Marginal – slow reads

On American unexceptionalism. Here’s a Washington Post article this week making the similar-but-different comparison I make about Obama’s and Romney’s views on American exceptionalism. Both men sound more like Douglas than Lincoln. I hope we get past this self-congratulatory rhetoric one day soon.

Categories

Passages

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (9)

13 June 2021 - Tom

Every day is anotheryear for cottonwoodsin the Sandhills.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Nocturne: Near & Far

13 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

"We try to see in the dark; we toss up our questions and they catch in the trees." ~ Annie Dillard After rain, the cotton-heavy breasts of clouds; the redbud, the hawthorn, the fringe tree. I still hear the one that tapped all morning, insistent in front of a gate that wouldn't move. Only the moon pauses, stretches wide as a palmful of dough. Unmuffled, the owls begin their two-note chant: who-when? who-when? I've long understood how distance is what makes the faraway conspicuous, the near at hand swizzle into a kind of silence. [Read more...]

Apocryphal

13 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

(Lord’s day). Up, and put on my new stuff-suit, with a shoulder-belt, according to the new fashion, and the bands of my vest and tunique laced with silk lace, of the colour of my suit: and so, very handsome, to Church, where a dull sermon and of a stranger, and so home; and there I find W. Howe, and a younger brother of his, come to dine with me; and there comes Mercer, and brings with her Mrs. Gayet, which pleased me mightily; and here was also W. Hewer, and mighty merry; and after dinner to sing psalms. But, Lord! to hear what an excellent base this younger brother of W. Howe’s sings, even to my astonishment, and mighty pleasant. By and by Gayet goes away, being a Catholick, to her devotions, and Mercer to church; but we continuing an hour or two singing, and so parted; and I to Sir W. Pen’s, and there sent for a hackney-coach; and he and she and I out, to take the ayre. We went to Stepney, and… [Read more...]

SHANI RHYS JAMES EXHIBITION

12 June 2021 - Unknown

Shani Rhys James' latest exhibition Hunan-Ynysu: Self-Island opened on Wednesday this week at the Connaught Brown Gallery at 2 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4HD. I was there. If you could enter - literally, physically enter - a space made of thick, gleaming oil colours passionately coaxed with brush and palette knife into recognisable forms and feelings, then you would experience something of the effect Shani’s paintings have on a viewer, at least this viewer. I deeply identify with her work precisely because of its bold, unapologetic self-exposure: all cards on the table, yes, but hidden within a veil, a mask of paint. That we were wearing Covid-necessary masks, limiting verbal communication, made the experience all the more metaphoric and relevant. Shani’s explosive flowers are darkness-dispelling incantations but it is the unsentimental, fully admitted darkness and sadness of the human figures which attracts and envelops me. As a lifelong and long-lived artist I can’t claim objectivity about other artists’ work, past or present. Some intangible personal rhythm or note in the work of an individual artist… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (8)

12 June 2021 - Tom

It comes hardor it doesn'tcome at allin the Sandhills.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

The laying out and the sorting: the more than enough

12 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

You are of the tenor again, while the vehicles of this life wave their assorted banners and say what were you thinking? You can't take anything with you, but neither do you want to take anything for granted, you know? To not allow for any more pleasure, to speak a constant apologia: it takes away such depth of sky. Even a tiny wound reeks of salt-lick and pine kindling. Even the ancestors come back for a taste. [Read more...]

The mower against gardens

11 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up; and to the Office, where we sat all the morning; and at noon, home with my people to dinner; and thence to the Office all the afternoon, till, my eyes weary, I did go forth by coach to the King’s playhouse, and there saw the best part of “The Sea Voyage,” where Knepp I see do her part of sorrow very well. I afterwards to her house; but she did not come presently home; and there je did kiss her ancilla, which is so mighty belle; and I to my tailor’s, and to buy me a belt for my new suit against to-morrow; and so home, and there to my Office, and afterwards late walking in the garden; and so home to supper, and to bed, after Nell’s cutting of my hair close, the weather being very hot. I saw the art of sorrow in her garden cutting my hair close the weather being hot Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 16 May 1668 [Read more...]

Undergrounded

11 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and betimes to White Hall, and there met with Sir H. Cholmly at Sir Stephen Fox’s, and there was also the Cofferer, and we did there consider about our money and the condition of the Excise, and after much dispute agreed upon a state thereof and the manner of our future course of payments. Thence to the Duke of York, and there did a little navy business as we used to do, and so to a Committee for Tangier, where God knows how my Lord Bellasses’s accounts passed; understood by nobody but my Lord Ashly, who, I believe, was mad to let them go as he pleased. But here Sir H. Cholmly had his propositions read, about a greater price for his work of the Mole, or to do it upon account, which, being read, he was bid to withdraw. But, Lord! to see how unlucky a man may be, by chance; for, making an unfortunate minute when they were almost tired with the other business, the Duke of York did find fault with… [Read more...]

Narnia After The Snowmelt

11 June 2021 - Dale

The lab numbers are back, and the cholesterol ones haven't moved at all. The triglycerides went down sharply, but my triglyceride numbers were already pretty good. I really thought that losing these last two inches from my waist, and cutting out the red meat and ice cream altogether, would move the needle on the cholesterol: but not a bit. I had already laid down the number that was going to make the statin decision: if the total cholesterol / HDL ration was still over 5.0, I'd start taking them. My number was 5.5, so -- here goes. I don't buy the story of cholesterol being a driver of ill health, but there's probably some value in taking the LDL level down. If I have any side effects from them, I'll stop. I don't really view it as a terribly important decision, which is why I sort of picked a number out of a hat to make it for me. I've already given it more energy than it deserves.Anyway, I'm glad to have gotten my waist down… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (7)

11 June 2021 - Tom

The grassesknow their jobin the Sandhills.So does the wind.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

All the recent talk about the new Marvel superhero

11 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

All the recent talk about the new Marvel superhero being Filipino or FilAm or Filipinx—Specifically, Captain America, following up on the premise delivered at the conclusion of Avengers: Endgame as the shield is given to Sam Wilson. Furor, though, over the name this character is given—Ari Agbayani, private school scholarship girl, hair bobbed & uniform-skirted. Short, too, if you look closely at the sketches. She's bent on justice for her best friend, but does it really kick audiences in the face if they can associate "labia, genitalia," with "Ari?" I'd like to know more about her: like, does she know how to use a tabo? need to eat rice at nearly every meal? This ordinary girl— does she know anything about the People Power revolution that toppled Marcos, quelling the old corruptions at least for a while? Remember that other guy who draped stars & stripes over his shoulders, held a walis tambó affixed to a shield to join the January 6 uprising in the Capitol? Since Ari's described as vigilante-like, would she have swept… [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (6)

10 June 2021 - Tom

God made time for the Sandhills.The cowboy in the oncoming pick-upknows it.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Three

10 June 2021 - rbarenblat@gmail.com (Velveteen Rabbi)

Chodesh tov: happy new month! One of my friends said that to me last night, and I groaned. "Wait, what? It's Tamuz already?!" I've had a few things on my mind. Preparing my shul community to shift from all-digital to hybrid / multi-access. Supporting my kid through the final days of his fifth grade year, a school year unlike any other. It makes sense that I lost track of time. But it's a new lunar month. Once again, I bump into the disjunction between the secular calendar and our sacred one. On the secular calendar, summer is just beginning: jump in the pool! fire up the grill! Jewishly, later this month we'll be mourning. And once again I grapple with the tension between now and coming. I struggle every year with winter's cold and darkness. I count the days until they start lengthening again. I crave summer's greenery, the profusion of produce, the long golden light. That season is finally beginning... and my professional life calls me to think about three months from now, when summer will… [Read more...]

Anting

10 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

I never knew either about such a word for such a thing as this sight captured on camera: a crow sitting quite still, letting an undisciplined parade of ants crawl up and down its feathers and all over its body. Audubon supposedly observed it in turkeys as early as the 1830s— No one knows for sure if in symbiosis, or if the birds were simply tolerating the insect picnic in order to have a ready supply of snacks on hand. In one picture there's a crow in an almost Sphinx- like pose; in another, a crow bends over like a dark tent in some desert, not knowng if the arrival of these tiny nomads is a blessing or a curse. [Read more...]

Coup season

9 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to the office, where we sat all the morning, and at noon home to dinner with my people, but did not stay to dine out with them, but rose and straight by water to the Temple, and so to Penny’s, my tailor’s, where by and by by agreement Mercer, and she, to my great content, brings Mrs. Gayet, and I carried them to the King’s house; but, coming too soon, we out again to the Rose taverne, and there I did give them a tankard of cool drink, the weather being very hot, and then into the playhouse again, and there saw “The Country Captain,” a very dull play, that did give us no content, and besides, little company there, which made it very unpleasing. Thence to the waterside, at Strand bridge, and so up by water and to Fox-hall, where we walked a great while, and pleased mightily with the pleasure thereof, and the company there, and then in, and eat and drank, and then out again and walked, and it beginning… [Read more...]

Apocrypha

9 June 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

History bears down again: its breath the humid reek of cities where we scuttle like crabs in the shadows. Brown and bareheaded we climb up platforms as trains clatter away to pre-set destinations—Some parts of the world act with this kind of certainty all the time, as if arrival were a given, as if the doors will always open. But so frequently now are we addressed again: with unexpected blows, with names that halve and mongrel us, that mail- order-bride and nanny us, that want to throw a pail of disinfectant in our faces. History is pages and pages of script: unclean in parts like these, the ones they'll classify apocryphal. [Read more...]

NEBRASKA SANDHILLS (5)

9 June 2021 - Tom

The sun behind you,and antelopes --morning in the Sandhills.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Fire Drill

9 June 2021 - Dale

I pull into the three-quarters full parking lot and find a space on the far side, so that people with trouble walking can get the nearer spaces. (One of those things you can allow yourself to do when you're semi-retired and not in a hurry any more.) A beautiful morning. Some deep breaths. Do the little juggling routine: key into my pocket, glasses off, tie on mask; glasses back on, get out of the car, fish the key back out of my pocket, lock the car. I stride toward the building, feeling bold and enterprising. But I slow as I approach. A wave of some dozen masked people comes out. A second, and a third wave. Each wave wanders deeper into the parking lot, and then stops. What the hell?Oh. I've seen this behavior before. It's a fire drill. More waves come out; they gather in little clusters, chatting: some cheerful, some resigned. Who knew how many people were in a nondescript, three-story medical building? There must be a hundred of them.I stop well away from… [Read more...]

Pulse

9 June 2021 - rbarenblat@gmail.com (Velveteen Rabbi)

This week I am reading up on cardiac catheterization. It sounds like sometimes they go in through the wrist, and sometimes at the groin. My wrists are tiny: I can't imagine that the blood vessel there is large enough to thread anything through. Then again, it's an easy place to feel my pulse. The radial artery, according to the internet. Radial makes me think of radiant. When I had the stress test with nuclear imaging, were my arteries temporarily radiant? I wonder if I could use that image in a poem. I wonder what became of the images of the inside of my body from when I had my strokes. Did the trans-esophageal echocardiogram yield still pictures, or only a live video feed? I remember being asked to count backwards, but I don't remember the procedure itself. I know there were brain scans; I remember seeing grainy images, with white blemishes in the places where the strokes left their damage. I probably have the images on a CD-ROM somewhere, though I no longer have a… [Read more...]

Out-foxed

9 June 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and by water to White Hall, and so to Sir H. Cholmly’s, who not being up I made a short visit to Sir W. Coventry, and he and I through the Park to White Hall, and thence I back into the Park, and there met Sir H. Cholmly, and he and I to Sir Stephen Fox’s, where we met and considered the business of the Excise, how far it is charged in reference to the payment of the Guards and Tangier. Thence he and I walked to Westminster Hall and there took a turn, it being holyday, and so back again, and I to the mercer’s, and my tailor’s about a stuff suit that I am going to make. Thence, at noon, to Hercules Pillars, and there dined all alone, and so to White Hall, some of us attended the Duke of York as usual, and so to attend the Council about the business of Hemskirke’s project of building a ship that sails two feet for one of any other ship, which the Council… [Read more...]