L’art Pour L’art

like wdym you don't think about the fact that women would tell stories as they made butter in the same way we listen to podcasts today? wdym you don't think about that one Chinese poet who wrote about how much he loved his cats hundreds of years ago? wdym you don't think about the fact that we found a gravesite of a young child surrounded by flowers from THOUSANDS of years ago? wdym you don't think about how people wrote "i was here" into the walls in Pompeii? wdym you don't think about the little egyptian boy who drew little doodles at the top of his school works more then a thousand years ago?

Grace Nixon's letter to Dick Winters, 9 Feb. 1995

Dear Dick, This little card says very little of my deepest appreciation, affection, and gratitude for all you have done for me—for your thoughtfulness to even write Miguel about his grandfather, his great grandfather, etc. touched me greatly. You are and always have been all these years such a true friend in all respects. I do not know anyone whom Lewis respected more than you, Dick Winters. [...]—and again, thank you, Dick Winters. Much love, Grace

it contains human existence.

116 images— the sun, the location of our solar system, mathematical and physical unit definitions, and our planets, including a blue and swirling white sphere simply labelled "Home." it contains images of human dna, of our atoms, their structure, the way they divide, our anatomy, our conception, our birth.

it does not contain an image of war. nor of disease, nor poverty, nor crime, religion, or ideology.

it does contain a father looking lovingly at his daughter. it does contain the picture of a tree toad in a gentle hand, of a woman eating a grape at a supermarket.

the remainder of the disk is audio. a 90-minute selection of music from all over the world, sounds, and greetings. there are greetings in 55 different languages, one akkadian, spoken in sumer about six thousand years ago, and one wu, a modern chinese dialect. the greetings call out to a friend. it wishes them well. it asks them if they have eaten yet.

but it contains other sounds too. it holds the sound of rain, of thunder, of a volcano and an earthquake. it holds the sound of mud pots and trains. it holds the sound of a mother kissing her child.

with little to erode it in space, the golden record would probably outlast all human creation. it will be 40,000 years before it approaches another planetary system. if it does, it cannot find intelligent life. intelligent life will have to find it, retrieve it from where it floats silent and small through space. we still don't know if they would understand it.

in 7.5 billion years, the evolution of the sun would burn the earth up, and we would not exist any longer, but the voyager would fly on, bearing a memory.

I had to look this up to recall the specific details, but "the Golden Record also carries an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of Ann Druyan. During the recording of the brainwaves, Druyan thought of many topics, including Earth's history, civilizations and the problems they face, and what it was like to fall in love." [wikipedia]

The recording was made two days after she and Sagan confessed their feelings for each other.

If you'd like to listen to an interview with Ann Druyan about the project and her relationship with Sagan, here's a clip from Radiolab:

Re-reading books is great and good until it’s The Secret History by Donna Tartt and you realize that just like Tiberius tried to follow in Augustus’s footsteps, Henry tried to follow in Julian’s. You see Richard’s focus shift from Julian- who was at first a savior, a god- to Henry, a flawed student of his who, at his end, is held in disdain by the majority of his closest friends and is lost in the indulgence of his own perversions- his attempts (and, arguable, success) to finally live without thinking.

Major Dick Winters’ Sykes Fairbairn fighting knife.

This knife was a gift from Lt. Lewis Nixon who was Winters’ close friend. The inscription is “L.N.” (Lewis Nixon) to “D.W.” (Dick Winters) “November 1943”. This knife is referenced in Winters’ war time letters and was taken by an unknown person at some point and the inscription was unsuccessfully partially removed with a file. Major Winters and Easy Company arrived in England in September 1943 and trained with British Soldiers and Commandos who sported the British Sykes Fairbairn knife. These knives became a “luxury item” and were very coveted by the U.S. soldiers who had them.