Arlington, Ma milestone
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Monday, May 13, 2019
Events and milestones highlight time’s passing.
Yesterday, Mother’s Day.
The day before, a First Communion celebration.
Tuesday coming, an appointment at the Microsoft store at Prudential Center, followed by a museum visit to the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit.
Friday daughter Kat returns home from school.
And fast-approaching, a week from Thursday, a trip to Seattle for a family reunion.
Plus many more that fill a calendar, sometimes jam a calendar.
Sometimes happening so hard on each other that we forget to appreciate how uniquely wonderful is the event of the moment.
Events and milestones, perpetuated by photographs.
Marking time’s passing.
Ripening into memories.
We have another too-cool day coming tomorrow but then the Boston area warms up.
Let’s not skip a single step because of the weather.
The hours are ticking away and if we don’t make the most of our time another day will soon click past.
Unnoticed.
Unappreciated.
Tick Tock.
In clock language:
Enjoy today.
Enjoy the week.
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Postings Count, Weather Brief, and Dinner
Monday, May 13, 2019
Our 402nd consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.
After 402 posts we’re at the 8.04 percentile of our commitment, the commitment a different way of marking the passage of time.
Time is 12.01am.
On Monday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 50* with a feels-like of 45*, with rain.
Dinner tonight is a Roast Sirloin with Broccoli Rabe.
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Question of the Day:
Who was Aristotle?
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Monday, May 13, 2019
Love your notes.
Contact me at domcapossela@hotmail.com
From Sally C:
Dear Dom,
This little bit is for your friend Howard D.
Howard, is there any such thing as "a regular person?" (Personally, I hope not.)
Sally
And Howard answers (directly):
Sally, it is perfectly delightful and appropriate of you to ask. The locution itself is lifted from my dear friend Jack R., who uses it, I might say, regularly, to signify a response to things that happen that may be said to be more or less predictable. I’ve always understood him, but you’d have to know him… etc. (the usual caveat). To make it easier for the majority of mankind who do not, and will likely never have the pleasure, I offer this undoubtedly inadequate gloss to facilitate deriving some sense. It is, to all effects, the same as that famously French construction (a legalism and probably a crypto-political expression as well, somehow), “l’homme moyen sensuel,” which I’m sure all sophisticated readers will recognize as a formulation most often alluded to in judicial contexts, understandable in English as “a man of average appetites.” As even the sage individuals who are appointed (or in some benighted jurisdictions elected) to the office of judge are ready to admit, this is almost an impossible term, that is “average,” to define to the satisfaction of everyone. Hence we have that famous comment regarding what is pornography by SJC associate justice Potter Stewart, to the extent that, in a concurring statement that a film under judgment as pornographic that with regard to defining it, although he “could never succeed in intelligibly doing so,” nevertheless, “I know it when I see it.”
In short there is no average when it comes to appetites (for which understand that poor beleaguered lexicographers mean, among other things, “tastes,” which is what I was talking about when I was writing to Dom). So, you’re right in your hope. Yes Sally, there is no regular person. We are all irregular, like some of the best of the marked-down goods in the lamentably now defunct Filene’s Basement, and we should revel in being so.
Now, if you’ll indulge me, delightful and appropriate in my lights as it was for you to ask me, please tell me why you were moved to ask.
yr. obedient srvt,
Howard
WebMeister responds: Sally, I love your approach: no frills; direct; keeping it simple. And I love Howard’s
scholarly approach shining through quietly, w/o distraction, yet, thunderous.
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Chuckle for Monday, May 13, 2019
I take my husband everywhere, but he keeps finding his way back.
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Answer to the Question of the Day: Monday, May 13, 2019
Aristotle (384–322 BC) was a philosopher during the Classical period in Ancient Greece, the founder of the Lyceum and the Peripatetic school of philosophy and Aristotelian tradition.
Along with his teacher Plato, he is considered the "Father of Western Philosophy".
His writings cover many subjects – including physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics and government.
Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him, and it was above all from his teachings that the West inherited its intellectual lexicon, as well as problems and methods of inquiry. As a result, his philosophy has exerted a unique influence on almost every form of knowledge in the West and it continues to be a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion.
Bust of Aristotle. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek bronze original by Lysippos from 330 BC; the alabaster mantle is a modern addition.
After Lysippos - Jastrow (2006)
Little is known about his life. Aristotle was born in the city of Stagira in Northern Greece.
His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian.
At seventeen or eighteen years of age, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty-seven (c. 347 BC).
Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC.
He established a library in the Lyceum which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls.
Though Aristotle wrote many elegant treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication.
The fact that Aristotle was a pupil of Plato contributed to his former views of Platonism, but, following Plato's death, Aristotle developed an increased interest in natural sciences and adopted the position of immanent realism.
Aristotle's views on physical science profoundly shaped medieval scholarship.
Their influence extended from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and were not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics.
Some of Aristotle's zoological observations found in his biology, such as on the hectocotyl (reproductive) arm of the octopus, were disbelieved until the 19th century.
His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and John Buridan.
Aristotle's influence on logic also continued well into the 19th century
He influenced Islamic thought during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church.
Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher" and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher".
His ethics, though always influential, gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics, such as in the thinking of Alasdair MacIntyre and Philippa Foot.
I have a copy of Robert’s Rules in case the battle between Howard and Sally heats up.
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Good Morning on this Monday, the thirteenth day of May, 2019
Our homily talks about milestones.
We posted the weather and calendar changes plus the number of postings.
And a fun give and take between two of our favorite people, Sally C and Howard.
And a chuckle
And a question and answer that reminded us of who Aristotle was.
And now? Gotta go.
Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?
See you soon.
Your love.