Jim > Recent Status Updates

Long ago the place had been called Ty-Cradoc ... but in 1737 an ailing girl called Alice Morgan saw the Virgin hovering over a patch of rhubarb, and ran back to the kitchen, cured. to celebrate the miracle, her father renamed his farm 'The Vision' and carved the initials A.M. with the date and a cross on the lintel above the porch.

In the winter of 2003, I went off to the Andes to follow in my grandfather's footsteps. I travelled from the Atacama Desert down to the icebergs of Patagonia. he Andean scenery terrified and exhilarated me in a way not even my grandfather's letters had prepared me for.

And there are some who can afford idleness in that peninsula where the cult of leisure flourishes still and where variety and pleasure can fill up many, though not all, days.

Above all, there is the fascination of finding here and there under swaying vines, or perched on top of a beetling crag, the rugged masonry of a bygone race; and of trying to understand the bewildering romance of the ancient builders who, ages ago, sought refuge in a region which appears to have been expressly designed by nature as a sanctuary for the oppressed....

As a matter of fact those snow-capped peaks in an unknown and unexplored part of Peru fascinated me greatly. They tempted me to go and see what lay beyond. In the ever famous words of Rudyard Kipling there was 'Something hidden! Go and find it! Go and look beyond the ranges -- Something lost beyond the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!'

[Philip K] Dick delights in devising paradoxes to illustrate the idea that getting to the ultimate truth is practically impossible. There is always another layer to be penetrated: every new truth turns out to be penultimate.

He passed Valentin le Désossé who, impassive and rigid, was dancing with the voluptuous La Gouloue. Part-laundress, part-bourgeoise, her red hair with its square-cut fringe was piled on top of her head and she wore a ribbon of watered silk around her neck.

We are used to the idea that the Incas quite literally worshipped stone, but few question why..... In an Inca creation myth, Lord Viracocha formed the first man out of stone.... This sense of stone as a life force is crucial to understanding the Inca architectural and sculptural aesthetic.

The very fact that America was indeed a New World caused Renaissance man an unexpected problem of intellectual absorption: there were no references in classical literature to America, at a time when scholars were trying to re-shape their intellectual maps in the mould of a rediscovered classical world; nor were there any biblical references to the new continent.

The Incas in the sixteenth century were a culture unusually obsessed with the beauty of mountains, in a way that European culture would only assimilate hundreds of years later.

I think it's a sad thing that the parties, rather than thinking about which system is best for the country, always think first of all about which system is best for them at a particular time.

I find people who are completely prepared for history rather suspect. They have a lot in common with the communists, who so arrogantly believe they have completely understood the world and therefore know perfectly how everything should be. And then, when everything turns out o be slightly different, they try to squeeze the world to fit their notion of it.

Politics is a kind of dough that one is eternally kneading; one can almost never say: the objective has been achieved; I can now cross it off my list and turn to other matters.

Plyne looked, seeing he thirty-dollar-a-week musician who sat there at the battered piano, the soft-eyed, soft-mouthed nobody whose ambitions and goals aimed at exactly zero, who'd been working there for three years without asking or even hinting for a raise.

Perhaps God not only could be a tyrant but is. Arguably this is Job's discomfiting discovery as he moves from a faith in God's secret judgments to a growing awareness of a pattern of human misfortune that God's nature is arbitrary judgment, not love.

However, the main reason laptops need to be put away for takeoff and landing is to prevent them from becoming high-speed projectiles during a sudden deceleration or impact and to help keep the passageways clear is there's an evacuation. Your computer is a piece of luggage, and luggage needs to be stowed so it doesn't kill somebody or get in the way.

From the book oj Job, [Pope] Gregory [the Great] authoritatively derives this saving knowledge—and learns that this saving knowledge can be truly gained only through suffering, loneliness, cognitive collapse, and penance. Gregory's Job is our guide through these depths and out of them again.

Timid now, skittish, the little animals were examining the faded walls, the beams, the blue flies buzzing by the window, the gold nuggets immersed in the prisons of light, the veins in the hardwood floor. Josefino stopped, his head was touching the bare feet, which drew back, and the Leons you're the original worm-man, and Josefino the serpent that tempted Eve.

He went along the path, quickly, among indistinguishable croaking, the luminous eyes of hoot owls and screech owls, and the tiny, exasperated melody of the crickets, feeling furtive brushings on his skin, pricks like those of a pin, trampling young bushes that crackled, dry leaves that whispered as they fell apart under his feet.

"Maybe it's true that the Green House brought bad luck," the old men would say, licking their lips, "but you certainly could have a good time there."

Everything you think you know about flying is wrong.... Commercial aviation is a breeding ground for bad information, and the extent to which different myths, fallacies, and conspiracy theories have become embedded in the prevailing wisdom is startling. Even the savviest flyers are prone to misconstruing much of what actually goes on.

Viktor found himself thinking of Kiev and Snail's Law, some article of which he was very likely offending against—possibly that of having so to speak drunk himself outfrom under the protective shell of Bim.... Here different laws applied, of which he had yet to learn.

But elections, as now practised, were war -- no longer simply a seizing of territory, but a killingoff of opposition, as in big business, on a front of anyone's choosing.

This had to do with the Republic of China's closing its embassy in Washington. The miniaturization of human beings in China had progressed so far at that point, that their ambassador was only sixty centimeters tall. His farewell was polite and friendly.: ...there was no longer anything going on in the United States which was of any interest to the Chinese at all.

She left, as they all did. For all the women who passed through [Bolivar's] life,many of them for a few brief hours, there was none to whom he had even suggested the idea of staying.

After five years of troubled independence, Spain had just reconquered the Viceregency of New Granada and the Captaincy General of Venezuela, territories that did not offer resistance to the ferocious onslaught of General Pablo Morillo, called The Pacifier. The supreme command of the patriots had been eliminated by the simple formula of hanging every man who could read and write.

Just a few days earlier it would have seemed inconceivable that the world's second superpower could be so completely humbled by bands of ill-armed, untrained amateur fighters, many of them in their teens. The revolution caught the imagination of the world. Throughout the Western capitals there were demonstrations in support of the plucky Hungarians who had the courage to challenge he Soviet Union.

It was the least-organized revolution in history. There were no leaders, no plans. Groups of armed men and women (most of them young) spontaneously formed in places that offered a vantage point to strike a swift blow, and then hide. Sometimes a group of a dozen or so would come together for one firefight; when that was over they would split up and never see each other again.

I'll teach you terrible things ... divine things ... you'll know at last what love really is! I promise you'll descend with me to the very depths of the mystery of love ... and death!

The murderous evening rush hour seemed to have passed its peak. At least there was enough room in the train to read the paper standing up. The paper was full of the National Workers' Union strike. Shigeo Segawa was sick and tired of reading about it and only looked at it here and there before turning to the stock market page. Now he began to read with concentration. It was many months since he had left Kabutocho,,,,,