Entries from December 2012
Extraordinary
December 31st, 2012 · No Comments
Tags: The Ancients
Never is a long time
December 31st, 2012 · 2 Comments
“There was so much to write. He had seen the world change; not just the events; although he had seen many of them and had watched the people, but he had seen the subtler change and he could remember how the people were at different times. He had been in it and he had watched […]
Tags: Lit & Crit
Things
December 30th, 2012 · No Comments
Put that in your gun and shoot it
December 30th, 2012 · No Comments
“Until we have created a romance of peace that would equal that of war, violence will not disappear from people’s lives.” – Count Harry Kessler (quoted by Alex Ross in “Diary of an Aesthete”)
Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit · Politics & Law
People
December 29th, 2012 · No Comments
The fascination malingers
December 29th, 2012 · No Comments
“Junkies and alcoholics are interesting to watch for about five minutes, and then the tedium of their bottomless need, their self-aggrandizing defensiveness, sinks in, and you want to tun screaming for your life—because they’ll suck it out of you, given the chance.” – Hilton Als, “Down but Not Defeated”
Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit · Politics & Law
People
December 28th, 2012 · No Comments
Teaching to the choir
December 28th, 2012 · No Comments
“Editorial writers can seem the most insipid and helpless of the scribbling class: they sum up anonymously the ideas of their time, and truth and insipidity do a great deal of close dancing–the right thing to do is often hard but seldom surprising. Good editorial writing has less to do with winning an argument, since […]
Tags: Politics & Law
Things
December 27th, 2012 · No Comments
Wait till you see what’s for supper before you decide
December 27th, 2012 · No Comments
“The big question Camus asked was never the Anglo-American liberal one: How can we make the world a little bit better tomorrow? It was the grander French one: Why not kill yourself tonight?” — Adam Gopnik, “Facing History”
Tags: Lit & Crit
People
December 26th, 2012 · 4 Comments
Gone boxing
December 26th, 2012 · 2 Comments
“Only the boring are bored.” – Tommy Lee Jones (quoted by Meg Grant in “Fighting for Love”)
Tags: Verandah
Things
December 25th, 2012 · No Comments
Merry Christmas
December 25th, 2012 · No Comments
“They who tell the people revolutionary legends, they who amuse themselves with sensational stories, are as criminal as the geographer who would draw up false charts for navigators.” – Sean Bonney, Happiness (Poems after Rimbaud)
Tags: Lit & Crit · Politics & Law · The Ancients
Places
December 24th, 2012 · No Comments
In the midst of the garden there are two trees
December 24th, 2012 · 2 Comments
“All things truly wicked start from an innocence.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Tags: Lit & Crit
Places
December 23rd, 2012 · 2 Comments
A species of leech
December 23rd, 2012 · No Comments
“When you have two people who love each other, are happy and gay and really good work is being done by one or both of them, people are drawn to them as surely as migrating birds are drawn at night to a powerful beacon. If the two people were as solidly constructed as the beacon […]
Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit
Places
December 22nd, 2012 · No Comments
The promise that you don’t have to keep
December 22nd, 2012 · No Comments
Tags: Economics · Politics & Law · Verandah
An appetite for it
December 22nd, 2012 · No Comments
“I learned to understand Cézanne much better and to see truly how he made landscapes when I was hungry. I used to wonder if he were hungry too when he painted; but I thought possibly it was only that he had forgotten to eat.” – Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
Tags: Lit & Crit
Places
December 21st, 2012 · No Comments
Happy New Year, you sweet Druid, you
December 21st, 2012 · 4 Comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kx8wGRNZX4&list=ALBTKoXRg38BD32LxD4xV3RePKu1nQIetB
Tags: The Ancients · Verandah
Pardon me, but do you have the time?
December 20th, 2012 · No Comments
Tags: The Ancients · Verandah
The Law of the Land
December 16th, 2012 · 2 Comments
There is these days much discussion in the United States regarding the Second Amendment to the Constitution. The text of this amendment is short: “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” There has been much […]
Tags: Politics & Law · Verandah
Places
December 15th, 2012 · No Comments
Arms and the man
December 15th, 2012 · 2 Comments
Yesterday’s tragedy at Newtown is not the first time our nation has faced the horror of a mass shooting. It may not be the last. It can’t help but make any thoughtful person consider the role of firearms in society. When considering what the Second Amendment meant or was intended to mean when it was […]
Tags: Economics · Politics & Law · Verandah
Things
December 14th, 2012 · No Comments
The supply of the second is copious
December 14th, 2012 · 2 Comments
“You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad.” – Gertrude Stein (quoted by Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast)
Tags: Lit & Crit