#last term they had 'slavery in the ancient world' and then the whole thing focused on Greece and Rome

[voluptuarian]

I HATE trying to find courses at this fucking school! First of all, it's complicated af, and then you find a course like "comparative slavery" and its tagline is "comparing slavery in different cultures in world history" BUT then it goes "focusing mainly on Europe, Africa, and the Americas" THAT'S ALL THE SAME DAMN SYSTEM aklhg;sdajWRD"blJBA

[thepacificationofhumanity-blog]

WHAT IS RACISM? It is natural? Can you stop it? (Enjoy the free read) The following material is copyright protected content but you can feel free to share it as long as it is connected to the original post. The content is from the book “THE PACIFICATION OF HUMANITY: Exposing the ideological contagions” by Emmanuel S. John Chapter Nine DISTORTION More people more problems Many people struggle with the use of language and almost as many people struggle with the constructs of race. There may be a connection. We have become increasingly more intolerant of one another regardless of our viewpoints. People carry around more anger than at any point in human history: They are quicker to find differences than similarities. What if I told you that "stereotyping" is a natural occurrence in the human animal? That it is impossible for the human animal not to profile or stereotype? Some of you are doing it right now. Probably stuffing me into a little box labeled he's in "the ____ group!" Does my claim that we can't stop it surprise you? Would you automatically think I was going to justify hatred? No, you wouldn't dare suggest that stereotyping is unnatural while at the same time stereotyping me. That would be crazy! Relax, talking about it will not make us racist or make things worse for the whole world even though that is what you have been programmed to believe via the cultural bullies. What I am suggesting is that you've been tricked by something or someone for no other reason than to acquire your emotional support or allegiance to an ideology; maybe to distract you from some other issue of the day that they don't want you focusing on. Stereotyping at its core is a natural occurrence that is seldom about race. It's about a little, forgotten phenomena called "in-grouping and out-grouping." This Out-grouping occurs all the time. It occurs every second in nature and for this reason it is natural; it's an ancient survival tool that all animals use. Monkey tribes do it all the time. Antelope and other animals like zebras rarely pack together unless they're all at the watering hole. Some behaviorists even suggest that similar looking horses will group together. Ever heard "like attracts like" or "birds of a feather flock together?" How come it is natural for animals but not for humans, who said so? Are we just that much more advanced? It is a part of human nature and humanity to in-group and out-group. How come they don't mention this stuff in school or on the evening news? Ask yourself why they don't educate young people about this very human trait? The answer is simple; they are using our emotions about race to polarize us. It's not an honest mistake. We have purposefully been given half the story in order to fulfill an agenda; to win our allegiance and to gain our support on an issue. In Grouping & Out-Grouping If we put 10 people who are exact copies of one another in the same room they will still eventually sub-group according to personal preferences. If I had 10 black men born in Africa, into the same tribe, same IQ's, who ate all the same foods every day, with no media or favorite stores or music they will still sub-group. Some would be better hunters, some leaders, some farmers, some followers, some will like the color red while others will like the color blue. Many would argue together over all the above. Do you see my point? Hopefully that's simple enough. People naturally group together; social animals do it even more often. That is what social animals do because like attracts like. Man cannot separate himself from or intellectualize himself out of his limbic system functioning (the part of his brain where fight and flight reside, the survival mechanisms). Grouping is a part of nature. It is left over from the herd and pack mentalities we once had as cave dwellers just trying to survive. You can't outthink this part of the brain and you can't legislate it away. No matter how alike a group may start out, eventually some of the above tribe members will get together and plan the hunt and call themselves the hunters and others will manage the farming and call themselves farmers. The farmers may even start to criticize the hunters when they came back empty-handed etc. Then there is gender grouping; we all know that women and men group themselves up at parties. This is in-grouping and out-grouping and it is not a gender issue either. Racism does not begin with race; it's about out-grouping and in-grouping as a survival strategy; as a way to assess safety issues and limit threats. This part of the brain does not use logic, rationale or memory; only conditioning. Any suggestion that we have evolved past this would suggest that grouping is a product of logic, which it is not; it's instinctual. It is possible to be conditioned to hate or fear a particular group, but that only lasts as long as the conditioning continues: As long as people are still being reminded of their conditioning. A black kid taught to hate whites will eventually change his mind after some exposure to good white people and less exposure to haters. He is actually more likely to group up with people from the same socio-economic class before deciding on race; why, because this group will survive in a familiar way. Hence, sub-grouping is natural and perhaps even necessary. The more obvious the differences, the more quickly grouping or separation occurs. Out-grouping occurs with age, gender, height and race, but it's still only about grouping and not about hate. If I brought 4 men in from another tribe (same race) it could even start a war. War is a major sub-grouping event usually created by more obvious differences, but often only over competing ideologies and perspectives. The point here is not about racism. No matter how hard we try, it is impossible for any society that embraces different cultures into its ranks to not have cultural (group) separations. Unfortunately, there are people who ignore this simple truth. They believe that you can change and control your instincts. They are called ideologues. They make ideology reality and then demand that because they can think something is real that it must be real and that out-thinking nature is possible. We have to adapt to nature because we can't out-think it. Nature is not wrong it is natural. In the long run Nature always wins! Trying to ignore nature is a form of an ideological contagion that suggests out-grouping is wrong; an ideology most commonly spread by institutions of "higher" learning. These self-described intellectuals are the owners of the biggest echo chamber on Earth. Most of the really farfetched lunacies in society come from our college campuses where academics (People who don't usually have real jobs or live in the real world) live in their little bubbles of bad ideas that have been handed down and passed around from the prior generation of academic elitists and ideologues. They're protected from reality and nature. Academia is one of the most strictly regulated and controlled echo chambers in modern society. A place where is has become common practice to only hire other people to work in the system who pledge themselves to progressive liberal thought. Living in these ideological echo chambers makes them delusional (a form of mental illness) because they don't operate on reality or facts. They are very self-deluded people who believe that if enough people feel (Think) the way they feel (think) then it must be real. The ideologues are the people who literally wrote the books on "I feel that…" and "yeah, but no,,," Their numbers and their influence are so vast that they lend a faux credibility to their unproven ideals. These people are responsible for keeping hate and division alive because they bully everyone around them. No one is allowed to object out loud so their self-deceptions fester and grow. Their echo chamber even provides sustenance for the cultural bully. They perpetuate division by choice, so they believe that division is a choice and not an aspect of nature. PLEASE READ THE ENTIRE BOOK. I SKIP AHEAD IN THE CHAPTER HERE RACISM Real Racism The real definition of racism is of no interest to the Ideologues. In truth "Racism" only exists when a good, service or opportunity is denied because of race. Thinking about denying someone a job based on race is not illegal or considered to be committing an act of racism. For racism to exist the job must actually be denied for the reason of race; regardless of the rationale. Simple test; Am I denying this person something because of race. If you deny him the job for punctuality issues in the past it's not racism, no matter how many white people work for you. Speaking about another race in a negative manner is not Racism, that’s why they came up with the term "hate speech." The problem with the term "hate speech" is that speech is supposed to be free and that is guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. They have resorted back to the word racism because it still has a lot of emotion attached to it. The race baiters use race to coerce you into silence. They would like you to think that speaking about race is just as bad as committing racism. Many northern black voters have never been in the South, yet they are all sure that everyone "down there" is filled with hate for them. (Recall the emotional aspect of polarization and how the Nazis used unrealistic fear to motivate support.)(SEE EARLIER CHAPTER) The left-leaning ideologues would be in major trouble if the religious Northern black vote unified with the Black and White religious Southern voters. It would end the Democratic Party. For this reason they are desperate to Keep Hate Alive! Their real motive is to engulf you in their argument and to get you to join them in their redefining of the word. The less you think, the more power and control they have; in a perverse ironic way, this assimilation of blacks as democrats is a form of ownership and slavery to their cause. The origins of the word Racism is not as old as you might think (which should give you pause). Its evolution had nothing to do with people of African descent. Leon Trotsky’s 1930 work, "The History of the Russian Revolution" was the first time that the term was coined. The word came from a Latin transliteration of the word he used in that book. “Racistov” essentially meaning “racists.” Trotsky was the cofounder and first leader of the infamous Red Army. Interesting enough, he was a Jewish man in a pre-WWII Russian State. He co-led the 1917 revolution alongside Vladimir Lenin as Commissar of War in the new Soviet government. He helped defeat forces opposed to Bolshevik control. As the Soviet government developed, he engaged in a power struggle against none other than Joseph Stalin who had had him previously exiled. It had nothing to do with people of African descent and in fact, it was a reference to a notion that Jewish people were not Caucasian. That is the original meaning of the term. Trotsky was arguing that Jews were Caucasians; just like Russians. Jews were being denied equal opportunity and access. In 1970's America the term shifted to "Denying the access to a job, to food, to shelter, to opportunity; or to equal treatment based on race alone." The co-opting of the word was initiated because it was the same thing that was happening to the Jewish people in Russia. That is the original and still the modern, standard for defining racism. Did they teach you that in school? Of course not, it wouldn't serve their agenda so they are trying to expand it to mean more than it does. Words and Perspectives! (see earlier chapters) Every other non-racial factor entered into the decision to deny someone access to something diminishes the impact of racism. The race that is "in power" is not relevant; it does not require the racist to be white. Slavery is not necessarily racism either. There have been many cultures that have enslaved their own race. People in the Middle East were the first to hold slaves and usually of the same race. The Muslims were the first outsiders to enter Africa and enslave black Africans. Black Africans (not all Africans are black, but you knew that too right) learned that if they converted to the Muslim faith they could not be held as slaves. According to Mohamed, one Muslim is not allowed to enslave another Muslim; hence the birth of the Black Muslims. The Black American Muslim is actually celebrating a heritage of slavery by being Muslim. While the faith freed them from slavery, it mandated or enslaved them into the religion/ideology. All this occurred long before the US was even conceived of. This information is not hard to find. SHOCKER ALERT!!! The first person in the US to legally own another person was a black man named Anthony Johnson in 1654. He sued and won when a North Hampton court allowed him to indefinitely retain and keep a black indentured servant named John Casor. Casor had left Johnson's keeping to be a paid servant/employee of a white man. Johnson sued in court for the return of his possession, Mr. Casor. His victory created the landmark case for ownership of a human being in the US colonies in 1655. Mr. Casor and those who followed, were the first property that a black man could actually own; yep, another black man. You can be certain that social order deemed that if a black man could own a black man, then a white man could own one too. Why didn't they teach us this in school? I'll tell you why, because it doesn't fit their narrative or their agenda. Leaving out important facts like this is evidence that agendas are at work in the US public education system. This is revisionist history. Remember, polarization requires an emotional reaction with a solution in place for you to choose. (See earlier chapters) It requires a victim. The black man can't be a victim of the white man if a black man fought for it and set the precedent. Ideology is not routed in facts, but instead in the fantasy of how things "should" be, not how things actually are. In the worlds of the ideologues, the means to the end are not relative to the greater good of serving an agenda. If I get you FALSELY outraged, you then turn to me for more information. Bam!!! I then have control, power and trust. Many of the cities struggling in America today are actually run by black people yet they use racism as an emotional bone of contention or as an original cause for the problem. A black-run city can commit racism by denying Caucasians, Asians or Hispanic peoples certain jobs in that city government by simply favoring the black candidate over any others. That's real racism and it happens all the time, but no one says a thing and there is no law enforcement to stop it. If it's just their friend that they hire, then that is called Cronyism (no matter the race). Add a dose of racism on top of some cronyism and you will not be getting the best person for the job. Cronyism is a major problem in many of America's largest cities and institutions, including the Federal Government. Additionally, not advertising a job because you don't want another race to apply is racism (denial of access) and that is why many jobs in the form of government grants are required to be advertised for a set period of time. This, however, does not affect the hiring preferences. Ask yourself the following: Why are these major black run cities not required to hire based on population percentages to prove their fair treatment in regards to race and to guard against racism? White-run cities are required to maintain certain equivalents based on race. Why should cities like Baltimore, Detroit, LA, Chicago and even New York (and others) not reflect their populations in their hiring practices? If the candidate chosen is similarly qualified to the rest of the applicants and then race determines the choice that is Institutionalized Racism. The ideologues believe that if they can keep the populace convinced that racism is a White/Black thing, then no one will even look behind the ugly curtain of what real racism in America looks like. FYI - Choosing by religion is bigotry or anti-Semitism The person selected because of race suffers subconsciously regarding their own self-worth because they will always have to question whether their position was earned, deserved or instead token. While people being chosen for an affirmative-action position may like the money, they will always question their real qualifications; their own sense of accomplishment will always be personally suspect. Affirmative action robs each and every candidate of their real sense of capability, regardless of how qualified they are. In much the same way as when we elect a president who is black, he will always question whether he got the votes because he was the right person or because he was black; or even a little black. Any person chosen by race will still wonder if s/he could have attained the position if the playing field was truly equal. More than ninety percent of blacks voted for Obama, many came out to vote for that reason alone. They said it out loud; that was racist. Sure, they wanted to help elect the first black president but that is racist too, because they chose by race. Many said they didn't care; that they were voting for him because he was black and it was justice for them; rational to commit a racist act. He was chosen by race; quite openly I might add. Many white people also voted for him because he was black. They chose by race. Is that racism? Is there a difference to you? What if I voted for the white guy; not because I dislike blacks but because I favor the white guy? Suddenly something changes doesn't it? That is racism and this is critical thinking. It's all an act I chose the topic of race because it is a good example of how modern media and certain segments of society, including the educational system, seem invested in your belief that racism is only white to black, that is alive and well. They want you to think that it somehow rests in people's hearts and not in their actions. The fact is that racism was decreasing so dramatically that it became necessary to expand the definition in order to keep the emotional reactivity and victimization alive. Now, if you even "think" about race you're a racist. Convenient, but not true! While some of this confusion is ignorance-based the majority of it is intentional and usually brought on by people in the background who you never see. Spurred on and given life by people who work in safe zones and live in gated communities; the same people who grab their purses tighter and lock their car doors when they see a person of another race walking down the street toward them. Their often faux outrage about race is usually an overcompensation and an attempt to mask their real perspectives about equality. In fact, one might question their supposed need to represent the black race, as if the black race can't take care of or represent itself; that it needs them. Unfortunately, many people in power in modern society have been affected by revisionist history. Proof of Revisionist history is in the mere truth that you were not aware of some vital facts in the history of human ownership in America, in slavery or of the real origins and meanings of the word racism. Words, definitions and perspectives. I encourage you to become attentive to current efforts to revise history by entities that only provide examples of events that support only their agendas. What many people call "Racism" is actually bigotry and prejudice; not illegal. Hatred is not illegal. If it were we'd all have a record or be in jail! Trying to make hatred illegal makes about as much sense as trying to make love mandatory. Trying to stop hatred with legislation will only make more hatred as it breeds resentment. Trying to force love will only make it harder to find, because love is supposedly unconditional. Control is an illusion that most often results in catastrophe. Allowing people to be themselves always results in more Harmony! One more brief consideration: If a white man hates a black man he is called a racist, yet ask that same black man if he hates any black men and like any other race, he will confirm that he currently does or has in the past. I don't like all white people, so I don't expect people of other races to like all white people. I can dislike a Chinese man and not be racist. Just like Martin Luther King, I judge a man based on the content of his character. I judge character without pause and without caving into hateful labels and coercion. If you said, I hate that white guy, I certainly wouldn't suggest you are racist because you hate one white guy. I would not call you racist because you used the identifier of white. It's no different than that tall guy, it's descriptive not racist. I wouldn't think you hate all tall people, only that one. My point is that you have been duped!!! Played!!! You have been co-opted into serving an agenda you don't support. Are you mad yet? Yes/No? At me or at your school system? Good! In the next chapter I will explain how they did it to you and how to avoid it in the future. THEPACIFICATIONOFHUMANITY.com

[amorremanet]

hate meme: harry james potter, abed nadir, freddie lounds & santana lopez? ^.^

“send me literally anything and ill tell you something i hate about it”

abed nadir

sometimes got too much attention and/or narrative forgiveness

like? abed is one of my favorite male fictional characters, period, and he means a lot to me because he’s one of the only examples of GOOD autistic spectrum representation in fiction, and i know that dan harmon and the writers loved him a lot (and for that, i don’t blame them)

but look at troy’s last episode in season five (the one where they had a massive, school-wide game of, “the floor is lava” before troy left to sail around the world with levar burton, but abed tried to drag it out forever, at the expense of literally everyone else, because he didn’t want troy to go)

for one thing: on the in-universe level, abed dragged the entire population of greendale into this game and kept dragging it out without regard for the game’s effects on anyone else (and people were getting hurt, greendale’s ability to function as a school — even by greendale standards — was pretty much dead, and abed was totally fine with that)

and he massively disregarded troy’s agency in the whole matter (because he lied to troy about the purpose of the game; britta, for all her many faults, is the one who went, “uh, troy, abed is screwing with everyone to keep you at greendale”) — and this was all cast not just as sympathetic, but as ultimately more or less okay, because abed only did it because he loves troy so much and he’s terrified of both change and losing his best friend

which *is* sympathetic, and i feel abed on both counts, but that doesn’t make what he did okay???

for another thing: on the meta-level, troy’s last episode wound up being more about abed than it was about troy. like, this was going to be the last time we got to see troy at greendale and he did have an arc in the episode, but his arc was subordinated for the sake of an abed-focused ep

and if they were trying to have a “troy and abed” focused ep, then…

1. troy’s last episode was really not the time for that; abed should’ve been a secondary focus, at most

2. they did not succeed, in terms of foregrounding the troy/abed relationship, because they approached troy and abed individually, rather than looking at their relationship, and they didn’t go back to the relationship enough to make it work (like in the “pillows and blankets” two-parter)


3. there wasn’t a balance between troy and abed like the one you had in the “pillows and blankets” two-parter, or like the abed/shirley balance in “messianic myths and ancient peoples” or like the jeff/shirley balance in “foosball and nocturnal vigilantism” (or basically any jeff/shirley episode; they usually balanced pretty well, without either overtaking the other)

so, yeah. i love abed, but ffs. making him the show’s pet was really not good for anybody. to be fair, i would also say that annie suffered from this at least as much as abed did, so it’s not like abed was alone in this — but it really sticks out in a series that otherwise tried to be good about balancing its ensemble cast and challenging the typical protagonist-centered worldviews you see in most sitcoms

harry james potter

it’s less about him, exactly, and more about how tumblr fandom has taken to handling his status as a survivor of horrific childhood abuse and a few metric fuck-tons of trauma (but tbf, i think most of these answers fall into the heading of, “it’s less about the character, more about X thing in contexts surrounding them,” so)

which isn’t even exclusive to harry, because the hp fandom is totally bogus about handling abuse culture in general, and it’s rife with all kinds of double standards

—like, on the one hand, sirius attempts to commit a very premeditated murder by proxy, and even though the proxy is remus and he would’ve suffered for it more than sirius bc he’s a werewolf and the murder would have happened on the full moon, this is apparently totally 5,000% acceptable because sirius has abusive parents and the intended victim is snape

but on the other hand, you are victim-blaming, abuse apologist garbage if you think that severus is justified in never forgiving james and sirius even if his actions based on that were mostly in the wrong, or thinking that he had every right to fight back against james and sirius when they tormented him in school

(and never mind that james potter was not, at that time in his life, a victim of fucking anything. he is a wealthy, pureblooded man who came from a loving, supportive family, and is canonically regarded as both straight and white

TO BE FAIR, he is also never specified as being white, like voldemort, lucius, and draco all are — and as other readers have noted elsewhere, the way the dursleys talk about james/lily is heavily racialized, despite being about him being a wizard, in the text — so poc!james is one of the, “jkr didn’t say it’s not canon, so it could be” type of headcanons

but he’s also never said to be a poc, so that’s fanon

moreover, it can’t be treated as canon in order to make it out like james’s years of bullying snape were anything but a guy who is canonically privileged in every way that he can possibly be privileged in jkr’s universe bullying another kid who does not have most of james’s privileges [he’s male, a halfblood — less privileged than purebloods but more privileged than muggleborns — and he’s canonically regarded as straight and white; that’s it on the, “privileges that snape has in jkr’s universe” front]

—but hey, if it’s fair game to bring up all of the racialized coding in how the dursleys talk about james by way of trying to ignore the fact that jkr treats him as white in canon, then how about let’s remember all the antisemitic coding in how jkr writes about severus, even though she doesn’t outright say that he’s jewish: source (nb: this post was written in 2005, the author didn’t have dh), source, source, source, source, source

and oh, never mind how james flat-out says that he bullies severus, “more [because of] the fact that he exists, if you know what i mean” [ootp 647]

and never mind how plenty of the people who act like severus was obligated to forgive james and sirius have reblogged things about how nobody is ever obligated to forgive their abusers, and/or condemn him for fighting back while applauding when hermione punches draco [which i say without judging them bc she’s fighting back against a blood purist little snot who torments her and her friends for fun, and i love that moment too], like??

ffs, guys, you can criticize and/or condemn snape’s actions without acting like he was terrible because he saw no reason to forgive james and sirius for what they did to him, or acting like it was Totally Wrong Forever for him to fight back against the guys who meant he didn’t even get a reprieve from his abusive, neglectful home-life at school bc they decided to torment him, and they had classmates who thought it made them cool)

furthermore, it’s apparently soooo totally not sirius’s fault that he abuses kreacher because he’s stuck in grimmauld place and lashing out against his abusive parents because kreacher still loves them…… or so say people who are otherwise happy to call out the wizarding world for having this institutionalized and magically reinforced system of slavery, which i guess doesn’t matter when sirius “cinnamon roll uwu~” black is the person abusing that system to get away with his bullshit and explicitly abusive treatment of another sentient being—

which all goes back to harry because of how abuse culture ends up rearing its ugly head in how people discuss him as a survivor

like, apart from the double standards that all fandoms have toward abuse culture and survivors, there are two big sides that i’ve seen, in this trend.

on one hand, you have the people who want harry being a survivor to excuse him of things like trying to use the cruciatus curse (and successfully using it on amycus in dh!) or similar

on the other hand, there was the shit like what you saw after “cursed child” first came out, where people were going, “omg but harry is an abuse survivor, he would NEVER say/do anything like this to his kids ever” — which…… uh?

no. not how it works.

even ignoring the irl psychology parts related to abuse and survivors of it, jkr has two big models of abusers in the series:

people who are over-privileged af and bully down because they fucking can and who the fuck is really going to stop them (draco, bellatrix, the dursleys, bartemius crouch sr., umbridge, tom-mort voldingdong, albus dumbledore, and oh yeah, james and sirius);

and people who have been hurt by others before and lash out at others because of it, to the point of becoming abusers themselves (severus, sirius, barty crouch jr., peter pettigrew, arguably albus and tom-mort have shades of this as well but it’s very debatable, and if ginny, and remus actually crossed the line into abusive, rather than being, “well, they’re not abusers, but they have these examples of behaviors that could become patterns that went this way,” they’d both be on this list too, but since they don’t, they’re only getting mentioned)

(she has three big models if we include, “abusers who are not recognized as abusers in the text because she didn’t feel like it today i guess” — which mostly means the weasley parents, but other characters definitely have moments of doing shit that should’ve been called out and wasn’t, c.f. harry running around and trying to cast the cruciatus curse, hermione keeping rita skeeter in a mason jar and hexing the signup parchment at the DA, hagrid trying to attack dudley and turn him into a pig over shit that vernon said and dudley trying to eat harry’s birthday cake, fred and george full stop)

so, yeah, uh

idk guys, how about let’s NOT invalidate abuse survivors in fandom by perpetuating these ideas that survivors are and/or have to be perfect cinnamon rolls, while all abusers ever in the world are these ridiculous slobbering caricatures of all things terrible

that’s not how it works

acting like that’s how it works ends up helping police survivors and invalidate their experiences because it plays into things like the idea that all abusers are obviously abusive, which leads to real-world survivors having a harder time being believed when they try to reach out for help

which makes it all a function of abuse culture

if you really care about survivors — and if you really care about harry as a survivor — then don’t use his status as a survivor to make shit harder for irl survivors, period

freddie lounds

i guess this is more of a problem with how freddie was written tbh

but, like…… true, nbc!hannibal avoided being absolute about most things even more than hannibal himself avoids vegetarian recipes

the most absolutism you really got was, “murder is generally wrong, like. killing in self-defense is one thing, but even if you’re trying to get ingratiated with a cannibalistic serial killer again in the name of stopping him (william), murder is probably going to be wrong so you should, like…… not do that, i’m just saying” and, “eating people is wrong unless hannibal didn’t tell you that you were eating people, in which case it is still wrong but it’s his fault, not yours”

all of which is stuff that the show doesn’t really get any cookies for taking a stand on because, “in 99.999% of cases, murder is wrong and should be avoided” is…… not really a unique or groundbreaking moral sentiment

like, it’s one of the beliefs you find in, as far as i know, every human civilization all over the world, throughout history

(there are, of course, differences of opinion on how to punish murderers, and there are exceptions made for people who get around the law by being wealthy and powerful, or by virtue of having some form(s) of societal privilege [e.g., whiteness, or straightness in the case of the, “gay panic” defense], or all of the old arguments about how killing someone during a time of war isn’t a murder and therefore doesn’t count, and then there are all of the semantic debates about, “are all killings inherently murders or what”

—but still. most people tend to agree that murdering other people is generally wrong.)

but yeah, uh

one place where i would’ve liked a little less ambiguity is freddie’s relationship with and feelings toward abigail

like, i wouldn��t have needed her to suddenly develop an increased amount of sympathy toward other victims — whether in general, or even just specifically, “other victims of hannibal lecter,” and given how he treated her on multiple occasions, it’s pretty ridiculous to just expect her ever stop being a pain in will’s ass (i mean, even when she wasn’t in the right, which was most of the time, some of how will treated her was unhelpful to everyone and in the realm of, “yes, i get where you’re coming from but this still wasn’t cool”)

—but with abigail specifically, the show sort of went back and forth between, “freddie is genuinely interested in helping abigail and does have some kind of regard for her as a person” and, “freddie is just out for herself and only using abigail and her trauma to further her own career,” which was all further complicated by the fact that pretty much no one on nbc!hannibal was a reliable narrator about anything, for any number of reasons

like, beverly probably came the closest before she got totally fridged for no good reason, but even she wound up hindered by the fact that hannibal was manipulating the evidence and playing everyone around him like a really overpriced theremin

and idk

i think the best “compromise” or interpretation here would’ve been, like… “freddie starts out just trying to advance her career because that’s just how she does things in general, but eventually, she did come to genuinely care for abigail as a person and to genuinely want to help her, which would explain things like why will was open to working with freddie against hannibal in season two, since he may not have trusted her in general, but he would trust her to want to take down the man whom they thought killed abigail (even though she was secretly still alive, at that point)”

but the show itself was never really clear on that, and it’s like

okay, guys, i don’t think you need to spell out absolutely everything, and i realize that a certain degree of ambiguity in most situations and with almost all of the characters is part of your #Aesthetic

but this would be an example of you once again screwing over the characters who are not named will and/or hannibal, especially since I got a feeling like it’s less that you were leaving things vague on the, “freddie and abigail” front, and more that you just didn’t really care to figure things out about this part of freddie’s character

so……… yeah

santana lopez

okay, i don’t blame her for wanting artie out of the way when he was dating brittany back in season 2 because lmao, i did too, but for starters, artie wouldn’t have been dating brittany if santana hadn’t blown her off in the first place

—which isn’t #Problematic in terms of her character development because…… uh, well yeah, that was the point. santana created the problem by blowing brittany off and trying to convince herself that she was “totally straight, except sometimes scissoring with brittany, lmao feelings are totally pointless and should be hated and santana doesn’t have them” and it was part of the story of her coming to accept herself as a lesbian

but it was kind of, “ummm…”-inducing that she… never actually had to accept her own responsibility for brittany/artie happening, like

first, in the duets episode, she tried to meddle and break them up by going, “brittany’s just using you for the free dinner at breadstix lmao” — which she succeeded in, because brittany and artie didn’t even sing (though they both still voted for themselves in the, “who should win” bit at the end) — and santana apparently thought that was it

tbf, it’s not like she could foresee puck and artie bonding, and puck trying to ““help”” artie get back with brittany by being so thoroughly himself…… but then brittany and artie were back on, and santana’s response was to manipulate brittany into cheating on him by going, “it’s not cheating bc we’re both girls” and expecting brittany to just go along with it

then, brittany calls her on that in “sexy” — inasmuch as brittany got a chance to do back then — and santana only accepts responsibility for anything in the sense of, “okay, brittany wants me to get more in touch with my feelings and admit that i do love her because that is how i fucked up before”

she doesn’t look at brittany’s relationships with other people, or at brittany’s feelings about anything but santana and the current state of their relationship + how it might go in the future, and so on — and this is another example of a situation where santana is presented as being sympathetic but still in the wrong, and brittany calls her on it, and it’s part of her overall growth in the end

but we never really address the manipulation in telling brittany, “it’s not cheating because we’re both girls” (which, by glee standards, is not that bad, and tbf, brittany and artie weren’t perfect angels in any of this, either, since artie was pretty ableist to brittany even before the, “how can you be so stupid, brittany!” “you were the only one in this school who never said that to me!” moment in the fleetwood mac episode, and brittany had her own manipulative moments with both artie and santana

—but it still kinda bugged me that santana had an opportunity to grow and learn more about using her capacity for manipulation for good, and it…… didn’t really go anywhere?

and you can tell that she didn’t learn about manipulating brittany — at least not until way later down the line — because a few episodes later, she’s plotting to use dave to win prom queen bc she thinks she can then go on to convince britt-britt that she’d made a royal decree that brittany had to be her girlfriend)

finally, santana was really ableist toward artie throughout the entire brittany/artie arc

……and beforehand.

…………and afterward.

………………and just in general, even without brittany needing to be involved, because to be fair, this was just one part of a larger overall pattern of ableist bullshit on glee’s part, of which artie wasn’t even the only victim (he was just one of the most notable ones because he was one of the only canonically disabled characters)

so, it’s like? yeah, santana said pretty ableist shit about artie, on a pretty regular basis — the “stubbles mc-cr*pple-pants” nickname is one example i’ll never forget

—and yeah, she said offensive things to basically everyone else on the show (c.f., calling rachel, “yentl”; calling mercedes, “wheezy”; taking her internalized homophobia out on kurt, not in the scenes like, “kurt and blarren sing about how much they love each other all over santana’s pain over being forcibly outed because that’s so what she needed to hear right now, stfu both of you” or in fairly going, “hey, shut up and quit judging MY wedding to brittany as a bad life choice just because YOU couldn’t make it work with blarren” but in all the smaller instances that you barely even notice at first; taking her internalized homophobia out on dave even while asking him to help her win prom queen/blackmailing him into it; list goes on)

but the ableist shit she said to artie sticks out to me, in particular, bc santana’s other examples of this behavior were generally cast as, “she’s witty and outrageous, yes, but you should really probably not actually say things like this, it’s asshole behavior on her part,” while the shit she said to artie…… kinda didn’t

not because the ableist shit she said to artie didn’t get called out

(bc lbr, most of the things that santana ever said didn’t get, “called out”

it got shown to be Not Cool bc it would get associated with people getting upset with her

or it would sound too much like Sue [who is almost always in the wrong, so sounding like her is something that you generally want to avoid]

or it would be used to show that santana is being selfish and rude even without it being called out [like when she called mercedes, “wheezy” before going, “we don’t have to like each other, let’s sing a duet together and win that free dinner at breadstix”]

or it would otherwise have some kind of repercussions

—but it probably wouldn’t get, “called out” as such, outside of REALLY big exceptions, like how they used, “well, but santana was bullying him” as a justification for finn getting her outed, when…… yes, her bullying him was wrong but these things are not the same

or the bit in, “silly love songs” where oher glee club kids [in order: finn, lauren, puck, quinn, tina, and rachel] bite back at santana over insulting them)

but her ableist shit toward artie sticks out because the show always kinda seemed to…… not agree with santana about it, exactly, since her saying it was still narratively seen as Not Cool?

but it seemed to give her a half-pass because plenty of the other characters who weren’t physically disabled expressed similar feelings about artie and his disability, just with less vitriol (e.g., puck, who even got to be friends with artie but still said ableist shit; he just wasn’t actively trying to be mean like santana was)

or they tried really hard to make it sound like, “well, this is just commonsense and how things are, what can you do” (e.g., MOST of them, back in season 1’s “wheels,” where rachel was pretty vitriolic in her ableist nonsense, but not directly at artie

—like, she was one of the, “but this is just how things are, don’t take it personally” when talking to him, but then lumped schue’s, “all of you will spend this week in wheelchairs to learn about accessibility!” lesson plan in with him giving kurt a fair audition for the “defying gravity” solo when she had her little diva moment of, “maybe someday, you’ll find a way to create teaching moments without RUINING MY LIFE” and then tried to storm out while still in a wheelchair)

which is all really less about santana herself, and more about how santana fit into the show’s overall patterns of ableism, but

i’m really hard-pressed to come up with something that i actually hate about santana, which is why hers is the longest answer (bc i had to dig deep and bullshit my way through it, oops)

(harry’s is closest in length but that’s because i had an actual point to make; by my standards, his answer is pretty short)

[whatisonthemoonarchive]

Fascism and Populism

Don brought up the following in a recent post: "As a counter to the post (above) by Robert Maynard, I am submitting excerpts from the following article titled “THIS IS NOT POPULISM”. Please pay special attention to the figure of Julius Evola."  In particular, he requested that I weigh in on the thought of Julius Evola.  First, I would like to suggest that the article he posted, though informative on fascist thought, seemed to miss the forrest by focusing on the trees in response to the matter of populism.  Populism is not a distinctly defined ideology, but more of an "us vs them" mood that sees a virtuous group of victims under siege by a "establishment".  It does not have to result in authroitarianism, but often does by an emotional appeal to the crowd's sense of victimhood.

Now, on tto Julius Evola, who was an influential 20th Century thinker with anbgreat deal of influence on modern fascism /traditionalism.  A closer look at his thought will reveal the historic ties between fascism and ancient paganism, which is a connection that is no longer fashionable to make.  Here is a link to an article I wrote quite a few years ago on the role of the state in early American thought: http://www.thelibertyfoundation.us/Sessions/Session5.htm

One of the central themes in this series is the responsibility those who enter into a Covenant with God have to establish a just social order. In this section I would like to explore the role of the state in establishing justice. This necessarily involves a discussion on the nature of politics. The question to be explored here is the nature of sovereignty that people exercise over others. In particular, by what justification does one person, or a group of people, presume to rule over others? Another question is to what end is such rule exercised?

The answer given by ancient pagan thinkers was simple: "For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule..." - Aristotle, Politics. Keep in mind that Aristotle is considered by many to be the most enlightened of pagan thinkers, yet he thought that some men were simply born to rule and others were born to be ruled. This was a common view in the ancient world where the ruler was considered to be a god incarnate. One simply does not question the right of a divine ruler to rule over those who are obviously inferior and born to be ruled. Sometimes that rule was exercised in a benevolent fashion, but the notion that such authority should be other than absolute was rare. The notion that some were born to rule and others to be ruled was the justification used for the practice of slavery, which was one of the most widespread and longest held practices of humankind.

What happens to this notion if the ruler is not held to be divine, but merely a created being? That is the revolutionary concept introduced by the Judeo-Christian Biblical tradition with its insistence that human beings are created in the image of God. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." - Genesis 1:27. This places ultimate sovereignty with a transcendent creator God and lays to rest any pretension of a person, or group of people to rule over others. In short, if we were all created "in the image" of a transcendent being who created as an act of free will, then we are all born to be free and no one is either born to rule or be ruled. Our founders considered this difference to be the dividing line between freedom and tyranny and sought to emulate the example of the early Israelites. Our Founders were not alone in seeing "the first illustrations" of the principles of liberty in the chosen people. In his famous essay "The History of Freedom in Antiquity", British historian Lord Acton wrote:

The most certain test by which we judge whether a country is really free is the amount of security enjoyed by minorities. Liberty, by this definition, is the essential condition and guardian of Religion; and it is in the history of the chosen People, accordingly, that the first illustrations of my subject are obtained.

Here is a piece I did on how the American ran into a challenge: http://www.thelibertyfoundation.us/Sessions/Session7.htm

We have been discussing the vision that was behind America's founding. From the very beginning Americans strove to share that vision with the world. Here are a few samples of the thought of early Americans on this matter:

In a 1630 sermon by John Winthrop entitled "City upon a Hill," he reminded his Congregation that:

"...for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword through the world, wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of god and all professours for Gods sake; wee shall shame the faces of many of gods worthy servants..."

Later, during the period in which our Constitution was in preparation, John Adams stated:

"The people of America have now the best opportunity and greatest trust in their hands that Providence has ever committed to so small a number."

In Federalist Paper number 1, Alexander Hamilton had this to say:

"It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force."

What were the results from sharing the principles that inspired our founding?

Following the American Revolution, its example and the principles at its foundation expressed in the Declaration of Independence inspired a renewed interest in the principles of liberty in Europe during the 19th Century. A European thinker who embarked on a political pilgrimage to America to view first hand this experiment in ordered liberty was the French historian Alexis De Tocqueville, who wrote in his now famous work Democracy in America: "The civilization of New England has been like a beacon lit on a hill, which, after it has diffused its warmth immediately around it, also tinges the distant horizon with its glow..."

Of course that distant horizon was Europe, where those who found themselves yearning to follow that beacon on a hill started a global abolitionist movement which succeeded in ridding much of the world of slavery and inspiring movements for national independence among people who were living under oppression. From Europe these ideas spread out even to the non-western world.

It wasn't until 1865 that slavery was abolished in the United States, making those states truly united at last. It was in the same year that France chose to acknowledge America's role in inspiring that movement toward global liberty with the gift of the Statue of Liberty.

The "Unconstrained Vision"

At the almost same time that people over in Europe were becoming enamored with the ideas that provided an underpinning for our experiment in ordered liberty, would be social engineers here in America were looking to the central planning theories of European thinkers. It was there that the seeds were planted for a vision that is relatively novel in historical terms. This vision has been referred to as the "Unconstrained Vision" in Dr. Thomas Sowell's book "A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles." Understanding this conflict is the key to understanding many of the political struggles taken place on both the domestic front here in America and in our foreign affairs as well.

This brings us to the question of why this rival vision to the Judeo-Christian vision is referred to as the "Unconstrained Vision" and what is novel about it. In his book "The Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace," classical scholar Donald Kagan points out that "It is a special characteristic of the modern Western world, as opposed to other civilizations and the pre-modern Western world, to believe that human beings can change and control even human nature to improve the condition of life" Dr. Kagan attributes this view to the great leap forward in technology that accompanied the start of the modern age. Just as advances in the physical sciences allowed the best and the brightest to rationally engineer progress in the world of technology, we should be able to socially engineer progress in the human community as well. This notion gave way to the concept of social engineering by means of central planning on the part of the best and the brightest.

The notion that the unconstrained vision arose as a response to the great leap forward in technological progress is true to an extent, but I believe somewhat incomplete. The huge leap forward in science and technology that the Western world pioneered itself can be seen as the result of a particular worldview. Father Stanley Jakia, a prize-winning historian of science with doctorates in theology and physics, has advanced the notion that it was the Judeo-Christian worldview that aided the development of science.

Thomas Chahill goes one step farther in "The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels," by stating that the worldview stemming from the Genesis account paved the way for the idea of progress itself and the whole Western way of thinking.

He points out that the notion which was predominant prior to the biblical account in Genesis was that of an eternally existing cosmos ruled by the impersonal laws of growth and decay. Humans were seen as mere cogs in a vast impersonal cosmic entity totally incapable of having any impact on our fates. The Genesis account denies that the cosmos is eternal, but came into existence as an act of free will by a personal creator and that we were created in the image of that creator. This gives mere human beings vastly more significance in the grand scheme of things than the ancient pagan view.

The individual human being can transcend the limits of his condition and enter into a personal relationship with the very creator of the cosmos. Furthermore, the cosmos was created in an orderly and rational way and we are capable of discovering the principles of order that are the basis of its existence. The Bible is full of injunctions on what we should and should not do and the consequences of following or ignoring such injunctions. The implications of such passages are staggering when compared to the pagan worldview of all actions being determined by fate. Human actions have an immense significance.

Frank Meyer summarized the Pagan view in his essay on Western Civilization:

"For the first twenty-five hundred years of recorded history men lived in civilizations of similar styles, a style for which the Egyptian may stand as the type. These cosmological civilizations conceived of existence so tightly unified and compactly fashioned that there was no room for distinction and contrast between the individual person and the social order, between the cosmos and human order, between heaven and earth, between what is and what ought to be. God and king, the rhythms of nature and the occupations of men, social custom and the moral imperative, were felt not as paired opposites but as integral unities. The life of men in these civilizations, in good times and bad, in happiness and unhappiness, proceeded in harmony and accord with nature, which knows no separation between what is and what ought to be, no tension between order and freedom, no striving of the person for individuation or the complement of that striving, the inner personal clash between the aspirations of the naked self and the moral responsibilities impressed by the very constitution of being."

The transformation brought about by the western view was described by Mr. Meyer in the same essay:

"It shattered the age-old identity of the historic and the cosmic. It burst asunder the unity of what ought to be and what is. It faced individual men for the first time with the necessity of deep-going moral choice. In a word, it destroyed the unity of what is done by human beings and what they should do to reach the heights their nature opens to them. And, in doing so, this understanding created, for the first time, the conditions for individuation, for the emergence of the person as the center of human existence, by separating the immanent from the transcendent, the immemorial mode of living from its previous identity with the very constitution of being. The arrangements of society were dissociated from the sanction of ultimate cosmic necessity; they were desanctified and left open to the judgment of human beings. But that transcendent sanction remained the basis of the judgment of human life. The transcendent was not destroyed; it was reaffirmed in terms more profound and awesome than ever. The earthly immanent and the transcendent heavenly remained, but how were they to be related each to each?"

While this view "desanctified" the cosmos and other aspects of the created order, it sanctified the relationship that individual human beings were able to enter into with their creator:

"The nexus, the connecting link between the transcendent and the immanent, between the eternal and the historical, could be no other than the human person. Living in both worlds, subjected by the demands of his nature to transcendent value and at the same time maker of history and master of society, he was suddenly (suddenly as historical process goes) revealed to himself as a creature whose fate it was to bridge this newly yawning gulf.

This is the big picture vie that we need to keep in mind in our fight for the dignity and freedom of the individual human person.  The restraint on human authority to rule over other humans, is a major sticking point in this "Conflict of Visions."  This clash was many Western intellectuals challenging the Biblical notion of limited sovereignty:

This notion goes back at least as far as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Godfather of modern liberalism, in his treatise The Social Contract: 

"Several peoples, however, even in Europe and its neighborhood, have desired without success to preserve or restore the old system: but the spirit of Christianity has everywhere prevailed. The sacred cult has always remained or again become independent of the Sovereign, and there has been no necessary link between it and the body of the State. Mahomet held very sane views, and linked his political system well together; and, as long as the form of his government continued under the caliphs who succeeded him, that government was indeed one, and so far good."

Rousseau was not happy because Christianity developed a view in which religion was "independent of the Sovereign, and there has been no necessary link between it and the body of the State." Religion having an independent status from the State, thus limiting the role of the State, is foundational to our notions of individual liberty and the separation of Church and State. The "old system" that the spirit of Christianity prevailed over was the Pagan system where the State itself was seen as divine and all aspects of life came under a single sovereignty. Like the pagan’s "old system", , Mohammad also set up a religious system with both state and religion under a single sovereignty. Thus sovereignty was not limited because it there was no division amongst competing entities.

Utopian visionaries cannot tolerate the notion of divided sovereignty, which is not only the basis of our separation of Church and State, but the idea of federalism as well. Utopians view centralizing power as necessary, to be used by the "best and the brightest" as a tool to socially engineer the perfect society.

By contrast, the Judeo-Christian perspective views centralized power in general, and centralized political power in particular, as dangerous. Power should be divided up as much as possible to prevent tyranny and lesser forms of human oppression. Such divisions of power are between the State and Civil Society (voluntary associations), between the various branches of government and between the different levels of government (Local, State and Federal). Power within Civil Society is regulated my moral persuasion and divided up by competition among the various groups for people's voluntary support. Because Civil Society is based on moral persuasion (voluntary cooperation) rather than force, it is self-regulating.

As citizens of a free society it is important that we understand the degree to which some of the political debate is a reflection of the conflict between these two visions. At its best, political debate should raise the question of the role of the various sectors of society and whether we are expanding the role of one sector of our society at the expense of another. In discussing a political issue we must always consider what the wisest role of government should be.

Robert Maynard

[thesnhuup]

Pop Picks — July 1, 2019

July 1, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

The National remains my favorite band and probably 50% of my listening time is a National album or playlist. Their new album I Am Easy To Find feels like a turning point record for the band, going from the moody, outsider introspection and doubt of lead singer Matt Berninger to something that feels more adult, sophisticated, and wiser. I might have titled it Women Help The Band Grow Up. Matt is no longer the center of The National’s universe and he frequently cedes the mic to the many women who accompany and often lead on the long, their longest, album. They include Gail Ann Dorsey (who sang with Bowie for a long time), who is amazing, and a number of the songs were written by Carin Besser, Berninger’s wife. I especially love the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, the arrangements, and the sheer complexity and coherence of the work. It still amazes me when I meet someone who does not know The National. My heart breaks for them just a little.

What I’m reading: 

Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls is a retelling of Homer’s Iliad through the lens of a captive Trojan queen, Briseis. As a reviewer in The Atlantic writes, it answers the question “What does war mean to women?” We know the answer and it has always been true, whether it is the casual and assumed rape of captive women in this ancient war story or the use of rape in modern day Congo, Syria, or any other conflict zone. Yet literature almost never gives voice to the women – almost always minor characters at best — and their unspeakable suffering. Barker does it here for Briseis, for Hector’s wife Andromache, and for the other women who understand that the death of their men is tragedy, but what they then endure is worse. Think of it ancient literature having its own #MeToo moment. The NY Times’ Geraldine Brooks did not much like the novel. I did. Very much.

What I’m watching: 

The BBC-HBO limited series Years and Years is breathtaking, scary, and absolutely familiar. It’s as if Black Mirror and Children of Men had a baby and it precisely captures the zeitgeist, the current sense that the world is spinning out of control and things are coming at us too fast. It is a near future (Trump has been re-elected and Brexit has occurred finally)…not dystopia exactly, but damn close. The closing scene of last week’s first episode (there are 6 episodes and it’s on every Monday) shows nuclear war breaking out between China and the U.S. Yikes! The scope of this show is wide and there is a big, baggy feel to it – but I love the ambition even if I’m not looking forward to the nightmares.

Archive 

May 19, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

I usually go to music here, but I was really moved by this podcast of a Davis Brooks talk at the Commonwealth Club in Silicon Valley: https://www.commonwealthclub.org/events/archive/podcast/david-brooks-quest-moral-life.  While I have long found myself distant from his political stance, he has come through a dark night of the soul and emerged with a wonderful clarity about calling, community, and not happiness (that most superficial of goals), but fulfillment and meaning, found in community and human kinship of many kinds. I immediately sent it to my kids.

What I’m reading: 

Susan Orlean’s wonderful The Library Book, a love song to libraries told through the story of the LA Central Library.  It brought back cherished memories of my many hours in beloved libraries — as a kid in the Waltham Public Library, a high schooler in the Farber Library at Brandeis (Lil Farber years later became a mentor of mine), and the cathedral-like Bapst Library at BC when I was a graduate student. Yes, I was a nerd. This is a love song to books certainly, but a reminder that libraries are so, so much more.  It is a reminder that libraries are less about a place or being a repository of information and, like America at its best, an idea and ideal. By the way, oh to write like her.

What I’m watching: 

What else? Game of Thrones, like any sensible human being. This last season is disappointing in many ways and the drop off in the writing post George R.R. Martin is as clear as was the drop off in the post-Sorkin West Wing. I would be willing to bet that if Martin has been writing the last season, Sansa and Tyrion would have committed suicide in the crypt. That said, we fans are deeply invested and even the flaws are giving us so much to discuss and debate. In that sense, the real gift of this last season is the enjoyment between episodes, like the old pre-streaming days when we all arrived at work after the latest episode of the Sopranos to discuss what we had all seen the night before. I will say this, the last two episodes — full of battle and gore – have been visually stunning. Whether the torches of the Dothraki being extinguished in the distance or Arya riding through rubble and flame on a white horse, rarely has the series ascended to such visual grandeur.

March 28, 2019

What I’m listening to: 

There is a lovely piece played in a scene from A Place Called Home that I tracked down. It’s Erik Satie’s 3 Gymnopédies: Gymnopédie No. 1, played by the wonderful pianist Klára Körmendi. Satie composed this piece in 1888 and it was considered avant-garde and anti-Romantic. It’s minimalism and bit of dissonance sound fresh and contemporary to my ears and while not a huge Classical music fan, I’ve fallen in love with the Körmendi playlist on Spotify. When you need an alternative to hours of Cardi B.

What I’m reading: 

Just finished Esi Edugyan’s 2018 novel Washington Black. Starting on a slave plantation in Barbados, it is a picaresque novel that has elements of Jules Verne, Moby Dick, Frankenstein, and Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad. Yes, it strains credulity and there are moments of “huh?”, but I loved it (disclosure: I was in the minority among my fellow book club members) and the first third is a searing depiction of slavery. It’s audacious, sprawling (from Barbados to the Arctic to London to Africa), and the writing, especially about nature, luminous. 

What I’m watching: 

A soap opera. Yes, I’d like to pretend it’s something else, but we are 31 episodes into the Australian drama A Place Called Home and we are so, so addicted. Like “It’s  AM, but can’t we watch just one more episode?” addicted. Despite all the secrets, cliff hangers, intrigue, and “did that just happen?” moments, the core ingredients of any good soap opera, APCH has superb acting, real heft in terms of subject matter (including homophobia, anti-Semitism, sexual assault, and class), touches of our beloved Downton Abbey, and great cars. Beware. If you start, you won’t stop.

February 11, 2019

What I’m listening to:

Raphael Saadiq has been around for quite a while, as a musician, writer, and producer. He’s new to me and I love his old school R&B sound. Like Leon Bridges, he brings a contemporary freshness to the genre, sounding like a young Stevie Wonder (listen to “You’re The One That I Like”). Rock and Roll may be largely dead, but R&B persists – maybe because the former was derivative of the latter and never as good (and I say that as a Rock and Roll fan). I’m embarrassed to only have discovered Saadiq so late in his career, but it’s a delight to have done so.

What I’m reading:

Just finished Marilynne Robinson’s Home, part of her trilogy that includes the Pulitzer Prize winning first novel, Gilead, and the book after Home, Lila. Robinson is often described as a Christian writer, but not in a conventional sense. In this case, she gives us a modern version of the prodigal son and tells the story of what comes after he is welcomed back home. It’s not pretty. Robinson is a self-described Calvinist, thus character begets fate in Robinson’s world view and redemption is at best a question. There is something of Faulkner in her work (I am much taken with his famous “The past is never past” quote after a week in the deep South), her style is masterful, and like Faulkner, she builds with these three novels a whole universe in the small town of Gilead. Start with Gilead to better enjoy Home.

What I’m watching:

Sex Education was the most fun series we’ve seen in ages and we binged watched it on Netflix. A British homage to John Hughes films like The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Pretty in Pink, it feels like a mash up of American and British high schools. Focusing on the relationship of Maeve, the smart bad girl, and Otis, the virginal and awkward son of a sex therapist (played with brilliance by Gillian Anderson), it is laugh aloud funny and also evolves into more substance and depth (the abortion episode is genius). The sex scenes are somehow raunchy and charming and inoffensive at the same time and while ostensibly about teenagers (it feels like it is explaining contemporary teens to adults in many ways), the adults are compelling in their good and bad ways. It has been renewed for a second season, which is a gift.

January 3, 2019

What I’m listening to:

My listening choices usually refer to music, but this time I’m going with Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast on genius and the song Hallelujah. It tells the story of Leonard Cohen’s much-covered song Hallelujah and uses it as a lens on kinds of genius and creativity. Along the way, he brings in Picasso and Cézanne, Elvis Costello, and more. Gladwell is a good storyteller and if you love pop music, as I do, and Hallelujah, as I do (and you should), you’ll enjoy this podcast. We tend to celebrate the genius who seems inspired in the moment, creating new work like lightning strikes, but this podcast has me appreciating incremental creativity in a new way. It’s compelling and fun at the same time.

What I’m reading:

Just read Clay Christensen’s new book, The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty. This was an advance copy, so soon available. Clay is an old friend and a huge influence on how we have grown SNHU and our approach to innovation. This book is so compelling, because we know attempts at development have so often been a failure and it is often puzzling to understand why some countries with desperate poverty and huge challenges somehow come to thrive (think S. Korea, Singapore, 19th C. America), while others languish. Clay offers a fresh way of thinking about development through the lens of his research on innovation and it is compelling. I bet this book gets a lot of attention, as most of his work does. I also suspect that many in the development community will hate it, as it calls into question the approach and enormous investments we have made in an attempt to lift countries out of poverty. A provocative read and, as always, Clay is a good storyteller.

What I’m watching:

Just watched Leave No Trace and should have guessed that it was directed by Debra Granik. She did Winter’s Bone, the extraordinary movie that launched Jennifer Lawrence’s career. Similarly, this movie features an amazing young actor, Thomasin McKenzie, and visits lives lived on the margins. In this case, a veteran suffering PTSD, and his 13-year-old daughter. The movie is patient, is visually lush, and justly earned 100% on Rotten Tomatoes (I have a rule to never watch anything under 82%). Everything in this film is under control and beautifully understated (aside from the visuals) – confident acting, confident directing, and so humane. I love the lack of flashbacks, the lack of sensationalism – the movie trusts the viewer, rare in this age of bombast. A lovely film.

December 4, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spending a week in New Zealand, we had endless laughs listening to the Kiwi band, Flight of the Conchords. Lots of comedic bands are funny, but the music is only okay or worse. These guys are funny – hysterical really – and the music is great. They have an uncanny ability to parody almost any style. In both New Zealand and Australia, we found a wry sense of humor that was just delightful and no better captured than with this duo. You don’t have to be in New Zealand to enjoy them.

What I’m reading:

I don’t often reread. For two reasons: A) I have so many books on my “still to be read” pile that it seems daunting to also rereadbooks I loved before, and B) it’s because I loved them once that I’m a little afraid to read them again. That said, I was recently asked to list my favorite book of all time and I answered Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. But I don’t really know if that’s still true (and it’s an impossible question anyway – favorite book? On what day? In what mood?), so I’m rereading it and it feels like being with an old friend. It has one of my very favorite scenes ever: the card game between Levin and Kitty that leads to the proposal and his joyous walking the streets all night.

What I’m watching:

Blindspotting is billed as a buddy-comedy. Wow does that undersell it and the drama is often gripping. I loved Daveed Diggs in Hamilton, didn’t like his character in Black-ish, and think he is transcendent in this film he co-wrote with Rafael Casal, his co-star.  The film is a love song to Oakland in many ways, but also a gut-wrenching indictment of police brutality, systemic racism and bias, and gentrification. The film has the freshness and raw visceral impact of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. A great soundtrack, genre mixing, and energy make it one of my favorite movies of 2018.

October 15, 2018 

What I’m listening to:

We had the opportunity to see our favorite band, The National, live in Dallas two weeks ago. Just after watching Mistaken for Strangers, the documentary sort of about the band. So we’ve spent a lot of time going back into their earlier work, listening to songs we don’t know well, and reaffirming that their musicality, smarts, and sound are both original and astoundingly good. They did not disappoint in concert and it is a good thing their tour ended, as we might just spend all of our time and money following them around. Matt Berninger is a genius and his lead vocals kill me (and because they are in my range, I can actually sing along!). Their arrangements are profoundly good and go right to whatever brain/heart wiring that pulls one in and doesn’t let them go.

What I’m reading:

Who is Richard Powers and why have I only discovered him now, with his 12th book? Overstory is profoundly good, a book that is essential and powerful and makes me look at my everyday world in new ways. In short, a dizzying example of how powerful can be narrative in the hands of a master storyteller. I hesitate to say it’s the best environmental novel I’ve ever read (it is), because that would put this book in a category. It is surely about the natural world, but it is as much about we humans. It’s monumental and elegiac and wondrous at all once. Cancel your day’s schedule and read it now. Then plant a tree. A lot of them.

What I’m watching:

Bo Burnham wrote and directed Eighth Grade and Elsie Fisher is nothing less than amazing as its star (what’s with these new child actors; see Florida Project). It’s funny and painful and touching. It’s also the single best film treatment that I have seen of what it means to grow up in a social media shaped world. It’s a reminder that growing up is hard. Maybe harder now in a world of relentless, layered digital pressure to curate perfect lives that are far removed from the natural messy worlds and selves we actually inhabit. It’s a well-deserved 98% on Rotten Tomatoes and I wonder who dinged it for the missing 2%.

September 7, 2018

What I’m listening to:

With a cover pointing back to the Beastie Boys’ 1986 Licensed to Ill, Eminem’s quietly released Kamikaze is not my usual taste, but I’ve always admired him for his “all out there” willingness to be personal, to call people out, and his sheer genius with language. I thought Daveed Diggs could rap fast, but Eminem is supersonic at moments, and still finds room for melody. Love that he includes Joyner Lucas, whose “I’m Not Racist” gets added to the growing list of simply amazing music videos commenting on race in America. There are endless reasons why I am the least likely Eminem fan, but when no one is around to make fun of me, I’ll put it on again.

What I’m reading:

Lesley Blume’s Everyone Behaves Badly, which is the story behind Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and his time in 1920s Paris (oh, what a time – see Midnight in Paris if you haven’t already). Of course, Blume disabuses my romantic ideas of that time and place and everyone is sort of (or profoundly so) a jerk, especially…no spoiler here…Hemingway. That said, it is a compelling read and coming off the Henry James inspired prose of Mrs. Osmond, it made me appreciate more how groundbreaking was Hemingway’s modern prose style. Like his contemporary Picasso, he reinvented the art and it can be easy to forget, these decades later, how profound was the change and its impact. And it has bullfights.

What I’m watching:

Chloé Zhao’s The Rider is just exceptional. It’s filmed on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which provides a stunning landscape, and it feels like a classic western reinvented for our times. The main characters are played by the real-life people who inspired this narrative (but feels like a documentary) film. Brady Jandreau, playing himself really, owns the screen. It’s about manhood, honor codes, loss, and resilience – rendered in sensitive, nuanced, and heartfelt ways. It feels like it could be about large swaths of America today. Really powerful.

August 16, 2018

What I’m listening to:

In my Spotify Daily Mix was Percy Sledge’s When A Man Loves A Woman, one of the world’s greatest love songs. Go online and read the story of how the song was discovered and recorded. There are competing accounts, but Sledge said he improvised it after a bad breakup. It has that kind of aching spontaneity. It is another hit from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, one of the GREAT music hotbeds, along with Detroit, Nashville, and Memphis. Our February Board meeting is in Alabama and I may finally have to do the pilgrimage road trip to Muscle Shoals and then Memphis, dropping in for Sunday services at the church where Rev. Al Green still preaches and sings. If the music is all like this, I will be saved.

What I’m reading:

John Banville’s Mrs. Osmond, his homage to literary idol Henry James and an imagined sequel to James’ 1881 masterpiece Portrait of a Lady. Go online and read the first paragraph of Chapter 25. He is…profoundly good. Makes me want to never write again, since anything I attempt will feel like some other, lowly activity in comparison to his mastery of language, image, syntax. This is slow reading, every sentence to be savored.

What I’m watching:

I’ve always respected Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but we just watched the documentary RGB. It is over-the-top great and she is now one of my heroes. A superwoman in many ways and the documentary is really well done. There are lots of scenes of her speaking to crowds and the way young women, especially law students, look at her is touching.  And you can’t help but fall in love with her now late husband Marty. See this movie and be reminded of how important is the Law.

July 23, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Spotify’s Summer Acoustic playlist has been on repeat quite a lot. What a fun way to listen to artists new to me, including The Paper Kites, Hollow Coves, and Fleet Foxes, as well as old favorites like Leon Bridges and Jose Gonzalez. Pretty chill when dialing back to a summer pace, dining on the screen porch or reading a book.

What I’m reading:

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson tells of the racial injustice (and the war on the poor our judicial system perpetuates as well) that he discovered as a young graduate from Harvard Law School and his fight to address it. It is in turn heartbreaking, enraging, and inspiring. It is also about mercy and empathy and justice that reads like a novel. Brilliant.

What I’m watching:

Fauda. We watched season one of this Israeli thriller. It was much discussed in Israel because while it focuses on an ex-special agent who comes out of retirement to track down a Palestinian terrorist, it was willing to reveal the complexity, richness, and emotions of Palestinian lives. And the occasional brutality of the Israelis. Pretty controversial stuff in Israel. Lior Raz plays Doron, the main character, and is compelling and tough and often hard to like. He’s a mess. As is the world in which he has to operate. We really liked it, and also felt guilty because while it may have been brave in its treatment of Palestinians within the Israeli context, it falls back into some tired tropes and ultimately falls short on this front.

June 11, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Like everyone else, I’m listening to Pusha T drop the mic on Drake. Okay, not really, but do I get some points for even knowing that? We all walk around with songs that immediately bring us back to a time or a place. Songs are time machines. We are coming up on Father’s Day. My own dad passed away on Father’s Day back in 1994 and I remembering dutifully getting through the wake and funeral and being strong throughout. Then, sitting alone in our kitchen, Don Henley’s The End of the Innocence came on and I lost it. When you lose a parent for the first time (most of us have two after all) we lose our innocence and in that passage, we suddenly feel adult in a new way (no matter how old we are), a longing for our own childhood, and a need to forgive and be forgiven. Listen to the lyrics and you’ll understand. As Wordsworth reminds us in In Memoriam, there are seasons to our grief and, all these years later, this song no longer hits me in the gut, but does transport me back with loving memories of my father. I’ll play it Father’s Day.

What I’m reading:

The Fifth Season, by N. K. Jemisin. I am not a reader of fantasy or sci-fi, though I understand they can be powerful vehicles for addressing the very real challenges of the world in which we actually live. I’m not sure I know of a more vivid and gripping illustration of that fact than N. K. Jemisin’s Hugo Award winning novel The Fifth Season, first in her Broken Earth trilogy. It is astounding. It is the fantasy parallel to The Underground Railroad, my favorite recent read, a depiction of subjugation, power, casual violence, and a broken world in which our hero(s) struggle, suffer mightily, and still, somehow, give us hope. It is a tour de force book. How can someone be this good a writer? The first 30 pages pained me (always with this genre, one must learn a new, constructed world, and all of its operating physics and systems of order), and then I could not put it down. I panicked as I neared the end, not wanting to finish the book, and quickly ordered the Obelisk Gate, the second novel in the trilogy, and I can tell you now that I’ll be spending some goodly portion of my weekend in Jemisin’s other world.

What I’m watching:

The NBA Finals and perhaps the best basketball player of this generation. I’ve come to deeply respect LeBron James as a person, a force for social good, and now as an extraordinary player at the peak of his powers. His superhuman play during the NBA playoffs now ranks with the all-time greats, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, MJ, Kobe, and the demi-god that was Bill Russell. That his Cavs lost in a 4-game sweep is no surprise. It was a mediocre team being carried on the wide shoulders of James (and matched against one of the greatest teams ever, the Warriors, and the Harry Potter of basketball, Steph Curry) and, in some strange way, his greatness is amplified by the contrast with the rest of his team. It was a great run.

May 24, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I’ve always liked Alicia Keys and admired her social activism, but I am hooked on her last album Here. This feels like an album finally commensurate with her anger, activism, hope, and grit. More R&B and Hip Hop than is typical for her, I think this album moves into an echelon inhabited by a Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On or Beyonce’s Formation. Social activism and outrage rarely make great novels, but they often fuel great popular music. Here is a terrific example.

What I’m reading:

Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad may be close to a flawless novel. Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer, it chronicles the lives of two runaway slaves, Cora and Caeser, as they try to escape the hell of plantation life in Georgia.  It is an often searing novel and Cora is one of the great heroes of American literature. I would make this mandatory reading in every high school in America, especially in light of the absurd revisionist narratives of “happy and well cared for” slaves. This is a genuinely great novel, one of the best I’ve read, the magical realism and conflating of time periods lifts it to another realm of social commentary, relevance, and a blazing indictment of America’s Original Sin, for which we remain unabsolved.

What I’m watching:

I thought I knew about The Pentagon Papers, but The Post, a real-life political thriller from Steven Spielberg taught me a lot, features some of our greatest actors, and is so timely given the assault on our democratic institutions and with a presidency out of control. It is a reminder that a free and fearless press is a powerful part of our democracy, always among the first targets of despots everywhere. The story revolves around the legendary Post owner and D.C. doyenne, Katharine Graham. I had the opportunity to see her son, Don Graham, right after he saw the film, and he raved about Meryl Streep’s portrayal of his mother. Liked it a lot more than I expected.

April 27, 2018

What I’m listening to:

I mentioned John Prine in a recent post and then on the heels of that mention, he has released a new album, The Tree of Forgiveness, his first new album in ten years. Prine is beloved by other singer songwriters and often praised by the inscrutable God that is Bob Dylan.  Indeed, Prine was frequently said to be the “next Bob Dylan” in the early part of his career, though he instead carved out his own respectable career and voice, if never with the dizzying success of Dylan. The new album reflects a man in his 70s, a cancer survivor, who reflects on life and its end, but with the good humor and empathy that are hallmarks of Prine’s music. “When I Get To Heaven” is a rollicking, fun vision of what comes next and a pure delight. A charming, warm, and often terrific album.

What I’m reading:

I recently read Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, on many people’s Top Ten lists for last year and for good reason. It is sprawling, multi-generational, and based in the world of Japanese occupied Korea and then in the Korean immigrant’s world of Oaska, so our key characters become “tweeners,” accepted in neither world. It’s often unspeakably sad, and yet there is resiliency and love. There is also intimacy, despite the time and geographic span of the novel. It’s breathtakingly good and like all good novels, transporting.

What I’m watching:

I adore Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 film, Pan’s Labyrinth, and while I’m not sure his Shape of Water is better, it is a worthy follow up to the earlier masterpiece (and more of a commercial success). Lots of critics dislike the film, but I’m okay with a simple retelling of a Beauty and the Beast love story, as predictable as it might be. The acting is terrific, it is visually stunning, and there are layers of pain as well as social and political commentary (the setting is the US during the Cold War) and, no real spoiler here, the real monsters are humans, the military officer who sees over the captured aquatic creature. It is hauntingly beautiful and its depiction of hatred to those who are different or “other” is painfully resonant with the time in which we live. Put this on your “must see” list.

March 18, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Sitting on a plane for hours (and many more to go; geez, Australia is far away) is a great opportunity to listen to new music and to revisit old favorites. This time, it is Lucy Dacus and her album Historians, the new sophomore release from a 22-year old indie artist that writes with relatable, real-life lyrics. Just on a second listen and while she insists this isn’t a break up record (as we know, 50% of all great songs are break up songs), it is full of loss and pain. Worth the listen so far. For the way back machine, it’s John Prine and In Spite of Ourselves (that title track is one of the great love songs of all time), a collection of duets with some of his “favorite girl singers” as he once described them. I have a crush on Iris Dement (for a really righteously angry song try her Wasteland of the Free), but there is also EmmyLou Harris, the incomparable Dolores Keane, and Lucinda Williams. Very different albums, both wonderful.

What I’m reading:

Jane Mayer’s New Yorker piece on Christopher Steele presents little that is new, but she pulls it together in a terrific and coherent whole that is illuminating and troubling at the same time. Not only for what is happening, but for the complicity of the far right in trying to discredit that which should be setting off alarm bells everywhere. Bob Mueller may be the most important defender of the democracy at this time. A must read.

What I’m watching:

Homeland is killing it this season and is prescient, hauntingly so. Russian election interference, a Bannon-style hate radio demagogue, alienated and gun toting militia types, and a president out of control. It’s fabulous, even if it feels awfully close to the evening news. 

March 8, 2018

What I’m listening to:

We have a family challenge to compile our Top 100 songs. It is painful. Only 100? No more than three songs by one artist? Wait, why is M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” on my list? Should it just be The Clash from whom she samples? Can I admit to guilty pleasure songs? Hey, it’s my list and I can put anything I want on it. So I’m listening to the list while I work and the song playing right now is Tom Petty’s “The Wild One, Forever,” a B-side single that was never a hit and that remains my favorite Petty song. Also, “Evangeline” by Los Lobos. It evokes a night many years ago, with friends at Pearl Street in Northampton, MA, when everyone danced well past 1AM in a hot, sweaty, packed club and the band was a revelation. Maybe the best music night of our lives and a reminder that one’s 100 Favorite Songs list is as much about what you were doing and where you were in your life when those songs were playing as it is about the music. It’s not a list. It’s a soundtrack for this journey.

What I’m reading:

Patricia Lockwood’s Priestdaddy was in the NY Times top ten books of 2017 list and it is easy to see why. Lockwood brings remarkable and often surprising imagery, metaphor, and language to her prose memoir and it actually threw me off at first. It then all became clear when someone told me she is a poet. The book is laugh aloud funny, which masks (or makes safer anyway) some pretty dark territory. Anyone who grew up Catholic, whether lapsed or not, will resonate with her story. She can’t resist a bawdy anecdote and her family provides some of the most memorable characters possible, especially her father, her sister, and her mother, who I came to adore. Best thing I’ve read in ages.

What I’m watching:

The Florida Project, a profoundly good movie on so many levels. Start with the central character, six-year old (at the time of the filming) Brooklynn Prince, who owns – I mean really owns – the screen. This is pure acting genius and at that age? Astounding. Almost as astounding is Bria Vinaite, who plays her mother. She was discovered on Instagram and had never acted before this role, which she did with just three weeks of acting lessons. She is utterly convincing and the tension between the child’s absolute wonder and joy in the world with her mother’s struggle to provide, to be a mother, is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once. Willem Dafoe rightly received an Oscar nomination for his supporting role. This is a terrific movie.

February 12, 2018

What I’m listening to:

So, I have a lot of friends of age (I know you’re thinking 40s, but I just turned 60) who are frozen in whatever era of music they enjoyed in college or maybe even in their thirties. There are lots of times when I reach back into the catalog, since music is one of those really powerful and transporting senses that can take you through time (smell is the other one, though often underappreciated for that power). Hell, I just bought a turntable and now spending time in vintage vinyl shops. But I’m trying to take a lesson from Pat, who revels in new music and can as easily talk about North African rap music and the latest National album as Meet the Beatles, her first ever album. So, I’ve been listening to Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy winning Damn. While it may not be the first thing I’ll reach for on a winter night in Maine, by the fire, I was taken with it. It’s layered, political, and weirdly sensitive and misogynist at the same time, and it feels fresh and authentic and smart at the same time, with music that often pulled me from what I was doing. In short, everything music should do. I’m not a bit cooler for listening to Damn, but when I followed it with Steely Dan, I felt like I was listening to Lawrence Welk. A good sign, I think.

What I’m reading:

I am reading Walter Isaacson’s new biography of Leonardo da Vinci. I’m not usually a reader of biographies, but I’ve always been taken with Leonardo. Isaacson does not disappoint (does he ever?), and his subject is at once more human and accessible and more awe-inspiring in Isaacson’s capable hands. Gay, left-handed, vegetarian, incapable of finishing things, a wonderful conversationalist, kind, and perhaps the most relentlessly curious human being who has ever lived. Like his biographies of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, Isaacson’s project here is to show that genius lives at the intersection of science and art, of rationality and creativity. Highly recommend it.

What I’m watching:

We watched the This Is Us post-Super Bowl episode, the one where Jack finally buys the farm. I really want to hate this show. It is melodramatic and manipulative, with characters that mostly never change or grow, and it hooks me every damn time we watch it. The episode last Sunday was a tear jerker, a double whammy intended to render into a blubbering, tissue-crumbling pathetic mess anyone who has lost a parent or who is a parent. Sterling K. Brown, Ron Cephas Jones, the surprising Mandy Moore, and Milo Ventimiglia are hard not to love and last season’s episode that had only Brown and Cephas going to Memphis was the show at its best (they are by far the two best actors). Last week was the show at its best worst. In other words, I want to hate it, but I love it. If you haven’t seen it, don’t binge watch it. You’ll need therapy and insulin.

January 15, 2018

What I’m listening to:

Drive-By Truckers. Chris Stapleton has me on an unusual (for me) country theme and I discovered these guys to my great delight. They’ve been around, with some 11 albums, but the newest one is fascinating. It’s a deep dive into Southern alienation and the white working-class world often associated with our current president. I admire the willingness to lay bare, in kick ass rock songs, the complexities and pain at work among people we too quickly place into overly simple categories. These guys are brave, bold, and thoughtful as hell, while producing songs I didn’t expect to like, but that I keep playing. And they are coming to NH.

What I’m reading:

A textual analog to Drive-By Truckers by Chris Stapleton in many ways is Tony Horowitz’s 1998 Pulitzer Prize winning Confederates in the Attic. Ostensibly about the Civil War and the South’s ongoing attachment to it, it is prescient and speaks eloquently to the times in which we live (where every southern state but Virginia voted for President Trump). Often hilarious, it too surfaces complexities and nuance that escape a more recent, and widely acclaimed, book like Hillbilly Elegy. As a Civil War fan, it was also astonishing in many instances, especially when it blows apart long-held “truths” about the war, such as the degree to which Sherman burned down the south (he did not). Like D-B Truckers, Horowitz loves the South and the people he encounters, even as he grapples with its myths of victimhood and exceptionalism (and racism, which may be no more than the racism in the north, but of a different kind). Everyone should read this book and I’m embarrassed I’m so late to it.

What I’m watching:

David Letterman has a new Netflix show called “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction” and we watched the first episode, in which Letterman interviewed Barack Obama. It was extraordinary (if you don’t have Netflix, get it just to watch this show); not only because we were reminded of Obama’s smarts, grace, and humanity (and humor), but because we saw a side of Letterman we didn’t know existed. His personal reflections on Selma were raw and powerful, almost painful. He will do five more episodes with “extraordinary individuals” and if they are anything like the first, this might be the very best work of his career and one of the best things on television.

December 22, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished Sunjeev Sahota’s Year of the Runaways, a painful inside look at the plight of illegal Indian immigrant workers in Britain. It was shortlisted for 2015 Man Booker Prize and its transporting, often to a dark and painful universe, and it is impossible not to think about the American version of this story and the terrible way we treat the undocumented in our own country, especially now.

What I’m watching:

Season II of The Crown is even better than Season I. Elizabeth’s character is becoming more three-dimensional, the modern world is catching up with tradition-bound Britain, and Cold War politics offer more context and tension than we saw in Season I. Claire Foy, in her last season, is just terrific – one arched eye brow can send a message.

What I’m listening to:

A lot of Christmas music, but needing a break from the schmaltz, I’ve discovered Over the Rhine and their Christmas album, Snow Angels. God, these guys are good.

November 14, 2017

What I’m watching:

Guiltily, I watch the Patriots play every weekend, often building my schedule and plans around seeing the game. Why the guilt? I don’t know how morally defensible is football anymore, as we now know the severe damage it does to the players. We can’t pretend it’s all okay anymore. Is this our version of late decadent Rome, watching mostly young Black men take a terrible toll on each other for our mere entertainment?

What I’m reading:

Recently finished J.G. Ballard’s 2000 novel Super-Cannes, a powerful depiction of a corporate-tech ex-pat community taken over by a kind of psychopathology, in which all social norms and responsibilities are surrendered to residents of the new world community. Kept thinking about Silicon Valley when reading it. Pretty dark, dystopian view of the modern world and centered around a mass killing, troublingly prescient.

What I’m listening to:

Was never really a Lorde fan, only knowing her catchy (and smarter than you might first guess) pop hit “Royals” from her debut album. But her new album, Melodrama, is terrific and it doesn’t feel quite right to call this “pop.” There is something way more substantial going on with Lorde and I can see why many critics put this album at the top of their Best in 2017 list. Count me in as a huge fan.

November 3, 2017

What I’m reading: Just finished Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere, her breathtakingly good second novel. How is someone so young so wise? Her writing is near perfection and I read the book in two days, setting my alarm for 4:30AM so I could finish it before work.

What I’m watching: We just binge watched season two of Stranger Things and it was worth it just to watch Millie Bobbie Brown, the transcendent young actor who plays Eleven. The series is a delightful mash up of every great eighties horror genre you can imagine and while pretty dark, an absolute joy to watch.

What I’m listening to: I’m not a lover of country music (to say the least), but I love Chris Stapleton. His “The Last Thing I Needed, First Thing This Morning” is heartbreakingly good and reminds me of the old school country that played in my house as a kid. He has a new album and I can’t wait, but his From A Room: Volume 1 is on repeat for now.

September 26, 2017

What I’m reading:

Just finished George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo. It took me a while to accept its cadence and sheer weirdness, but loved it in the end. A painful meditation on loss and grief, and a genuinely beautiful exploration of the intersection of life and death, the difficulty of letting go of what was, good and bad, and what never came to be.

What I’m watching:

HBO’s The Deuce. Times Square and the beginning of the porn industry in the 1970s, the setting made me wonder if this was really something I’d want to see. But David Simon is the writer and I’d read a menu if he wrote it. It does not disappoint so far and there is nothing prurient about it.

What I’m listening to:

The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast. I love this band. The opening piano notes of the first song, “Nobody Else Will Be There,” seize me & I’m reminded that no one else in music today matches their arrangement & musicianship. I’m adding “Born to Beg,” “Slow Show,” “I Need My Girl,” and “Runaway” to my list of favorite love songs.

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