Friday Links, October 23, 2020

Sacred Art competition, forebear photos, O’Connor reads A Good Man Is Hard to Find, and Dana Gioia Laments L.A.

Catholic art organization seeks entries for Sacred Art prize

From Bernardo Aparicio García, Dappled Things Founder & Publisher:

The Catholic Art Institute is calling for submissions of fine contemporary sacred art for an online juried exhibition. Submission deadline: December 2, 2020. Here are Submission Details.

Mesmerizing Photographs of Historical Figures With Their Direct Descendants

Dappled Things Managing Editor Karen Barbre Ullo recommended this link with, “I guess if you want to know what your ancestors looked like, dress up in period clothes and look in the mirror.”

Flannery O’Connor Reads ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ in Rare 1959 Audio

In case you haven’t previously had the pleasure or want to experience it again, you can listen to Flannery O’Connor read “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” while reading along here.

I have a  quibble with this introduction at Open Culture, which characterizes O’Connor as “isolated, and goes on to say, “In April of 1959–five years before her death at the age of 39 from lupus–O’Connor ventured away from her secluded family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, to give a reading at Vanderbilt University.”

Flannery O’Connor’s fame as a writer was already recognized, and she was living away from home in close companionship with other Catholics who had significant clout in the wider literary world—when she came down with lupus, the same disease that had killed her father. Because of her illness, she moved back to Georgia to be with her mother, who lived in the town of Milledgeville, and they moved to live on the family farm, Andalusia—which was not “secluded,” since it was just outside of town. For another thing, her reading at Vanderbilt University was by no means an isolated event.  During the thirteen years she lived on Andalusia until her death, Flannery travelled often, all over the United States, to appear in person for a surprising number of interviews and speaking engagements. I seem to remember seeing a total number of over 150!

Psalm and Lament for Los Angeles | The Hudson Review

Katy Carl shared the above link.

EXCERPT FROM
PSALM AND LAMENT FOR LOS ANGELES
BY DANA GIOIA

2.

If I forget you, Los Angeles, let my eyes burn
In the smoggy crimson of your sunsets.

If I prefer not the Queen of the Angels to other cities,
Then close my ears to the beat of your tides.

Let me stand on the piers of Malibu, blind
To the dances of the surfers and the dolphins.

But, O Los Angeles, you dash your children against the stones.
You devour your natives and your immigrants.

You destroy your father’s house. You sell your daughters to strangers.
You sprawl in the carnage and count the spoils.

You stretch naked in the sunlight, beautiful and obscene—
So enormous, hungry, and impossible to pardon.”

A Parting Thought from Miss O’Connor

The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands.

“And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.”—Flannery O’Connor