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February 28, 2023

National City

The hour doesn’t matter. The gates never close. I daily walk by them during the workweek and maybe several times a day on Saturday or Sunday. This is the smallish Courtyard—it even has it own smallish Outdoor Chapel—at the entrance to the offices of the National City Christian Church. 5 Thomas Circle, N.W. Built 1930. Neoclassical. The architect was John Russell Pope. Pope loved big, no-ignore, national center city projects. The Jefferson Memorial, completed in the early 1940s, is another Pope building. National City Christian was Texan Lyndon Johnson’s church. LBJ’s state funeral was here in 1973. Worshippers in this nearly-200 year Presbyterian offshoot often have strong Southern roots. Think Presbyterians who like full-immersion baptism. They are also non-obnoxious inner-city activists of varying political and cultural bents. Educated. Devout. Musically sophisticated. Upbeat. They like people. Not every church does. Bonus? They love Dogs, too. In a big dog way. One spring Sunday a year you can get your dogs blessed on the DC church steps. A dog blessing. One of the warmest and funniest annual scenes in DC.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)

Heidelberg Schloss

By Jacques Fouquières, Hortus Palatinus, (before 1620). Heidelberg Palace, gardens and terracing.

Posted by JD Hull at 08:30 PM | Comments (0)

February 27, 2023

Happy 216th, Mr. Longfellow.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born February 27, 1807 in Portland, Maine. He died on March 24, 1882 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Posted by JD Hull at 09:39 AM | Comments (0)

Cincinnati's Big Joe Duskin

Went to a couple of his practices when I was in high school. Authentic bluesman in the staid Queen City.

Posted by JD Hull at 05:45 AM | Comments (0)

February 26, 2023

Kitzbühel

Speaking of snow, which I like and D.C. so far has escaped this season, Kitzbühel is a medieval town in the province of Tyrol, Austria, near the river Kitzbühler Ache. The Illyrians, a war-like tribe from the Balkans, mined copper around here starting between 1100 BC and 800 BC. Around 15 BC the Roman Emperor Augustus occupied and claimed this area--by that time the old Celtic province of Noricum--which included the Austrian Alps. After the fall of the western Roman Empire, the Bavarii tribe settled in the Kitzbühel region (around 800).

So Kitzbühel is old, with a 12th century wall around much of it. It's small (around 8500 people), beautiful, historical, and a bit slow--but loads of fun for those with pluck. In modern times, and before non-Austrians found it and made even it more famous for skiing, the region was a resort for wealthy and proper Austrians from towns like Vienna.

But Kitzbühel has loosened up a bit. Well, a lot. It now has decent jazz. Drinking happens. It's inexpensive to live or visit here. It's surprisingly quiet. You can write your novel or textbook. You can miss editors' deadlines--and count on forgiveness. Oh, you can ski. And you can watch some of the best skiers in the world.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Digital in the next life.

Posted by JD Hull at 08:08 AM | Comments (0)

February 24, 2023

Forógra na Poblachta.

("Proclamation of the Republic", April 24, 1916)

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2023

Perfectionism: The Horror. The Horror.

Clients pay for excellent--not for perfect. Excellent is way harder.

Clients 99.5% of the time are not paying you to be perfect. Clients don't want perfect. In the rare instances they do want perfect, they will let you know. So clients want excellent. Be excellent, not perfect. Got it? See, e.g., Rule 10: Be Accurate, Thorough and Timely--But Not Perfect of our repetitive and irritating but life-changing 12 Rules of Client Service.

The Horror. The Horror.

Posted by JD Hull at 08:18 PM | Comments (0)

February 22, 2023

One Night/One Person: 2023 Edition

The purpose of this post—which we keep revising every time we post it—is simple. To keep humans alive during the 30 coldest nights of the year by doing something simple and effective for others without holding pressers about what great people we are when it’s cold as a witch’s tit downtown and in city parks.

Bear with me.

As a Yankee, Eagle Scout, outdoorsy dude, lifelong camper and all-weather philanderer, let me assure you that spending a night outside in colder weather has unique challenges. Even in the Fall. And generally in the period October through March.

Exposure. The Elements. And hypothermia. Call “it” what you will. Authors Jack London and Hans Christian Andersen each wrote well-known stories about it. And you can die from hypothermia well above 32 degrees F.

You say you would really like to help the urban homeless on both cold and super-cold American Northeastern and Midwestern nights? Chilly, plain cold and the bitterly cold, there are unpredictable nights that many cities are prepared to accommodate more homeless residents at shelters but for a number of reasons (both good and bad) thousands of Americas's rough sleepers take their chances outside?

Good. So see our inaugural post about our One Night, Person (March 5, 2015) campaign and our follow-up March 7, 2015 post. No, we don't have time to go over all of this again; we're working stiffs like you. Just read the posts.

Once again, and in short, here is the idea and the rules:

You're a Yuppie, professional or other generic dweeb between the ages of 22 and 82.You live in towns like New York City, Philly, Boston, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Wilmington, DC or Chicago.

Or similar cities in Europe. Or Asia. Generally? Think Northern Hemisphere. Planet Earth. Wherever Yuppies roam. You may live in the suburbs or in a downtown neighborhood of these cities. But if you work during the day in a downtown area of any of them, you and yours will go forth and do this:

1. Pick out and ask a homeless woman or man what articles of warm clothing she or he needs that you already have at home or in storage--thermal gloves, wool scarfs, warm hats and beanies, big sweaters, winter coats, thermal underwear, socks, etc.

2. Ask just one person at a time.

3. Agree on a time to meet (preferably at the same place) later that day or the next day.

4. Find the winter stuff you have at home or in storage.

5. Bring said stuff to the homeless woman or man as agreed.

6. Nine out of ten times, your new friend will be there when you show up.

7. Wait for forecasts of the next super-cold night--and repeat.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (1)

February 21, 2023

Baudelaire: On Cities.

What strange phenomena we find in great cities. All we have to do is to stroll about with our eyes open.

--Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

Benjamin Franklin, a Carrara marble statue in the District of Columbia by Jacques Jouvenal (1829-1905), a German American sculptor. The statue was dedicated on January 17, 1889, at 10th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. It was moved in 1980 to its current site at the Post Office Pavillon at 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue. Photo: May 21, 2019

Posted by JD Hull at 08:59 PM | Comments (0)

The Church of the Epiphany, Washington, D.C. 1844.

Right altar. North side. The Church of the Epiphany (Episcopalian). Built 1844. 13th and G Streets, Northwest. United States.Senator Jefferson F. Davis (D-Mississippi) and his family worshiped here in Pew No. 14 from 1846 until 1861. 2:30 PM June 5, 2019.

Posted by JD Hull at 03:59 AM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2023

American Pantheon: Lucy Liu

Lucy Liu Vogue China April 2009

Posted by JD Hull at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)

February 19, 2023

Mountain Grove, MO goes to Washington: J. Dan Hull, Jr.

My grandfather was born in 1900. He died in 1988. I still miss him. He grew up in the Ozarks in a town called Mountain Grove and, at a very young age, started taking degrees at the University of Missouri, Chicago and Yale. In my family in the 1920s, going to college would have been a very big deal, and granddad was the first in his branch to do that. He was of the sixth American generation of a family of German farmers who arrived in Philadelphia in the early 1700s and started out life Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They later moved to Middlebrook, Virginia where they would stay for 100 years. In the 1850s, they oved to southern Missouri where, 50 years later, grandad would be born and grow up. My grandfather was at heart a schoolteacher. He was principal of Shortridge High School in Indianapolis during the mid-1940s. He also managed people, authored books and eventually became a government official in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. He traveled globally and extensively in his HEW position. "J. Dan" Hull wrote a standard text on high school administration that was used for decades. In the 1950s, he was elected to Cosmos Club in Washington. He taught me things no one else in my family could teach. And he gave me the Great Books. This giving started after he had finished his career in Washington, D.C., and had returned to Springfield, Missouri. Most were written centuries ago, and lived in his library long before I was born. He seemed to love Cicero's known works as much as any of his books. Now, I have all those volumes. They are, to me, like parts of him--and like very old friends of his in my care who've finally agreed to live with me indefinitely.

*from past posts

J. Dan Hull II in 1933

Posted by JD Hull at 11:50 PM | Comments (0)

Van Doren on Wordsworth.

We no longer require humor in poets. We demand salvation. Of that commodity, Wordsworth still supplies the purest sort.

--Mark Van Doren, 1950, commenting on the subtle graduation of William Wordsworth (1770-1850) from his role as "nature poet" to one of philosopher who offered hope and reassurance to troubled Europe.

All his life, Wordsworth preferred the beauty and solitude of the outdoors to London and the most literary cities on the Continent. His poetry was seeing, feeling and emotional, its inspiration springing from northwest England's famous Lake District, where he was born, wrote and spent most of his life. In his younger years especially, the upheavals in France between 1789 and 1799, and his extensive travels through Europe, made Wordsworth sad, cynical and pessimistic about man and society. Writing 100 years after Wordsworth's death, Mark Van Doren (1894-1972), the remarkably influential Columbia English professor, himself a poet who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940, gave Wordsworth high marks for his power in his later years "to soothe and console an age fallen victim to philosophic despair."

Wordsworth in the Lake District

Posted by JD Hull at 11:25 PM | Comments (0)

February 18, 2023

Charlotte Rampling: Still smoldering in three languages.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:54 PM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2023

"Romeo and Juliet", 1870, Ford Madox Brown.

"Romeo and Juliet" from Act III parting scene, 1870, Ford Madox Brown (1821-1893). Oil on canvas, 53 × 37 inches, Delaware Art Museum.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

February 13, 2023

Happy Birthday, EJB.

My friend Ellen Bry, an actress and prime time television mainstay (St. Elsewhere, Dexter, Boston Legal, Monk, The Closer) for decades, also known as this blog's in-house photographer, usually works in television. A few years ago she played Ester Hobbes, a Chicago socialite who suddenly loses everything, in The Lost & Found Family, a Sony Pictures release. In the film, we meet a strong and spiritual woman who is surprised to learn that she has inherited just one thing from her dead businessman husband: a run-down old house in Georgia, and the turbulent foster family living in it. Taken from the story Mrs. Hobbes' House, The Lost & Found Family is a remarkably powerful family film set in the American South. It was filmed in Jackson, Georgia, a town between Atlanta and Macon, with a population of about 4000, in Butts County. I was there once years ago. No, it's just not a movie for this stereotype: people who go to church, sing, say "golly", watch lots of TV, eat a lot, and are afraid of virtually everyone and everything all the time. There are artful, and moving, performances by Ellen and her younger cast members, who include teen heartthrob Lucas Till and Jessica Luza, a film and television actress. Ellen's other movie credits include Mission Impossible 3, Deep Impact, and Bye, Bye Love.

Original post: February 13, 2018

Posted by JD Hull at 02:04 PM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2023

Paul Fussell’s Class

Paul Fussell’s 1983 book “Class: A Guide through the American Status System.” No finer, funnier or painfully accurate book on the subject. Fussell was a Penn professor, WWII combat veteran and WASP’s WASP. Read it at your peril. It might bum you out.

Posted by JD Hull at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

Voltaire, God and Human Beings, 1769

"In general men are stupid, vengeful, ungrateful, jealous, greedy for other people's goods, abusive of their superiority when strong, and deceitful when weak."

--First sentence, Chapter 1, Our Crimes and Stupidities

Posted by JD Hull at 12:32 AM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2023

Weekend Angst Special: Henri, the Existential Cat.

Henri, the existential cat, belongs to one Will Braden. "Being, Nothingness and Le Vet."

Posted by JD Hull at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)

February 08, 2023

Gaius Julius Caesar: General, Statesman, Conqueror, Writer.

D. March 15, 44 BC. Above: Vincenzo Camuccini, Mort de Caesar, 1798.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Just Ask Alice.

If you have nothing nice to say, come sit by me.

- Alice Roosevelt Longworth, d. 1980

Posted by JD Hull at 08:20 AM | Comments (0)

John Henry Holliday: Fun. Funny. Educated. Southern. Mean as a snake.

John Henry Holliday in 1872. Graduation photo.

He despised and, whenever he could, preferred to engage bullies. He had a knee-jerk resistance to following the crowd in anything. He thought for himself. He argued with everyone (including the Earp family) about everything. He liked underdogs.

The Gift of Loyalty, Being There, Standing Up. Nine-tenths of what has been said or written about him, including Hollywood's versions, is hype. Doc Holliday wasn't a great shot, or anything like an artist with that big knife he carried around with him. He didn't kill scores of people. He wasn't drunk 24/7. Not everyone hated or feared him. Yes, he could be as mean as a snake.

But when you clear away the Old West myth, he's still a tragic but compelling and often admirable loner. Biographers do agree that John Henry Holliday (1851-1887) was fiercely loyal and could be counted on to stand up for friends--not just the Earp family--and a few others who might need a bold if flamboyant assist.

To be honest, I wish more lawyers--too many of us are cowards and wimps--had Doc's pluck, his ever-readiness to "be there" for you and his fine madness. Most of us? We don't come by strong character, action or decisiveness naturally. Face it: as a group, we are barely above-average Dorks. We've raised holding back, and even common cowardice, to an acceptable art.

Like many lawyers-to-be, Doc grew up comfortably and was well-educated. He was raised in Georgia as a popular and bright youngster in a close, supportive and fairly well-to-do family in which, among other things, he learned about card games. His clan's fortunes were badly set back, but not destroyed, by the Civil War and the subsequent occupation by Union soldiers.

He started out adulthood in 1872 as a 20-year-old graduate of a fine dental surgery school in Philadelphia. But Holliday caught Tuberculosis from either his stepmother or a patient in his first year of practice. At 22, still the beginning of his dental practice, he was diagnosed as "consumptive"--and told that he had but a few months to live.

This shock, coupled with what some researchers believe was a star-crossed love affair with a first cousin, made Holliday move West for his health. Dentistry quickly took a back seat to gambling. He became a binge-drinking rogue with only a few friends, professional gambler, resident wit, expert womanizer and prankster who was somehow menacing to most of the people he met, even at a weight of around 140 pounds. Although he was clearly an emotional and in some respects volatile man, most reports have him clear-headed, quick-witted and even strangely calm in violent situations the moment they erupted.

This was a bit of Social Critic and Philosopher in Holliday, too. I've read three bios now on Doc. (The best, to me, is Doc Holliday by Gary L. Roberts, John Wiley & Sons (2006)). Even when drunk, or when he had lost his temper (both happened a lot), Holliday was clear-eyed in a number of respects.

He wouldn't beat up on weaklings. He despised--and, whenever he could, preferred to engage--straight-up bullies and self-hating creeps. He had a knee-jerk resistance to following the crowd in anything. He thought for himself; he argued with everyone (including the Earp family) about everything. He liked underdogs. And even when cornered--or was about to be hauled off to jail (also happened a lot)--he had something caustic and often incredibly funny to say.

Tuberculosisj did finally claim him in Colorado at age 37. There is no end to the lore about what he did and said, or to the speculation about what made him tick in those last 15 years. But even the most sober historical sources on Holliday do agree on one thing. Over and over again, if a friend--in a few cases a total stranger--needed him, he was there immediately.

Instinctive. No hesitation. An angry yet adept explosion. None of the pathetic step-by-step "analysis" of modern white collars that should shame us deeply every time and never does. You didn't need to ask Doc to help. Doc didn't need to think about it. He just did it.

Posted by JD Hull at 01:46 AM | Comments (1)

February 05, 2023

Mannish Boys, Backdoor Men, Big Dogs, Players and Hounds

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

Oscar Wilde: On Writing and Writers.

The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.

--Lord Henry Wotton, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (1890)

Posted by JD Hull at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)

February 02, 2023

H. L. Mencken: Fly the Colors.

Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.

— H. L. Mencken

Posted by JD Hull at 08:36 PM | Comments (0)

Go Somewhere Different. Meet Someone Different.

A wise man's country is the world.

--Aristippus (435-360 BC), as quoted by Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers

"There is hope. I see traces of men." Aristippus was shipwrecked on the island of Rhodes in the Aegean Sea. He and his fellow survivors did not know where they were or if the island was inhabited. But he sees geometric figures drawn on the sand.

Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

It’s February 2023. Please Think On Your Own. Resist Bozo-Think.

Happy New Year. In 2023, and daily, stop apologizing for being open-minded, being outspoken, seeing all sides of an issue and being against the goofy fashion of that day. Think on your own. Get off your knees and let people know who you really are. Fight junior high mob culture. Tell the world you’re done with it. Risk something.

Original post 1/1/2023

Posted by JD Hull at 04:43 AM | Comments (0)

February 01, 2023

February is also Pikey History Month.

Never Forget. Avenge Mickey O’Neil’s Mum.

Posted by JD Hull at 08:15 AM | Comments (0)

Sensitive Litigation Moment #631

Lawyering? A cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. And then there's a negative side.

--Holden Oliver, Salzburg, Austria

Posted by JD Hull at 12:58 AM | Comments (0)