Back in the days of radio, the comedy team of Bob and Ray provided hours of low-key comedy. Ray Goulding has been gone for some time, but Bob Elliott’s obituary just appeared in the NY Times this morning. Continue reading “Bob and Ray”
Category: Philosophical
My thoughts on whatever
Books that change your life
I’ve been reading some essays by C.K. Williams (who wrote last week’s poem). In one essay he talks about reading a book by Robert Lowell, Imitations, which broke open a new way of thinking about poetry.
Imitations was influential and controversial. Lowell took poems in other languages and rather than translate them, he created his own poems in English inspired by them. Many deplored this technique, finding it arrogant and disrespectful. But it definitely gave poets something to think about. For Williams, it “released something in me I hadn’t grasped had been keeping me from moving ahead in my own work.”
How amazing it is that books can crack you open, can shed light into your own struggles and world view. Continue reading “Books that change your life”
Some thoughts on racism
I came up against my unacknowledged biases twice in the last month, first in the audience at an LGBT event. Seeing how everyone else was dressed–a kind of kinky extreme fashion–and how I was dressed–skirt, sweater, sandals–I felt slightly out of place. It made me realize how awkward it must feel to be differently attired in a “normal,” straight audience.
Second, at storytime at the Albany Library with my toddler grandson, we were in a very small minority–almost everyone else was Asian, mostly Chinese, and mostly speaking cheerfully to each other, as friends will, in Chinese. Both these experiences reminded me how the world around me is changing, how the new order challenges my unquestioned assumptions about normal, and how important it is to be open to these changes. Much better than any diversity training I might attend!
Then this morning I read John McWhorter’s excellent exposition of the current attitudes towards racism on campus. You can read the entire article here, or a few excerpts below:
“The problem is that the university campus is already one of the most exquisitely racially sensitized contexts a human being will ever encounter in America–a place where, for example, comedians such as Chris Rock have stopped performing because audiences are so PC…
“For example, current ideological fashions call for telling whites to “acknowledge” their “privilege.” This paradigm has no place in a university environment. It assumes a truth at the outset and allows no room for genuine exploration. (“It’s Not About You!” is a common mantra.) Another central part of the New Indoctrination is the battle against “microaggressions.” Continue reading “Some thoughts on racism”
Reading to each other
Since we were first together, Larry and I have read to each other–over breakfast, while making dinner, or just when something good struck the eye. This morning, we were both reading different articles by Peggy Noonan. I read him this, from her article about learning her craft in the Wall Street Journal:
“In 1980, the Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state erupted. It really blew, with an eruption plume that was 15 miles high; it spread ash along a dozen states. It was my job, over those days, to call everyone I could think of nearby or in surrounding towns to do audiotape interviews about what they had seen, experienced, and what was the latest.
One morning, a week or so into the story, I tracked down a guy who knew what was going on near the volcano…he told me that the biggest problem right now was the long lines at the post office. Everyone in town was picking up volcanic ash and putting it in envelopes and mailing it to their friends. The ash was slipping out of the envelopes and clogging the machines. I found this comic and lovely—how do we respond to disasters? we get mementos!—but I thought it insufficiently serious for a sober network news broadcast, so I didn’t give it to my editor to use.
…I mentioned it to our morning anchor, a young man named Charles Osgood, who was famous for writing the news with cleverness and wit. The minute that I told him about the post office, Charlie’s ears perked up. Put that on top, he said.
I was startled. I thought it was just a little story that would be interesting to us. But he knew that something interesting to us is likely to be interesting to everyone. And though it was a small anecdote, it said a lot about the mood around Mount St. Helens: It tells us the emergency is over and human nature has kicked in.”
And this: Continue reading “Reading to each other”
Two great phrases
Once in awhile, someone comes up with a phrase that really nails an experience with vivid exactness. This weekend, talking with a new friend about our mutual disgust with the tedious prose of Karl Ove Knausgård (the author of the biographical novels collectively titled My Struggle), she came up thigh this descriptor: Frat boy Proust, which is really all one needs to say about this over-praised work. It took me at least three or four paragraphs to explain this phrase to my 12-year old niece, but I think I had moderate success. Continue reading “Two great phrases”
Straight to the quarter
Why are we bothering with pennies, nickels and dimes? For everyday use, the quarter is the only meaningful coin. And both pennies and nickels cost more to produce than they’re worth! Insanity. We could keep odd amounts for electronic transactions but just STOP making any other coins and round up or down. I know all those charities, vending machine and nickel slot machine folks are going to be upset. But hey, get with it. Admit reality. Adjust!
If you want to mark up a book, buy it
As longtime readers know, I love libraries. Just now I have about six books from the UC Library, three from Berkeley and another four or five from Contra Costa. But when I opened The End of Beauty, by Jorie Graham from the UC Library, I found that a previous reader had heavily underlined, parenthesized, exclamation pointed, and otherwise defaced the poems.
A morning in the room of available time
This morning, I open one of the four books on my desk, Mothers, by Rachel Zucker. I have to read it right away even though I only took it out on Wednesday, because someone at UC requested it and now it’s due Friday.
I drink my organic High Mountain Red Tea and read “I am lame in the memory,” quoted from Jorie Graham quoted from Sylvia Plath, and go downstairs and get Plath’s collected poems and find “Little Fugue,” the poem it was quoted from. Meanwhile, I text back and forth to my granddaughter about the cats. I find this strange photo she made of herself on my phone when I go to text her a picture of the cats eating.
Continue reading “A morning in the room of available time”
Je ne suis pas…
Around the world but especially in France, people have been holding up signs, Je suis Charlie Hedbo (I am Charlie Hedbo), in a show of solidarity with the cartoonists who were assassinated. Of course, this costs nothing. No one is likely to assassinate them for holding the signs. So here’s my own little anti-terrorist rant…
At the same time of the emergence of these Je suis Charlie Hedbo signs, anti-semitism has been sweeping through Europe (and most especially France) in an alarming way, often under the guise of pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel sentiment. This creates a fertile ground for terrorism. Here’s a quote from the NY Times: “From the immigrant enclaves of the Parisian suburbs to the drizzly bureaucratic city of Brussels to the industrial heartland of Germany, Europe’s old demon returned this summer. “Death to the Jews!” shouted protesters at pro-Palestinian rallies in Belgium and France. “Gas the Jews!” yelled marchers at a similar protest in Germany.”
And here’s one from the Wall St. Journal: “In France, worshipers in a synagogue were surrounded by a howling mob claiming to protest Israeli policy. In Brussels, four people were murdered in the Jewish museum, and a synagogue was firebombed. In London, a major supermarket said that it felt forced to remove kosher food from its shelves for fear that it would incite a riot. A London theater refused to stage a Jewish film festival because the event had received a small grant from the Israeli embassy.” Continue reading “Je ne suis pas…”
Storm hysteria
It’s been awhile since I posted a rant so here’s a short one, just before we get to the season of good will. I can’t understand why the media and the ordinary folk around are so excited about what seems to me a perfectly normal and much needed rainstorm. We used to have these all the time. But everybody’s yammering about the terrible storm.
I’m sure the places that usually flood will flood, mud will slide, sink holes will appear, people will forget they need to take extra care on the road and there will be massive accidents on the freeway. In short, it’s a normal California winter day. Tomorrow I want to take a look at the surf on Ocean Beach.
A taste of freedom
When I saw signs for Burger King, Subway, KFC, McDonald’s in Russia I thought about how we export the worst of our culture–it contaminates everything. But when I was in St. Petersburg, I read an article by Mitya Kushelevich in the St. Petersburg Times, reprinted from The Calvert Journal. It gave me a different perspective. He was writing about the government’s closure of McDonald’s, allegedly for sanitation reasons, but curiously synchronous with the West’s recent imposition of sanctions. This first McDonald’s in Russia is in a prime Moscow location. I’ll quote from the article at length:
“Everything about this particular branch of the American fast-food giant was iconic for a person born in Soviet Russia. Just as St. Petersburg was once considered our ‘window to Europe,’ this restaurant was our ‘window to the world.’ Continue reading “A taste of freedom”
The Wellbeing Project
If you live in Santa Monica, the city cares whether you are thriving. So they formed the Wellbeing project, and sent out surveys to see how you’re doing. They are compiling a Wellbeing index. Their website can explain it to you: www.smgov.net/Wellbeing. Is it charming or scary?