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T. S. Eliot on causes
for we must know in advance, if we are prepared for that conflict, that the combat may have truces but never a peace. If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph.
From T. S. Eliot on F. H. Bradley, via John Ganz
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New Hartley mine disaster
A coal mining accident took like the lives of 204 miners in New Hartley, north of Newcastle, in 1862. The massive cast iron beam of a steam engine used to pump water out of the depths of the mine (which extended out under the North Sea) snapped and fell into the open shaft of the Hester Pit, entombing the workers within. The men survived some time in the earth but succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning before rescuers reached them nearly a week later.
A record of the event, taken some years later, puts the aftermath in some admittedly florid but touching language:
On the 26th the last sad phase of this fearful tragedy was completed by the bodies being solemnly interred in the silent grave; and so great was the number of persons and vehicles composing the procession, that although Earsdon Church is four miles from New Hartley, the first rough hearse had arrived at the church before the last had left the colliery. The burial ground attached to the parish church at Earsdon was totally inadequate to the extraordinary requirements made upon it, and provision had consequently to be made outside the church-yard for nearly the whole of the bodies. The ground for the purpose was given by His Grace the Duke of Northumberland. After the bodies had been laid in the graves, there were sorrowing friends anxiously inquiring the exact spot at which were laid those for whom they mourned; and the tender flower and gloomy cypress, planted by the hand and watered with the tear of affection, will bloom there when the memory of those who sleep peacefully beneath shall have passed away from the earth.
Further reading
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Domain squatting
This. “It me,” or whatever. When I first started doing computer stuff I bought charlesharries.com from a scuzzy site that wouldn’t let me transfer it out, so I let it lapse and bought the (much more aesthetic but also much more difficult to say aloud to another person) charlesharri.es.
I’d intended to re-purchase the domain through a Reputable Domain Retailer but it got squatted immediately.
In the end I did get it back once whoever was squatting it realised that I have nearly zero authority on the web.
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Aurora
Saw the aurora last night, for the first time ever. I don’t know what I expected. I waited until the sun was good and set and then I poked my head out the back door just shy of the motion sensor on my neighbour’s flood light. There was a pale haze in the sky, like a long thin cloud. Off to the west, the sky was noticeably pinkish. To the naked eye it all looked sort of blurry, more the suggestion of an aurora than an actual aurora, like in the pictures.
Sam and I hopped in the car and drove out towards Weardale, where the sky gets Dark. All along the road outside of Sunniside and Tow Law we saw people parked up on the verges, faces skyward. We parked up above Wolsingham and took some pictures by the side of the road. I think that by this point the geomagnetic storm or whatever was weakening. We still captured some pretty magical pictures, and it was fun to tool through the countryside in the middle of the night on a Thursday.
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Actually good stuff continues to be good
Yesterday I wrote about a trend towards plainness and dullness as exemplary of the foibles of Modernism. Yes, the diversity of colour in art is decreasing. Yes, Mark Rothko's colour fields are getting more and more expensive. Yes, the places that we live and work are increasingly converging on dull beige boxes.
But:
Changsha Meixihu International Culture and Arts Centre by Zaha Hadid 
Habitat 67 by Moshe Safdie These are both a ton of fun! The bottom one is nearly 60 years old. What they lack in colour they more than make up for in sheer panache.
I think that at least some of the explanation for the observation that things from the past are more aesthetically pleasing comes down to plain old survivorship bias. Neither of these hold a candle to Nôtre-Dame de Paris, but I'll bet they knock the socks off 99% of NDdP's contemporaries.
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