Steven H. Cullinane\’s Harvard Weblog

 Friday, September 26, 2003  3:28 PM

A Mass for
Rosh Hashanah

In memory of playwright Herb Gardner, who died on Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2003, in honor of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, which begins at sunset today, and in celebration of T. S. Eliot’s birthday, which is today, here is an illustrated Mass from the Catholic News Service dated Sept. 24 (Saint Herb’s Day):

See also the two previous log24.net entries,
and “Max’s Hawaiian Ecstasies” in
Gardner’s play “The Goodbye People.”

For a musical accompaniment to this
requiem for Gardner,
 the “Aloha Mass,”
click here.

Among
those
at the
Mass:

The Mass, at Max’s Hawaiian Ecstasies in Paradise,
will conclude with “Simply Irresistible,” sung by
Saint Robert Palmer and performed by…

Irresistible Grace.

The role of the congregation will, as usual,
be performed by George Plimpton.
Payment for our sins will be made by
Johnny Cash.

Olympic Style

For Dr. Mary McClintock Dusenbury,
Radcliffe College Class of 1964,
who shares an August 22 birthday with
the late Leni Riefenstahl —

Three occurrences of the same
sangaku (temple tablet):

August 19, 2003,

August 22, 2003,

September 6, 2003.

Story Theory

The conflict between the Euclidean, or “diamond” theory of truth, and the Trudeau, or “story” theory of truth, continues.

On this, Hugh Grant’s birthday, let us recall last year’s log24 entry for this date. On Roger Ebert’s review of the Hugh Grant film “Sirens” about the artist Norman Lindsay:

Ebert gets Pan wrong in this film; he says, “the
bearded Lindsay is a Pan of sorts.” No. The “Pan of sorts” is in fact
the girl who romps joyfully with the local boys and who later, with
great amusement, uses her divine x-ray vision to view Tara Fitzgerald
naked in church.

This year’s offering for Grant’s birthday is an
illustrated prayer by a great defender of the religious, or “story,”
theory of truth, Madeleine L’Engle: