culture

Empty Words of the Privileged

by

It’s hard to believe so many people have to live so miserably in the richest, most powerful country in the world.


This has become cliché and empty to say, especially from those of us speaking from our privilege, but since there are so many pockets of wretched poverty all around the country such as described in the following article, it’s hard not to say it.

Courtesy New York Times

“Hundreds of miles of roads are unpaved, so it can take up to three hours to get a sick person to help. It’s difficult to self-isolate because families live in one-room homes called hogans. Up to 40 percent of Navajo households don’t have running water, making it hard to wash hands. Cellphone service and Wi-Fi are limited, so it’s difficult to keep in touch and to get information about the epidemic.”

A Life on and Off the Navajo Nation, New York Times, May 13, 2020

#alonetogetherwithourprivilege

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

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

Regarding That Which Despicable Beings Create

by

Always a conundrum — what to do with something good created by someone bad.

I mean, take HP Lovecraft for instance. Are horrors authors and readers still praising him so for his early contributions to the genre? Fortunately for me, having read his work long before learning he was such a virulent racist, I find his writing flat and uninteresting and way, way overrated so shunning him to the dustbin of the disgraced is no problemo.

But there are a lot of other types of situations and scenarios out there that can put one in such an unpleasant conundrum…

Read more

So Many Weird Grammar Moods Give Me the Blues

by

Weird moods such as…

As do weird modern remakes of classic Moody Blues mood music…

#newisnotalwaysbetter

 

Two Learnings from My Recent Rememborizing Efforts: One cool; One cautionary

by

As I discussed in my last post, I’ve embarked on an effort to memorize stuff that interests me. I’m finding that the more I memorize stuff, the easier is to memorize and retain new stuff.

So as I just finished up memorizing the poem Invictus, I decided to go large and take on the grandest, and perhaps greatest, of all letters penned on behalf of these United States, The Declaration of Independence.

Yeah, maybe I am getting a little cocky/in over my head taking on such a significant body of work — significant as in packed with meaning, and, especially, significant as in packed with a lot of words. One-thousand, four-hundred and fifty-eight of them to be exact.

Read more

Shackled To History

by

Back in the wonderful Nineties (Nirvana, 2Pac, The Matrix, Fight Club, etc…), I took a break from my normal Navy telecommunications gig to spend a few years in a special assignment as an Equal Opportunity Advisor.

To become qualified as an EOA, I had to attend three months of very intense and in-depth training at the military’s Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute at Patrick Air Force Base in Cocoa Beach, Florida.

Let’s just say becoming an EOA is not the typical choice of an extremely White and WASPy dude like myself; so, due to the lack of other white, WASPy dudes like myself enrolled at the institute, it was one of those rare times in my life where I was in both the racial and gender minority for any significant amount of time.

Read more

Poetry is for Girls

by

humor-image

I may occasionally write the junk, but rarely do I read it.

And it is not because I don’t like it that I rarely read it…

It’s because it, the really good stuff anyway, is so durn hard to read.

I’m talking Poetry here…

Poetry with a big, bold capital P.

And it is so hard for me to read (And by read I mean read. I mean really digging into the poem and fighting through the initial confusion and the complicated and often archaic words. I mean, not just reading the poem, but studying it and trying to close the gap in time from when the poem was written to when the poem is being read by learning about the poet and where and when and why and how he or she is from and where and when and why and how he or she lived and then coming to my own understanding of what I think the poem means and then trying to apply that meaning to my own life and where and when and why and how I live it. That’s what I mean by read.) because it takes more than a little bit of effort to read it.

I certainly don’t have time for all that junk.

Read more