¶ Matins: Between this and this: I just had one of my big ideas: Libraries in France are bookstores. (Bibliothèques are libraries, but never mind.) What if we altered the English definition, and publicly funded small bookshops?

¶ Lauds: The world’s “largest concert“: the Hamburg State Orchestra plays Brahms — all over Hamburg.

¶ Prime: It took me forever to realize what Formenwandlungen der &-Zeichen means. “&-Zeichen” is the (rather klutzy) German term for “ampersand.”

¶ Tierce: The good news is also the bad news: Orient-Express Hotels wants to back out of a deal with the New York Public Library that may leave the Donnell Library building standing.

¶ Sext:  Keith McNally, owner of Balthasar and other eateries, would like to swat the bloggers who are swarming around his latest venture (which doesn’t open until next week), Minetta Tavern. Buzz, buzz!  

¶ Nones: Amazing news: “Arrest warrant issued for Sudan leader.”

¶ Vespers: Maud Newton reconnects with Katherine Anne Porter, who has just appeared in the Library of America.

¶ Compline: This is a joke, right? The United Transportation Union objects to surveillance cameras in railroad engine cabs; recommends staffing same with two people.

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Quatorze (shown at right), alarmed by unexpected presence of gangster-level garden ornaments on pricey Upper East Side real estate (not to mention in such close proximity to Museum!), challenges Apollonian wannabe to pop apricot into his open mouth.

¶ Matins: A collection of lucid responses to last week’s story about academic humanities (covered here).

¶ Lauds: Have a look at but it does float — a tumble log noted by Things Magazine, an apparently anonymous curation noted, in turn, by Robin at Snarkmarket.

¶ Prime: I’ve been following David Galbraith’s Smashing Telly(!) for a while now, and I’ve linked to or through it a couple of times. It’s a great site, because Mr Galbraith is a very strong writer. I have never once been inspired to watch the TV show under review, however. (I hope to read Niall Ferguson’s Ascent of Money eventually….)

¶ Tierce: Bergen County Academies, a limited-admissions public school in New Jersey, is changing the debate (or at least reviving it) about vocational schools. Completely.

¶ Sext: V X Sterne, at Outer Life, has some creative thoughts about tax avoidance. (They’re also perfectly legal; commendable, even!)

¶ Nones: When I first glanced at headlines about the story about the cricketer shootings in Lahore, I thought that it involved a ramping up of Tamil violence on Sri Lanka. But no; it’s rather worse — yet another gash in the fabric of Pakistani society.

¶ Vespers: Patrick Kurp writes so persuasively about Zbigniew Herbert’s essay collection, Barbarian in the Garden, that I’ve got to havea copy.

¶ Compline: More than thirty years later, Spain is purging monuments to the Franco régime.

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Looking for a book yesterday, I came across one that I hadn’t even opened, much less begun to read: Edward Mendelson’s The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have to Say About the Stages of Life. It was immediately clear that this was a book that I ought to have looked into a while ago, and, retiring with it to my reading chair, I was soon so engrossed that I forgot all about updating the Daily Office. I have never seriously considered reading Frankenstein, the first of Mr Mendelson’s choices, but his chapter on the novel left me feeling something of a booby. Right now, though, I want to share a paragraph from his introduction. Because it could serve as a mission statement for this Web log, I wish I’d said it myself.

One of the themes of this book is its argument that the most intellectually and morally coherent way of thinking about human beings is to think of them as autonomous persons (the plural noun “persons,” not the collective noun “people”) instead of as members of any category, class or group. A second theme, inseparable from the first, is that persons exist only in relations with other persons, that the idea of an absolutely isolated and independent person is intellectually and morally incoherent, that all ideas of personality and society that emphasize stoicism and self-reliance are at best only partially valid, while ideas that emphasize mutual need and mutual aid have the potential to be true.

Like Mr Mendelson, my perspective lies between that of the soul-stuck solipsism of individualism viewpoint and the mechanical oversimplification of collectivism. I am not ashamed to label this perspective socialist. Whatever the political connotations of that term, it correctly denotes the focus of my values: mutual need and mutual aid, distributed in the society with which I’m familiar, which happens to include folks at many socio-economic levels.

¶ Matins: In a foreseeable development that few wanted to think about very much, the downside inequalities of European Union constituents threatens to pull the EU apart. Steven Erlanger and Stephen Castle report.

While Western European countries are reluctant, with their own problems both at home and among the countries using the euro, there is a deep interconnectedness in any case. Much of the debt at risk in Eastern Europe is on the books of euro zone banks — especially in Austria and Italy. The same is true for the problems farther afield, in Ukraine.

Having watched the Soviet Union collapse, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe embraced the liberal, capitalist model as the price of integration with Europe. That model is now badly tarnished, and the newer members feel adrift.

¶ Lauds: In the Chicago Tribune, Mike Boehm asks, “Will the Obamas’ interest in the arts create an inflation of appreciation?” The prospect of presidential interest in theatre and dance is so dizzying that he doesn’t stop to ask why it would be a good thing.

¶ Prime: Perhaps you’ve already discovered Look At Me, the Web site of found photographs, but it’s new to me, and I’m checking it out every day. (I’ve linked to a recent posting that shows what has to be an old Howard Johnson’s — looking not so old.)

¶ Tierce: As usual on Monday mornings, I begin with the Times’s Business section, because that’s where the interesting stories are, even if they would fit just as comfortably in the first section, alongside the “regular” news. Two stories today that generate a certain twinned-snakes synergy:

• “In Obama, Labor Finds the Support It Expected” by Steven Greenhouse, and
•  “India Maintains Sense of Optimism and Growth,” by Heather Timmons.

¶ Sext: A party who signs himself “MDL Welder” seeks advice about a romantic “att[achment].” The Non-Expert replies in an odd demotic.

You are very att. To each other. Man we all know that, we can all see it. When you two are passing yes there will be kiss in return, geddit? So obv. Most people wish they were with someone who was so att. To each other. So you say “Do you think she is falling for me?” and all of us here are LOAO because YES YES YES she’s falling for you and she’s already falling so far down you have to reach down and catch up. You need to jump that diving board and triple flip and angle downwards for minimum air resist. She att. You att. To each other. It’s the best way to be, it’s the best way to start. And we say aww.

This drollery has me imagining a novel yet to be written, set, like Then We Came to the End and Personal Days, in the workplace — but not in a very literate workplace.

¶ Nones: I’ll be watching to see how the US press in general and the New York Times in particular cover this story (from the BBC): “Israel ‘plans settlement growth’.”

¶ Vespers: Charles McGrath paves the way for a revival of interest in John Cheever, soon to appear in the Library of America.

¶ Compline: The Infrastructurist lists the top ten hot infrastructure jobs, complete with tips about getting one. For example (“Smart Meter Installer”):

There are 150 million electric meters in the US. About 90 percent of them are “dumb.” Obama has offered a plan to upgrade 40 million of the meters, but eventually they will probably all be replaced. Some utilities are well under way: PG&E in California is putting in 10.3 million smart meters, while Oncor in Texas is planning to install 3 million in the next four years.

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We broke the “Never on Sunday” rule to take in the Paul Taylor Dance Company this afternoon. Better to say that I broke the rule when I bought the tickets in January. All I knew when I bought the tickets was that I wanted to see “Arden Court.” I couldn’t have told you why. It may have been a snapshot of the dance that was printed in a brochure several years ago; it may have been something that somebody said. According to this year’s brochure, “Arden Court” would be given three times, and the other two dates were for one reason or another impossible. So I broke the rule against doing things on Sundays and bought tickets for this afternoon’s performance. The result was not repentance, but a new rule.

Once a quarter, more or less, we’ll break the “Never on Sunday” rule and go to some matinee or other. Sunday matinees are usually at three in the afternoon; that leaves plenty of time for a late lunch — and for box-office crawling. Here’s how box-office crawling works:

Kathleen fills a few dozen large Post-It notes with information about plays that we want to see. (There are lots at the moment, more than we can afford to see.) Then she organizes the notes. (more…)