2021: Farewell to a Stupid Year, David Corn, December 30, 2021, Reason.com

… this essay by David Corn summarizes the precarious state of affairs in this country pretty much the way i believe it to be…

Ignorance can kill. And ignorance and anger are a lethal combination. Particularly in politics. The pro-Trump anti-vaxxers have placed themselves in danger; the 1/6 deniers and Stop the Stealers have put the nation’s political system in jeopardy. The year 2021 delivered a tough message: the suspicion, hatred, and paranoia flamed by Trump and his crew remain potent forces that can propel millions to make bad decisions. It’s a clear warning for 2022 and the stupidity that lies ahead.

In 2022, Pay Attention to Right-wing Authoritarianism, Veronique de Rugy, December 30, 2021, Reason.com

… talks about the rise in Authoritarianism around the globe and urges us to pay attention and resist…

So, as I wish you a happy New Year, I also ask you to join me in opposing illiberalism in all its forms. It means opposing the draconian regulation and unsustainable government welfare advanced by the left. It also means opposing rising right-wing illiberalism that is hostile to LGBTQ and immigrant cultures, itches to ban books, and generally wants to use government power to achieve its cramped vision of an American society.

How Biden’s Agenda Is Causing Inflation, Nick Gillespie, December 30, 2021, Reason.com

… talks about the relationship between the money supply and inflation…

We’ve seen absolutely massive increases in government spending over the past two years, which have been paid for by printing money and historic boosts in the money supply. When you print money it means that there are more dollars chasing basically the same amounts of goods and services, which causes prices to rise.

Unselfing into Oneness with the All: Transcendentalist Queen Margaret Fuller on Transcendence, December 26, 2021, Maria Popova, The Marginalian

… ode to Margaret Fuller, an uncommonly intelligent and determined woman who acquired an education and professional position at a time when neither were commonly available to women…

From the platform of her precocious girlhood, Margaret undertakes an inquiry into the building blocks of character. “Nothing more widely distinguishes man from man than energy of will,” she writes in a six-page essay, positing that a conquering will is composed of imagination, perseverance, and “enthusiastic confidence in the future.” But these elements are not weighted equally — she prizes above all perseverance, which fuels the “unwearied climbing and scrambling” toward achievement. “The truly strong of will,” she writes, having lived just over a decade, “returns invigorated by the contest, calmed, not saddened by failure and wiser from its nature.”

Against Illusionism, Jorg Colberg, Conscientious Photography Magazine, December 27, 2021

… about a group of photographers in Poland who created Archive of Public Prostests… shoestring budget, public good, what photography should be… JG is increasingly questioning the world of art photography and photobooks, as am i… too tied to the rarefied capitalist art market it has become an elitist proposition that struggles to offer meaning to the world at large…

First notes…

… we got home safe and sound with, i guess, 1 near miss when a car suddenly decided to change lanes and almost pulled in front of us with no time for us to stop… swerved around, crash avoided… having done that myself days earlier, i realized that shit happens, humans make mistakes, no car or person was hurt, just move on… well, not quite, i did utter a bunch of explatives…

… i keep thinking about the possibility that i am related (distantly?) to James Earl Ray… i am tempted to tell people but i keep thinking that my reason for doing so is to attach myself to the notoriety of it… make myself interesting through it… the man shot and killed Martin Luther King… why would i want to attach myself to the notoriety of that?… yet, i know the universe has shifted for my consciousness with this small piece of information… what do i do with it?… what is the message it is delivering?…

… i keep thinking about Ancestory.com commercials that tempt you to explore your family tree with the idea that you will discover some interesting, possibly even famous, ancestor that shared an interest you have, even a profession… they never posit a finding of being related to a notorious murderer, which of course, is going to happen to some people… of course, that i am related to such a person in whatever way says little about me… i am not prejudice beyond the ways in which most white people routinely and largely unconsciously are… i am not violent, don’t own a gun, have no desire to own a gun… well, that is not quite true, the volatility of the current political situation has me wondering every now and again about whether i should have one for self defense should anarchy unfold…

… i read the Wikipedia article about JER and discover that through the Ray side of the family (my grandmother on my father’s side), i am of Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent… i also discover that there was controversy over whether Ray committed the crime and that the family of MLK ultimately came to believe that Ray was not the assassin and that there was a plot involving government and the mafia that had set him up to take the fall… in 1998 AG Janet Reno opened a Justice Department investigation of the conspiracy claims and released a report in 2000 saying there was no conspiracy… Ray is buried in Ireland…

… whatever the truth is, and the evidence seems to favor him as lone assassin, JER was a “bad apple,” as they say… he was in and out of prison for a number of crimes committed prior to assassinating MLK… i have decided that i need to ask M about this connection and explore the history of it further… my cousin also sent us a link to Ancestory.com that has the Kriegh side of the family tree…

Savannah, GA…

… beautiful city, the deep shade of the public squares in the Historic District, the history and historic buildings… then we sought lunch and things went south fast… popular restaurant with hostess that wasn’t being honest… name on list… wait a long time before discovering that two large groups are being seated before us occupying all the outside tables which are the only tables that would accommodate us and our 2 dogs, we leave our phone number and go exploring… Forsythe park with bathroom in sight, H trips on a raised slab of concrete and smashes up their face… no serious damage but our Savannah day has come to an end… the restaurant calls to let us know they set up an extra table for us… my wife has smashed up her face in the park i tell them… hope we see you next time you are in Savannah… not likely i think… we start to make our way slowly back to the car… we find lunch at Parker’s Market which is really a high end convenience store… we return to car and then to motel… all the while we are checking for signs of concussion…

First notes…

… 11 hours on the road yesterday… another interminable amount of time unloading car, procuring food and beer… i don’t know when i have been more tired…

… we are outside of Savannah… food was found at Cracker Barrel… a curious place… we stopped in one or two on our trip to Illinois to get Fiona… they consist of gift shop and restaurant and seem designed to lead to lots of waiting in the gift shop to get access to food… the gift shop is filled with stuff, practical and whimsical related to “country culture” of the place they are located in… here in Georgia Harry Potter and the sitcom Friends seem to be on the list, along with cast iron pans chicken paraphernalia and moonpies…

… as i waited for my food i noted big bellied white men and their generally more trim women as the bulk of patronage, some Blacks and Spanish and Aisians too… no signs of racial animosity… this being Georgia i somehow expected tensions to be massive and visible… everybody seemed to mingle comfortably… and that is the thing… the impressions we get of places through national news is enormously skewed to the tensions of the country as manifested by shenanigans of a few… the bulk of the population just wants to get on with their lives and that is what they do…

… the more i think about politics and the difficulty of conversations the more i think one should not speak about candidates or parties, one should talk around issues only… what do you think about immigration, abortion rights, the best way to secure prosperity for the majority of the population, gun rights, voting rights, not what does your party think, what do you think?…

… i found a municipal parking garage on the edge of the historic district in Savannah so we know where we can park now… we point our car to the garage and move out from there… now we need to figure out bathrooms…

First Notes

227.2 lbs

… the traditional overeating happened yesterday without much weight gain… we made a lovely dinner of crab meat strudel, roast rack of lamb and roasted root veggies… we played a yule log on the TV all day, went for a nice walk with dogs, had nice chats with M… i feel sad to be turning around and leaving so soon… H and i agree, we would structure our trip differently if we did it again…

… Christmas isn’t as noticeable in Naples… not as much decoration… not cold and gray… hard to think Christmas when it is beach weather… still, the world did stop for 24 hours…

… learned a little sadness about D… we had a nasty exchange years ago… it was entirely their fault… M tells me that over the years it morphed into my abuse of them in their mind… they were so angry with me… to the point of hatred it sounds… they’er dead now but still casting a shadow on my life… not sorry i wasn’t present when they died… there are some positive reverberations of D’s being… i have a coat, a sweatshirt of theirs… when i put them on i find myself feeling them as the warm embrace i never could have got from them when they were alive…

… M put out a couple of small Christmas Tree scenes D bought… the kind of thing i considered getting for H and me to travel with… these gave me the sense of D being present in a good way… i connected with them…

… when M told me about the morphing of D’s perception of “the incident” i wanted to tell them my theory of the case, that D was jealous of me because of my close relationship with them… Oedepal, i know… i was a rival for the affections of the person they cared most about in the world… my goose was cooked a long time ago all the way back to when i was in my 20s…

… M liked the portable twinkle lights we brought so we left them…

Morning walk, Christmas, Naples, FL…

Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!📷

First Notes

227 lbs

… Christmas eve with M, H and Dogs… we are told about an extremely poisonous toad that inhabits bushes in Florida… now we will keep dogs away from bushes and i will have night and daymares about the dogs getting hold of one until we clear the lands of poisonous toads… dogs behaved pretty well yesterday… M seemed to like them well enough…

… we watched Love Actually together last night… today it is breakfast, presents such as they are… the prep and consumption of Christmas dinner… rack of lamb, roasted root vegetables…

… starting to think about logistics for the return trip… not as well prepared on the food front… not sure how to get prepared… need to get some wine for sure…

… research into Savannah Historic District… looks like a fun day will be had…

… still looks like weather will be good…

… it’s been a little sad being here… i get the feeling M is not sure what to live for… i have my own struggles with that… what do we live for?… especially as we get older and less relevant to the people we live amongst…

Hope everyone has a terrific Christmas day!

Naples, FL, Christmas Eve…

Christmas Journey

… three days of longer, harder driving than expected… we learned that whatever the map app says about travel time, add two hours… we had no time to enjoy any sights along the way… we are in Naples now… will be able to walk around a little…

HCR meter…

… the big news is that January 6 committee may be considering criminal referral of 45 to the DC Federal courts… they are not compelled to take it up, but…

… the 45 admin’s involvement in creating the riot on January 6th is getting clearer… if anything is proven i fervently hope there will be consequences…

First Notes

225.7 lbs

… i knew my weight would be down but almost 3 lbs is amazing!… next two days will add some of that back but nice work me!…

… the drive from Savannah to Naples was, in its own way, easier than either of two days before, but, the rule of add two hours to what the map app says held… i am convinced that this trip should have three overnights, not just 2… we will do that on way back, stopping two nights in Savannah… it won’t make a difference in time spent on the road driving each day, but at least we will see something… will be a busy couple of days and then we will head back… this trip will have to be configured differently if we do it again…

… H and dogs sleeping…

… i was so exhausted last night… couldn’t put two thoughts together towards end of dinner…

Defacing our national parks…

… there is a long list of stupidity in this article about the desecration of our national parks… i concur with the thought that wilderness shouldn’t be easy to get to…

First notes…

… the first two days of travel have been brutally long… yesterday, it wasn’t completely clear why other than some slow spots of traffic… on Tuesday, the trip was 2 hours longer than indicated by google maps when we started out… yesterday it was three hours longer… and this was the indication as we started the trips!… what we had planned to be 7 hr days of travel were, in fact, 9 and 10 hours respectively… we are at 19 hours of a trip that was supposed to take 21-22 hours total… it’s going to be closer to 30 hours… we have been going from point to point with no time to explore along the way… the only thing we have experienced off the beaten track was the result of detours through the countryside… one such detour took us through what looked like poor, sharecropper farmland in South Carolina… … we are told by friends who travel the route frequently that today will not be much better…

… i am going for a 6:30 AM start in hopes that we will miss some of the predicted awful traffic… we have a choice of three routes… two travel highways and are projected to take about 7 hours… one does not use highways and is projected to take closer to 9 hours… we are tempted to do the 9 hour one in the hope that it will be more interesting and with fewer delays…

… one of the thoughts i keep having is how inefficient it all is… when so much of the nation’s goods and workforce flow over the apparently inadequate roads of the nation, so much time is lost…

The Manchin Mess… good article in the Bulwark about the mess…

Omicron, the possible good, bad and ugly… this article in The Bulwark summarizes the possible directions Omicron could go…

Heather Cox Richardson, December 21, 2021…

… the January 6 Select Committee noose tightens around the neck of 45’s administration… violent rhetoric is increasing… the HCR meter pointing down… we are on course for rough times…

First notes…

… we started our journey to Florida yesterday and the first leg of the trip was a bear… we got a late start which put us at DC near rush hour… DC rush Hour traffic is legendary… the traffic was weird too… car with flashing lights moving too slow on I95… in the fast lane!… a brush fire by the side of the road… accidents we never saw because we were rerouted through suburbs and farm land to avoid… the vehicular arteries around DC as metaphor for the arteries of government… what should have been 7 hours of driving turned into 9 with only 2 brief stops!… we will get an earlier start today… hoping the worst is behind us…

… we seem to have landed in the land of national chain retailers… big box stores everywhere…

Ignore Xi Jinping’s Deceptions. China Is Struggling, Therese Shaheen, National Review, December 20, 2021…

… this is a long and interesting article that makes the case that China is not as strong as one might get the impression it is through American news media… it made its case thoroughly and if that case is correct, it makes the China-US tensions seem less worrisome assuming a world where the US and Europe are united in containment efforts…

OMG, this is a must read! Against the Trap of Efficiency: Mortality, Meaning, and the Antidote to the Time-Anxiety that Syphons the Joy of Life, Maria Popova, The Marginalist…

… MP is one of my main spiritual guides and in this post she strikes spiritual gold, so to speak:

The exercise instantly clarifies — and horrifies, with the force of its clarity — the empty atoms of automation and unexamined choice filling modern life with busyness while hollowing it of gladness. What emerges is the sense that making a meaningful life is less like the building of the Pyramids, stacking an endless array of colossal blocks into a superstructure of impressive stature and on the back of slave labor, than like the carving of Rodin’s Thinker, cutting pieces away from the marble block until a shape of substance and beauty is revealed. What emerges, too, is the sense that the modern cult of productivity is the great pyramid scheme of our time.

… and then there is this quote from the book MP is telling us about:

Most other resources on which we rely as individuals — such as food, money, and electricity — are things that facilitate life, and in some cases it’s possible to live without them, at least for a while. Attention, on the other hand, just is life: your experience of being alive consists of nothing other than the sum of everything to which you pay attention. At the end of your life, looking back, whatever compelled your attention from moment to moment is simply what your life will have been.

… this is the foundational idea of what this blog is about!…

Bob Thompson’s Provocative Challenge to Euro-American Art History, Billy Anania, Hyperallergic, December 20, 2021…

Bob Thompson, “Black Monster” (1959), oil on canvas, 56 x 67 inches (© Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York)

… if i were anywhere near Maine and the Colby College Museum, i would go see this (assuming adequate safety measures for COVID)…

In 28 years of life, Thompson created more than 1,000 paintings, including hundreds of expressive reinterpretations of Renaissance and Early Modern artworks. These variations, much like those in jazz music, allowed the artist to riff on familiar favorites, and his standards of choice were Poussin, Tintoretto, Manet, and Goya. Approaching renowned white artists from the margins allowed Thompson to tease out Euro-American tensions with Blackness, and the 85 works on display here portray the terror and splendor of public space, the persecution of Black sexuality, and the fine line between assimilation and fugitivity.

… here is a Wikipedia article on him…

… he strikes me as a primitive, almost outsider artist, though he had formal training…

Heather Cox Richardson, December 20, 2021…

… about the betrayal of Joe Manchin… makes a compelling case for an economy centered around ordinary people and how BBB would have helped create that… it notes that Goldman Sachs downgraded economic growth projections by 1% upon news of Manchin’s betrayal… there is more to this than meets the eye though… it sounds like someone in the administration really pissed him off and he is having a temper tantrum… he has also, from what i see, left the door open for a reformulation of the bill into something more to his liking… i suspect we haven’t seen the end of BBB… politics is complicated, there are always steps back and steps forward…

First Notes

228.2 lbs

… departure day… will leave a little later than hoped, but, there is no ferry to catch, so we should be good…

… FB friend of Holly’s told her to beware I95 corridor gas stations… seems to be a spreading vector for COVID… i do an internest search, don’t find any new articles but find one from 2020 citing research of spread along the corridor so it makes sense that it would be a vector for Omicron… i have packed latex gloves and disinfectant wipes which i have not been using lately but will start using on the trip…

… did watch The Ice Harvest last night… slept through most of it… H says it was good… i guess we will add it to the roster…

… did a lot yesterday… not quite enough, but a lot… there is no absolute departure time today, so we should be fine… at least all our Christmas gifts got sent off and delivered…

… check utility bill, had been thinking automatic pay didn’t work… i was right… set up payment… one more thing off my mind…

The New West Side Story Brings the Show’s Father Issues to the Fore, Kyle Turner, Hyperallergic

… compelling review of Spielberg’s take on this classic reimagining of Romeo and Juliet…

Spielberg’s understanding of West Side Story and the role of inheritance in it (the love he’s inherited for the show, the love or hate the characters inherit for one another) is not uncomplicated. He doesn’t find a satisfying, saccharine answer around resilience the way he usually does in his characters, even though that idea easily could have manifested here in the form of María and Tony’s romance. Nor does he lean into the sentimentality of working on such a beloved title. His approach is dynamic, as shown by how he deepens (without “solving”) the story. Though evincing a classical Hollywood sensibility, he makes the personal and political violence more harrowing, their cyclical nature more tragic. The aesthetic in-betweenness — both breathtakingly old-fashioned and sharply modern — feels like his way of situating West Side Story within both his filmography and broader cinematic and political history. “Somewhere” is a utopian song, but finding a “new way of forgiving” doesn’t seem possible without grappling with the past. María and Tony ultimately can’t escape it, but can the show? Can Spielberg himself? Maybe “tonight” …