Civil – slow reads

A kangaroo court

Dear Sen. Warner, I know the public documents, videotape, and proffered evidence at the former president’s trial yesterday was damning, but it hardly registered with half of our country. What would still register — miraculously, perhaps, at this late stage of our national unraveling — is courtroom testimony. Take the Constitution seriously concerning the court… Continue reading A kangaroo court

Transcendent matters

From today’s New York Times: A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that Congress could not sue to enforce its subpoenas of executive branch officials, handing a major victory to President Trump and dealing a severe blow to the power of Congress to conduct oversight. In a ruling that could have far-reaching consequences for executive… Continue reading Transcendent matters

Sadism and civic impotence

A friend’s homely benediction last week: “Well, now that we’ve solved all the world’s problems . . .” It was perfect: all we had said had the force of cliches. We “solve the world’s problems” because we sense we were made to tend our land together. But we have no civic plot to tend. So… Continue reading Sadism and civic impotence

The church rescues Il Duce

In June of 1924, Mussolini was in trouble. Fascist thugs with ties to him had murdered Italy’s top Socialist parliamentarian, Giacomo Matteotti. The public assumed that Mussolini had ordered it, and Italy was in an uproar. Even conservatives were beginning to distinguish between nationalism, which they embraced, and the overthrow of democracy, which they weren’t… Continue reading The church rescues Il Duce

Republicanism and redistribution

Today’s plan by Elizabeth Warren is more republican orthodoxy. She wants to keep private equity firms from looting and destroying U.S. corporations. I first read about private equity firms in Robert Kuttner’s book, published last year, Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism?: Invariably, a private-equity takeover means an even deeper squeeze on worker wages, benefits, and job… Continue reading Republicanism and redistribution

Safety

Earlier this week I got a fundraising email from my congresswoman. Here’s how it started: Peter, I didn’t get into politics to play it safe. I spoke out immediately on behalf of our federal workers when Trump needlessly caused a shutdown. I’ve taken on the NRA in my district to push for comprehensive, common sense… Continue reading Safety

Stolen voices

Victoria and I talked this morning about our fears of not being heard. For my part, I’ve been working on a book that I may or may not ever finish. I’ll let Victoria speak for herself. Hannah Arendt’s vision of the political is essentially positive: the political is a realm where people are seen and… Continue reading Stolen voices

Primal political events

There’s Euphoria, another TV show I’ve never watched but read about in, this time, The New Yorker Today. Euphoria is about the homeland generation, the generation I teach. I didn’t know all of this was going on outside of my classroom. The New Yorker review accounts for “all of this” in part by citing this generation’s “primal political event”… Continue reading Primal political events

School, government . . . the whole bit

The seventy-two came back jubilant. “In your name, Lord,” they said, “even the demons submit to us.” “Wup woo,” Jesus replied. “I saw Satan fall, like lightning, from heaven. And I have given you the power to tread underfoot snakes and scorpions and all the forces of the enemy. Nothing will ever harm you. Nevertheless,… Continue reading School, government . . . the whole bit

The spirit of democracy

We had dinner in D.C. with a friend and her new boyfriend not long after the 2016 election. He’s a civil servant, high up in a federal bureaucracy, so I took the opportunity to ask him what many of us were worried about: Would the new administration destroy American democracy? He was no fan of… Continue reading The spirit of democracy

Categories

Passages

CATARACTS AND SHOES

22 February 2021 - Unknown

Cataract removal no.2 over and done with this morning. Am typing this with one hand while the other hand holds a magnifying glass over the keyboard. Plastic shield over operated eye plus post-op whatever prevents vision so I can't tell as yet what the result is but the consultant, my NHS surgeon, said it went very well. He also said I was very calm whereas most people are not calm during this operation. He also said he liked my shoes, which was very nice. I wore my lucky comfortable flat golden shoes. It has taken me almost an hour to type this. Read the rest at the main Blaugustine: http://www.nataliedarbeloff.com/blaugustine.html [Read more...]

A fog, a weight, a program running in the background

22 February 2021 - rbarenblat@gmail.com (Velveteen Rabbi)

"I don't know why everything is so hard," you say to me. Everyone's hitting the wall, I point out. We're reaching one year of global pandemic. Even if we're okay, it's okay with an asterisk. Okay within global pandemic parameters. Not the same. You protest: "but I'm fine. I'm not sick. My family isn't sick. I don't know why I'm struggling so much. I'm healthy, I have a job, I have electricity and internet, I'm as lucky as anyone can be. And yet life still feels like slogging through cold molasses." I can't tell you how many people have said those things to me. (So if you're reading this and thinking, "Is she blogging about our conversation?" the answer is, I've had this conversation lately more times than I can count.) Almost everyone is struggling. As longtime readers know, I've lived with grief (the end of my marriage, mourning my mother's death) and I've lived with depression. As we reach the end of the first year of COVID-19, I think a global pandemic is a little… [Read more...]

THE WITHINNESS

22 February 2021 - Tom

The withinnesswith youis so withoutwith me.The blessingof that momentlifts usagain, again.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Incremental

22 February 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

An animal whimpering in the long hours of night— until you realize the sound has come from your own throat. Trembling maple leaves outlined on cream- colored sidings; musk of previous repasts souring in the cracked garbage bin. Someone unzips a garment in another room or jostles with the glassy points of something they either welcome or dread. [Read more...]

Poetry Blog Digest 2021, Week 7

22 February 2021 - Dave Bonta

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. This week: a hodge-podge of delightful and challenging posts that nonetheless seem to converge on a single point, or cluster of related points, though at the moment I’m too tired to work out quite what that might be. Enjoy. The big conversation that the world is having. Human voices are only the tiniest part of it. Zipper of crow flight against the white blank sky. Syllables of sea birds that float, read left to right, right to left, moment to disappear. Alder branch hashmarks over a smudge of obscured sunlight. Blue slash of shadow, so sharp it cuts you.In the preface of The Way Winter Comes, Sherry Simpson writes, “The more you looked, the more you saw, but you could never see it all.” The poet Jane Hirshfield says, “Everything changes. Everything is connected. Pay attention.” Two voices that I love speaking to each other over… [Read more...]

TEN OLD MONK POEMS (3)

21 February 2021 - Tom

DON'T ASK YOURSELFDon't ask yourself,You might not likewhat you answer,the old monk says.That's the whole plotin a few simple words.~THE STARS AREThe stars are shifting,the old monk said.The horses have runaway, yet the starsdon't worry. Everymoment is tomorrow.~WE HAVE SO MUCHWe have so muchinfinity,the old monk said.It never ends.~IF YOU DON'TIf you don't dowhat you always do,the old monk said,you may not dowhat you need to.~I HAVE SAIDI have said so much,the old monk said,the silence is full.~WHEN I SEEWhen I see the same thingI say the same thing,the old monk said,when saying something newwouldn't be fruitful.~THE MOONThe moonopens the sky,the old monk says.The pines singan old song.Listen:the night saysHow long,how long?~LEARNING THISLearning this silence,the old monk says,prepares you forthe next one.~YOU CANNOTYou cannotmean silence,the old monk says,when you keepspeaking in words.~WHEN YOU KNOWWhen you know,the old monk says,you knowyou can saynothing.You ownyour silence.The silenceowns you.~The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Displaced

21 February 2021 - Dave Bonta

It being weather like the beginning of a frost and the ground dry, I walked as far as the Temple, and there took coach and to White Hall, but the Committee not being met I to Westminster, and there I do hear of the letter that is in the pamphlet this day of the King of France, declaring his design to go on against Flanders, and the grounds of it, which do set us mightily at rest. So to White Hall, and there a committee of Tangier, but little done there, only I did get two or three little jobs done to the perfecting two or three papers about my Tangier accounts. Here Mr. Povy do tell me how he is like to lose his 400l. a-year pension of the Duke of York, which he took in consideration of his place which was taken from him. He tells me the Duchesse is a devil against him, and do now come like Queen Elizabeth, and sits with the Duke of York’s Council, and sees what they… [Read more...]

LITERATURE, YOU KNOW

21 February 2021 - Unknown

Is this a new lockdown-inspired industry? For the past couple of months I've been getting a steady stream of emails in my junk folder from ladies with constantly changing names, some exotic, some Anglo-Saxon, inviting me for sex. From references to my hardness and other virile qualities, they evidently assume that I am male. All give links to photographs and phone numbers (needless to say, I never click on anything). At first all the emails said, with variations, that she had "seen me walking around her apartment, I am amazing, exactly her type, I can come and spend the night with her and stay for breakfast." Then the style changed and invitations were from "young, inexperienced college girl yearning for a mature man to show her all that he can do to her." Later the messages took on more outright porno details of what was on offer. Then, since those desperate entreaties weren't getting any response, a cooler approach was tried: she is now a bored married woman longing for a mystery lover but we… [Read more...]

IN SOME LANGUAGE (10)

21 February 2021 - Tom

In some languagethe word for desirealso means death.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Queen of the Night

21 February 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

- after Leonora Carrington's "And then We Saw the Daughter of the Minotaur" We wished to tell her of certain buds that bloom only one night of the year— about how, when at last they raise their heads, the perianth opens and the ivory wings of petals fall away. Finally, from out of one of the glass balls we rolled into her lair, some seed must have broken free. The ceiling rejoiced by building a softer canopy of clouds. The garment her father was always trying to unravel stayed faithful to her body. We witnessed how she had not burned herself into coal, how the years of solitude had merely curved the points of her horns into softer filaments resemblimg those growing out of the sex of flowers. We were as curious as she was about the guide dressed in gauze, dancing to a melody only it could hear; it pointed toward an archway through which soft sepia light spilled, as if from the mouth of a bell. [Read more...]

Winter Den

21 February 2021 - Dave Bonta

Watch on Vimeo Limbs against the snow, outlined with more snow. Treetops no longer canopies but the bare nets of need. Their no-longer-rare caresses and collisions in the winter wind. The moans of the ice-bound. How tormented they’d be if they hadn’t retreated to the underworld, that silken matrix of rootlets and hyphae, to trade fermented memories of sunlight for the bones of a mouse. winter den a slow leak of breath growing needles snowy meadow seedhead bending into its own pit We who cannot hibernate, isolated in our boxes of wood or brick, fight the cold any way we can. A poet posts a selfie taken by snowlight. A long-Covid survivor befriends the horse stabled beneath her apartment. The snow plowman dreams of combine harvesters bringing in the crop: a wintry mix. One of his chickens goes gaga over her egg. cold sun the fetal curl of rhododendron leaves What fever do I still need to break? I take a dose of Vitamin D with my morning outrage. Whose salt-block ignorance or black-ice tongue… [Read more...]

Head cleaner

21 February 2021 - Dave Bonta

(Lord’s day). Up, and with my wife to Church, and at noon home to dinner. No strangers there; and all the afternoon and evening very late doing serious business of my Tangier accounts, and examining my East India accounts, with Mr. Poynter, whom I employed all this day, to transcribe it fair; and so to supper, W. Hewer with us, and so the girl to comb my head till I slept, and then to bed. examining my accounts I employ a girl to comb my head * (Lord’s day). Up, and with my wife to Church, and at noon home to dinner. No strangers there; and all the afternoon and evening very late doing serious business of my Tangier accounts, and examining my East India accounts, with Mr. Poynter, whom I employed all this day, to transcribe it fair; and so to supper, W. Hewer with us, and so the girl to comb my head till I slept, and then to bed. no angers mining my head I slept Erasure poems derived from The Diary… [Read more...]

BIRDS

20 February 2021 - Tom

The big birdsand small ones,the weed birdsand beauties,God's creatureson the wingto whereverheaven is.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

NOT YOUR BODY

20 February 2021 - Tom

Not your body,not mine,which breaksbetween uswhen we break.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

Pelikula

20 February 2021 - Luisa A. Igloria

In Tagalog, the word for movie or film is pelikula, which borrows from the Spanish pelicula; this leans, in turn, toward the Italian pellicula, typically meaning the place where people go to watch the latest movies. Before Netflix or Hulu, the projectionist leans out of his overheated second-floor booth, impatiently waiting for the runner to arrive from the next town, panting as he hands over the second reel. It gets there just in time for him to feed the film into the sprocket- lined rollers, in time to fend off jeers and insults peppered with whistles and boos from the restive audience. In the old days, this was also the way films were distributed in the Philippines. My father once told me as we drove through Pangasinan on the way to Manila that a town at one end of a bridge was named Carmen, and the one at the other end was named Rosales, after a Filipina actress considered the queen of cinema in the '40s and '50s. When not playing the sweetly pliable girlfriend,… [Read more...]

Problematizical

20 February 2021 - Dave Bonta

Up, and to the office, where busy all the morning, and then at noon to the ’Change with Mr. Hater, and there he and I to a tavern to meet Captain Minors, which we did, and dined; and there happened to be Mr. Prichard, a ropemaker of his acquaintance, and whom I know also, and did once mistake for a fiddler, which sung well, and I asked him for such a song that I had heard him sing, and after dinner did fall to discourse about the business of the old contract between the King and the East India Company for the ships of the King that went thither, and about this did beat my brains all the afternoon, and then home and made an end of the accounts to my great content, and so late home tired and my eyes sore, to supper and to bed. which to be a ropemaker or a sun the old East India Company or the rains no end of accounts to tire my yes Erasure poem derived from… [Read more...]

Perseverance and the portable ark

20 February 2021 - rbarenblat@gmail.com (Velveteen Rabbi)

"וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃ / Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell within them." (Ex. 25:8 - in this week's Torah portion, T'rumah.) The word mishkan (the portable dwelling-place for God) shares a root with the word Shechinah, the divine Presence. We build sacred space so God will dwell in us. I talk about this verse every year, because I love it. But this year, what jumps out at me is its juxtaposition with what follows. Immediately after this verse, Torah tells us to make an ark to hold the tablets of the covenant. Cover it with gold. Put rings on the sides, and poles through the rings. And keep it that way. The ark over which the divine Presence would rest needed to be ready to go at a moment's notice. Wherever the people go, holy words and presence go with them -- which is to say, with us. As beautiful as the mishkan was (as beautiful as our beloved shul building is) God's presence doesn't live… [Read more...]

ENOUGH

19 February 2021 - Tom

Enough, he says,when wind fills hisbreath, when the skyroars, when the birdsstay low. Wisdomis turning wherethe road goes.The Middlewesterner [Read more...]

The closest thing to spring

19 February 2021 - Lorianne

February is hard. Years ago, I repeated Jo(e)’s claim that February is the longest month, and she is exactly right. Come February, the novelty of winter has long worn off. The snow is cleared from streets and sidewalks after each storm, but it piles and ossifies in yards and corners. Our dog pen is as slick as a rink, with weeks of snow trampled and saturated with last week’s sleet, then frozen hard: snow covering ice layered atop treachery. The daily winter drill is now familiar and mundane. The piling on of coats and hats and gloves, then the pulling on of boots: it takes so much effort to take the trash to the curb, the dog to the pen, one’s own self to the car. Along with any obligation, there are these extra intervening steps: almost inconceivable are those summer days when stepping outside was as simple as slipping on sandals. By February, winter has grown old, a tired routine that wears thin. And this year, we are in the February of the pandemic:… [Read more...]

One More Time

19 February 2021 - Loren

Although I considered taking my camera on our recent snowshoeing trek through Pt. Defiance Park, I dismissed the idea because my hands were already full with two poles and a 600mm lens just plain doesn’t work well at close range. As it often turns out, though, I regretted not bringing it because we saw a large number of Varied Thrushes on our trek, more than I have ever seen in one place, and closer than I have ever managed to get to them in our yard. After that missed opportunity, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’m not going to get any better pictures than the ones I managed to get in our yard in the last two weeks. I’ll try not to wear out my welcome by posting any more pictures of Varied Thrushes this winter, but I can’t promise because I’ll have to admit I still grab my camera when I see one in the yard. I’m not sure, though, whether that’s because I still find them quite beautiful or because… [Read more...]