Proverbs and a Poem

by

How long, you simpletons, will you insist on being simpleminded? How long will you mockers relish your mocking? How long will you fools hate knowledge?

Proverbs 1:22, New Living Translation

O, but the mockers’ cry

Makes my heart afraid,

As though a flute of bone

Taken from a heron’s thigh,

A heron crazed by the moon,

Were cleverly, softly played

From The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats

The Bogart Advantage

by

It’s a close call but this might be one of those rare instances where the movie outperforms the book. The flick does have an unfair advantage though with Bogart as the lead…

For a crash course on a category that can be hard to pin down, Nicholas Ray’s psychologically complex “In a Lonely Place” has it all, starting with a sneering Bogart.

Even trying to categorize “In a Lonely Place” is tricky: It has elements of murder mystery, melodrama and Hollywood insider scoop. Yet it is certainly one of the most forthright films to deal with domestic abuse ever to come from a major production company, let alone in the early 1950s. Here is a movie so rough-minded, so willing to be unsympathetic that it opens with its protagonist, a screenwriter named Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), threatening to get into a brawl with a stranger.

New York Times , April 30, 2020
THE BOGART SUSPENSE PICTURE WITH THE SURPRISE FINISH – (original tag line)
A classic California noir with a feminist twist, this prescient 1947 novel exposed misogyny in post-World War II American society, making it far ahead of its time. [Amazon Publisher description]

#alonetogetherinalonelyplace

Say what you will…

by

Be it be an exploration of loneliness or light or whatever, but ”Nighthawks,” to me, is the most colorful expression of the beautiful bleakness of noir that I know…

From Those who say Edward Hopper is the artist of social distancing may be wrong:

But while some Hopper experts appreciate the wave of [social media] interest in the American painter, who died in 1967, they say it’s a mistake to brand him as a patron saint of loneliness and social isolation.”

Washington Post April 27, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
Courtesy Wikipedia

#alonetogetherwithhopper

Starbucks and Mocha

by


The New York Times’ recent piece Melville’s Whale Was a Warning We Failed to Heed is actually a quite serious look at human nature, racism, the environment… but here is a fun selection from it that belies its erudition:

Melville had read Jeremiah Reynolds’s violent account of a sperm whale “white as wool,” named — for his haunt near Mocha Island, off the coast of Chile — Mocha Dick. It’s unknown what led Melville to tweak Mocha to “Moby.” Good thing he did, and that Starbuck was the name he gave his first mate rather than his captain. Otherwise the novel would follow Starbuck’s obsession with a Mocha.

Courtesy the New York Times

#whosaidseriousnesscantbefun
#nowbacktobeingserious

We are what we… read?

by

At least according to the Big Think article The Books You Read Really Make You Who You Are:

“The takeaway from all [the studies] is that no matter the culture, humans are intimately attached to stories. They’re part of our makeup as a species. Stories can literally transport us into the mind and body of a character. They can move us toward empathy or action. Nothing has the power to inform, change our minds, unlock our potential, or transform us and our society in the most powerful and profound ways. Now, we’re starting to unlock the neuroscience behind this and learn exactly how they impact us.”

Courtesy of The New Republic

If this is true, that what we read deeply shapes who we are, and my common sense detector, aka my gut, tells me it is, then in a nation where reading for personal interest has been in steady decline since 1978, we’re in big trouble.

But it certainly goes a long way in explaining our national empathy deficit…

#readon

Just Imagine

by

Imagine what the response would have been if these heavily armed “protesters“ were of any other race than white…

– A lot of dead and incarcerated non-white “protesters,” that’s what the response would have been for those of you with failed imaginations.

Now, try to imagine that none of these “protesters” are trump cultists emboldened by their dear leader’s violence-inspiring rhetoric…

– Unimaginable, isn’t it.

Courtesy of Washington Post

Outside the House chamber, the protesters crammed into the hallway and stairwell, periodically chanting, “Lock her up!” and “Let us in!” Their chanting could be heard faintly from the House floor — and ultimately, the Republicans gave the protesters what they wanted: a refusal to extend Whitmer’s emergency declaration. In Michigan, legislative approval is required to extend emergency declarations beyond 28 days; Whitmer’s expired Thursday night, with no such approval to renew.

After a day of armed protesters and a GOP lawsuit threat, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer extends state of emergency, Washington Post, May 1, 2020

#americaisoccupiedterritory