The Art of Tetman Callis

Some of the stories and poems may be inappropriate for persons under 16

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Entries from May 2018

Restless through and through

May 31st, 2018 · No Comments

“Deep in the heart there dwells relentless care And secretly infects us with despair; Restless, she sways and poisons peace and joy She always finds new masks she can employ: She may appear as house and home, as child and wife, As fire, water, poison, knife— What does not strike, still makes you quail, And […]

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Tags: Lit & Crit

It burrows eternal

May 30th, 2018 · No Comments

“Hope never seems to leave those who affirm, The shallow minds that stick to must and mold— They dig with greedy hands for gold And yet are happy if they find a worm.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Yep

May 29th, 2018 · No Comments

“I have, alas, studied philosophy, Jurisprudence and medicine, too, And, worst of all, theology, With keen endeavor, through and through— And here I am, for all my lore, The wretched fool I was before.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Odd lot, they

May 24th, 2018 · No Comments

“The Germans are really a strange people. With their profound thoughts and ideas, which they seek everywhere and project into everything, they make life harder for themselves than they should.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, May 8, 1827 (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)

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Tags: Lit & Crit

That’s why it dosn’t make any sense

May 23rd, 2018 · No Comments

“The more incommensurable and incomprehensible for the understanding a poetic creation may be, the better.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, May 8, 1827 ( from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)

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Tags: Lit & Crit

They’ll do you in

May 22nd, 2018 · No Comments

“A life chequered with uncommon varieties is seldom a long one. Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick despatch.” – Thomas Paine, “Reflections on the Life and Death of Lord Clive”

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Not free from responsibility

May 21st, 2018 · No Comments

“There is nothing which obtains so general an influence over the manners and morals of a people as the Press; from that, as from a fountain, the streams of vice or virtue are poured forth over a country.” – Thomas Paine, “The Magazine in America” (emphasis in original)

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Tags: Politics & Law

It’s almost a business model

May 20th, 2018 · No Comments

“The wisest assemblies of men are as liable as individuals, to corruption and error. The greatest ravages which have ever been committed upon the liberty and happiness of mankind have been by weak and corrupted republics.” – Thomas Paine, “A Dialogue Between General Wolfe and General Gage in a Wood Near Boston”

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Tags: Politics & Law

Try that on for size

May 19th, 2018 · No Comments

“Christians are taught to account all men their neighbours; and love their neighbours as themselves; and do to all men as they would be done by; to do good to all men; and Man-stealing is ranked with enormous crimes. Is the barbarous enslaving our inoffensive neighbours, and treating them like wild beasts subdued by force, […]

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Tags: Politics & Law

Cashing in

May 18th, 2018 · No Comments

“Most of the Galician Jews, like Polish Jews residing in the General Government, died in the course of 1942 after spending months isolated from the rest of the population in ghettos created on Nazi orders. Acting on instructions of German police commanders, the Jewish and Ukrainian police rounded them up and shipped them to extermination […]

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Tags: Economics · The Second World War

In the killing fields

May 17th, 2018 · No Comments

“The Holocaust was the single most horrific episode of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, which had no shortage of horror. Most Ukrainian Jews who became victims never made it either to Auschwitz or to any other extermination camp. Heinrich Himmler’s Einsatzgruppen, with the help of local police formed by the German administration, gunned them down […]

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Tags: The Second World War

The gates of hell

May 16th, 2018 · No Comments

“Ukraine under German occupation became a large-scale model of a concentration camp. As in the camps, the line between resistance and collaboration, victimhood and criminal complicity with the regime became blurred but by no means indistinguishable. Everyone made a personal choice, and those who survived had to live with their decisions after the war, many […]

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Tags: The Second World War

Yet prescient

May 15th, 2018 · No Comments

“In December 1940 [Hitler] signed a directive ordering preparations for war with the Soviet Union. The operation was code-named Barbarossa after the twelfth-century German king and Holy Roman emperor who had led the Third Crusade. He had drowned while trying to cross a river in heavy armor instead of taking the bridge used by his […]

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Tags: The Second World War

A fine-looking bunch

May 14th, 2018 · No Comments

“By early October 1939, the Polish army had ceased to exist . . . . The Red Army, which was no match for the Germans in mechanization, demonstrated its superiority to the Polish troops in the quality of its armaments, which included new tanks, aircraft, and modern guns—all products of Stalin’s industrialization effort. But to […]

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Tags: Economics · Politics & Law · The Second World War

Out, damn spot

May 13th, 2018 · No Comments

“The past is not made out of time, out of memory, out of irony but is also a crime we cannot admit and will not atone.” – Eavan Boland, “Making Money”

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Tags: Lit & Crit · Verandah

Call it what you will, people died

May 12th, 2018 · No Comments

“Was the Great Ukrainian Famine (in Ukrainian, the Holodomor) a premeditated act of genocide against Ukraine and its people? In November 2006, the Ukrainian parliament defined it as such. A number of parliaments and governments around the world passed similar resolutions, while the Russian government launched an international campaign to undermine the Ukrainian claim. Political […]

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Tags: Lit & Crit · Politics & Law

Dictatorship of the proletariat

May 11th, 2018 · No Comments

“The ‘Russian revolutionary sweep’ that Stalin wanted to combine with American efficiency came to Dniprohes with tens of thousands of Ukrainian peasants unqualified to do the job but eager to make a living. The number of workers employed in the construction of the dam and the electric power station grew from 13,000 in 1927 to […]

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Tags: Economics · Lit & Crit · Politics & Law

Song sung blue

May 10th, 2018 · No Comments

“The Ukrainian national anthem begins with the words, ‘Ukraine has not yet perished,’ hardly an optimistic beginning for any kind of song.” – Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Just another industry

May 9th, 2018 · No Comments

“Courts acknowledge that running a prison is an inordinately difficult undertaking that requires expertise, planning, and the commitment of resources, all of which are peculiarly within the province of the legislative and executive branches of government. Courts must therefore accord substantial deference to the professional judgment of prison administrators, who bear a significant responsibility for […]

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Tags: Economics · Politics & Law · The American Constitution

Not me

May 8th, 2018 · No Comments

“Is it not well that even for a little time the light of life shine—though it shine through fear and sadness—than be cut off altogether? For who knows where the trails tend that lead through the darkness of the night of death?” – The Elder Maiden of Héshokta, “Átahsaia the Cannibal Demon,” Zuñi Folk Tales […]

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Tags: Lit & Crit

That’s why we till and reap and hunt and fish

May 7th, 2018 · No Comments

“My face is in front of me, and under a roof is no place for men.” – Mátsailéma, “Átahsaia the Cannibal Demon,” Zuñi Folk Tales (recorded & translated by Frank Cushing)

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Same as they ever were

May 6th, 2018 · No Comments

“ ‘Ye of the Home of the Eagles! Ye do I now inform, whomsoever of ye would gather datilas, whomsoever of ye would gather piñon nuts, whomsoever of ye would gather grass-seed, that bread may be made, hie ye over the mountains, and gather them to your hearts’ content, for I have driven the Bear […]

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Tags: Lit & Crit

One among several

May 5th, 2018 · No Comments

“Prison is an expensive way of making bad people worse.” – Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, 1985-1989

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Tags: Economics · Politics & Law

In some respects, they’re all the same

May 4th, 2018 · No Comments

“No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails.” – Nelson Mandela

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Tags: Politics & Law

Can he read a honeydew list

May 3rd, 2018 · No Comments

“Pretty girls care very little how their husbands look, being pretty enough themselves for both. But they like to have them able to think and guess at a way of getting along occasionally.” – “How the Corn-Pests Were Ensnared,” Zuñi Folk Tales (recorded & translated by Frank Cushing)

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Which do you prefer

May 2nd, 2018 · No Comments

“Now, there are two kinds of laugh with women. One of them is a very good sort of thing, and makes young men feel happy and conceited. The other kind is somewhat heartier, but makes young men feel depressed and very humble.” – “How the Corn-Pests Were Ensnared,” Zuñi Folk Tales (recorded & translated by […]

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Tags: Lit & Crit

Children of the lesser gods

May 1st, 2018 · No Comments

“Utopianism isn’t hope, still less optimism: it is need, and it is desire. For recognition, like all desire, and for the specifics of its reveries and programmes, too; and above all for betterness tout court. For alterity, something other than the exhausting social lie. For rest. And when the cracks in history open wide enough, […]

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Tags: Economics · Politics & Law