SWEEPINGS

Let there be lightning! Life could not exist without lightning breaking the bonds of nitrogen atoms in the atmosphere, thereby making them usable as building blocks of organic compounds.

By Meg51994 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49220943

My grandmother, born in India, was kidnapped from her cradle by one of these monkeys and taken up into a tree. The monkey decided the human baby wasn't worth the effort and returned her when the locals and the household servants started banging pots and pans and offered a bunch of bananas, which the kidnapper could not hold at the same time as the squalling infant.

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes--Duelo a garrotazos-Fight with cudgels

Profoundly moral allegory of the mad savage desperation of human conflict. This, along with thirteen other scenes Goya painted on the walls of his house in the last years of his life when he seemed to be battling with his own madness.

The second page of Bach's Mass in B Minor was presented to Augustus III of Saxony in hopes of employment at his court. One of the pinnacles of Western music, it is also the most impressive job application in history. Bach got the job.

Vikings may have used Icelandic spar to navigate in heavy fog by taking advantage of the properties of polarized light to locate the sun's position. I have another theory, which is probably wrong because I am an expert in nothing. If the navigator had an approximate idea of the interval of time between first light and dusk and the date, then he would know how high the sun would reach at its zenith and, therefore, roughly his latitude. If accustomed from childhood to this practice, it might have become as natural for him as reading a map is for us.

Göbekli Tepe, a temple complex built more than 11,000 years ago, not only before any other monumental construction but before the advent of agriculture. Many of the huge pillars were ornately carved. Organized religion has been called an artifact of civilization, but Göbekli Tepe suggests the reverse. Coincidentally--or not--the DNA of the wild wheat found twenty miles away from this site is closest to the DNA of our modern domesticated wheat.

Paleolithic flute made from a vulture bone. 35,000 to 40,000 years ago our most ancient forebears were moved by music.

Houdon's bust of George Washington. Washington usually comes off stiff in the representations of him, but in this most unyielding medium of marble, I get a sense of the man beneath the skin. I am persuaded of his ability to lead.

A birthday invitation from the Roman wife of the commander of the Fort of Vindolandia to her sister. The correspondence was composed by a person skilled in writing except for the line by the birthday girl, "I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper and hail." Some artifacts unexpectedly take us into the daily lives of other times and show us a continuity of hopes, cares, and traditions.

The Heck horse was bred to resemble the Tarpan, an extinct primitive horse. The first domesticated horses likely came from a breed that looked like this. Some BCE Nobel Prize should be awarded to the first person who jumped on a horse, stayed on, and directed the animal where they wanted to go.

Not the deadliest of natural disasters, a dust storm for me is the most awesome. the visual image brings home the impossibility of escape.

HEAD SCRATCHERS

Occasionally, a famous person will say something you don't quite expect.

"Whoever drinks beer, he is quick to sleep; whoever sleeps long, does not sin; whoever does not sin, enters Heaven! Thus, let us drink beer!" Martin Luther

Also: "He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long."

Frederick the Great who was as openly gay as a king of Prussia could be in the 18th century said this after a defeat: "Fortune has it in for me; she is a woman, and I am not in that way inclined."

Churchill's last words: "I'm bored with it all."

Ludwig von Wittgenstein: "It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed 'Wisdom.' And then I know exactly what is going to follow: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'"

Hector Berlioz on the exhumation of his wife: "It came away with a dull thud and a smell."

“What ails my Nicky, my darling Imp,
My Lucifer bright, my Beelze?
My Pig, my Pug-with-a-curly-tail,
You are not well. Can a mother fail
To see _that_ which all Hell see?"

The Devil's mother to her son who is yearning for a wife in Charles Lamb's Satan in Search of a Wife

"Others have been made fools of by the girls; but this can never be said with truth of me. I most emphatically, in this instance, made a fool of myself." Abraham Lincoln in a letter to Mrs. Orville H. Browning

LOGAN’S SPEECH

Logan was a prominent Cayuga leader. He was a war leader but often urged his fellow Cayuga not to attack whites settling in the Ohio Country. His attitude changed on May 3, 1774, when a group of Virginia settlers murdered approximately one dozen Cayuga. Among them were Logan's mother and sister. He conducted raids in western Pennsylvania, killing thirteen whites in retaliation for the deaths of the Cayuga.

I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war [the French and Indian War, 1755-1763], Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, "Logan is the friend of white men." I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Col. Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it: I have killed many: I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbour a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan?--Not one.