It was in the wilderness and the canyon was on fire
And I stood on the mountain in the night and I watched it burn
I watched it burn, I watched it burn.

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.

Well you really got me this time
And the hardest part is knowing I'll survive.
I have come to listen for the sound
Of the trucks as they move down
Out on ninety five
And pretend that it's the ocean
coming down to wash me clean, to wash me clean
Baby do you know what I mean

I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.



Thank you, Emmylou, and a happy birthday (April 2), too. It's been quite a journey from those gigs at the Red Fox Inn.




Sources:
Photo, emmylouharris.com
Lyrics: play.google.com