Ms. Solnit writes, “While their fear and dismay is often regarded as rooted in delusion, rightwingers are correct that the world is metamorphosing into something new and, to them, abhorrent.”
I can picture a not too far off future when an aging body of today’s right wing voters march on Washington to demand attention to Social Security issues and increases in funding from a US Congress that has a majority of members being people of color and or Hispanic origin.
Bills will be introduced to increase social security funding and benefits for these old right wingers.
I think there will be much satisfaction for many members of that Congress in voting no.
imagination seeds of dreams are found in books golly miss dolly
Since moving to the South, I can report there are indeed some things southern that southerners take seriously.
Very seriously.
Football.
Well, college football anyway.
On this devotion to college athletics, all I can say is that my old college up north has, since 2018, played in the NCAA Final Four of all FOUR major sports.
That includes, football, basketball, baseball AND hockey.
When UGa or ‘Bama add a hockey team, call me.
The love and devotion to that food item known as grits is real.
I have had some that are really good.
I have some that were like eating ice cream on the beach on windy day.
Gritty.
And there is Dolly Parton.
The patron Saint of the South.
Being from the North, I knew of Miss Dolly.
Even one of my favorite northerner authors, Jim Harrison once wrote about the crystal clarity of Miss Dolly’s voice.
She seemed sweet but no one to be taken seriously or at least not too seriously.
Miss Dolly is on my mind because the other day I was online at my local library which here in the Low Country is the Beaufort County Library.
Through this partnership with the Imagination Library, free books were now available to kids in the area.
I was aware of this program if vaguely so.
Some years ago, with much fanfare it seems to my memory, Dolly Parton announced that she wanted to give books to kids.
Very sweet, but not something I took very seriously.
I was sure it was pretty much a publicity stunt of some kind.
It seems like I remember reading that over one million books had been given away through this program.
But in the back of my brain were other memories about Miss Dolly,
Miss Dolly had recently donated a large amount of money to Covid Vaccine research.
Back a few years ago when fires went through the Great Smokey Mountains part of Tennessee where she was born, Miss Dolly cut an album of songs and the proceeds went to relief agencies.
Intrigued enough by the announcement and these other memories, I clicked on the link to read about this new partnership.
I went with a cynical, ‘oh really‘, ‘isn’t that sweet‘ pre-set suspect animus in my mind.
Then I read the announcement.
Then I read some more.
Then I closed my eyes and said a quick prayer to thank God for people like Miss Dolly.
I figured that this program sent some lucky kids a book.
And it does.
Once a month.
Every month.
Until the lucky kid turns five.
The program had not delivered just one million books, BUT one million books A MONTH.
I had to read that part a couple of times to make sure I read it right.
I immediately searched the zip codes where my grand children live to see if the program was available there.
If it was, my grand kids were going to get signed up.
Sad to say it wasn’t.
Maybe there are flaws to the program.
Maybe there are flaws that make this program hard to partner with.
Maybe, maybe maybe.
On the other hand, maybe this is one of those programs that people, for reasons mentioned, think this is a sweet little program but not one to be taken seriously.
I don’t want to think that.
I want to think this program exists to put books in the hands of kids.
I want to believe it.
I want to believe it is what it is and says what it says and does what it does.
I want to believe that Miss Dolly is as sweet as I think she is.
I want to believe that Miss Dolly is as serious as she says she is.
The Imagination Library website states:
Inspired by her father’s inability to read and write Dolly started her Imagination Library in 1995 for the children within her home county. Today, her program spans five countries and gifts over 1 million free books each month to children around the world.
The website then quotes Miss Dolly herself:
“When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true.
I know there are children in your community with their own dreams.
They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister.
Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer.
The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”
I also remember that recently the state of Tennessee was planning to put up a statue of Miss Dolly.
As I remember it, Miss Dolly asked that the money go to charity instead.
Very sweet.
Very Very Sweet.
Very serious.
Why isn’t the Imagination Library available where you live?
You want to do something during covid, there isn’t anything much easier than ask this question.
Ask this question, then do something about it.
The Imagination Library is looking for the next local champion.
As Miss Dolly said, The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.
book shop after hours slide money under the door good deed weary world
The Old Bay Marketplace is an arcade or covered outdoor walkway through the middle of a building that is lined with shops on either side of the walkway located on Bay Street in downtown Beaufort, South Carolina.
On the corner of the entrance to the arcade on Bay Street is a used bookstore named the McIntosh Book Shoppe.
The McIntosh Book Shoppe is situated there on the corner of the entrance into the arcade so that there is a door facing Bay Street and another back door that opens out into the covered walkway.
The space outside this back door under the covered walkway is crowded with book carts and tables that are filled with books for sale.
The back door to the McIntosh Book Shoppe
So many carts, tables and books are crowded into this space that moving all these carts, tables and books would be a lot of work to bring in at night and put back out the next day.
So the books, carts and tables are not brought in at night.
The books, carts and tables stay outside in the covered arcade.
On the arcade wall, next to the door, is a metal rack stuffed full of envelopes.
Next to the metal rack stuffed full of envelopes is a small, hand lettered sign.
The sign reads:
After hours – put money in envelope and slide under the door.
It is altogether appropriate at this point to quote Big Bill’s, “How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a naughty world” (Merchant of Venice – Act V, Scene I)
But, somehow, it is better to quote Gene Wilder in the role of Willy Wonka.
So shines a good deed in a weary world.
PS: Admit it – this made you smile and feel a little bit of a warm bump inside – maybe a small kick of hope in your soul.
people are trapped in impossible, yet still strangely plausible problems
Perspective.
It’s all about perspective.
In the old TV Show, Barney Miller, NYPD Police Captain Barney Miller’s reoccurring lecture to the people who passed through the police station focused on “not losing one’s perspective.”
The theme was so familiar that it led to this exchange …
Detective Ron Harris : Barney, his wife has decided not to press charges, so I let him go after giving him that spiel you always give about “not losing one’s perspective.” Captain Barney Miller : I’m … flattered that you chose to use it. Detective Ron Harris : Well, I thought it oughta be in the public domain by now …
The article is a review of the just-released Kaleidocycles, a book that according to the review, lets you make paper cut outs of MC Escher paintings.
Mr. Jones wrote:
You are walking up a staircase that winds up to the top of a tall square tower.
It ascends one side, then the next, then the next – and then suddenly you are right back where you started.
This is the kind of problem people who are trapped in the geometrically impossible, yet still strangely plausible, worlds of MC Escher have to deal with all the time. ‘
In his mind-boggling creations, dimensions collide and normality dissolves.
Somewhere in the years at Crestview Elementary school in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I grew up, one of our text books had the MC Escher painting, Which way up?
Maybe it wasn’t in a text book but in a book from our library.
I remember looking at this picture over and over again.
I would trace the steps with my finger tips.
I would think this is so cool.
I would think this is so nutz!
In my mind I can remember standing at someone’s desk, looking down at the book along with both hands on the pages of the book to hold it as flat as possible.
What I was looking at wasn’t possible?
Was it?
I understood perspective a little.
I covered most of my school work and the margins of my textbooks with doodles of a 3D cube.
Did the cube go up and to the left or go down to the right?
Both impossible, yet still strangely plausible
Perspective.
Keep ones’ perspective.
Don’t lose your perspective.
But from where I stand … so many problems today are a problem of perspective and most of these problems are both impossible, yet still strangely plausible.
On the one hand, (saying this without judgment either way okay?) we have a feller who ran for the office of President of the United States and by all accounts this feller lost.
But this feller will not accept this and many people cannot understand his perspective.
If one reads, and it seems like I have read them all, the ‘inside’ accounts of the election, no one and I MEAN NO ONE, dared tell this feller he was losing.
Throughout election night and the next days as votes were counted, no one, and I MEAN NO ONE, dared this feller he did not win.
To this day, this feller cannot admit the he did not win.
Other feelings aside, at this point, I find it hard to blame him as his reasonings, from his perspective, are strangely plausible.
I cannot say that had I been in the his place, based on the information he received, that I would feel any different.
AGAIN, and this is important, I am treating this as a laboratory case to examine the perspective of one individual and to comment on that individuals’ perspective based on the information received by that individual ASIDE from the body of work produced by this individual.
All I am saying is I can see his point, as it were.
This world’s history is filled, littered, with folks who only got the information they wanted to hear from their entourage and most likely never did accept that their information was wrong.
Often I come back to John F. Kennedy and the criticism he got for appointing his little brother Bobby, Attorney General of the Untitled States.
RFK was 35 without much experience to which JFK said, “I can’t see that it’s wrong to give him a little legal experience before he goes out to practice law.“
Such was the predicted furor over the appointment that JFK said he felt like opening his door at 3AM and whispering, ‘It’s Bobby’ to the street and going back to bed.
Here is the point, when he made the appointment, JFK said something along the lines that what he needed was someone in the Cabinet that would tell him when they thought he, the President, was wrong.
JFK trusted that RFK would do that.
If you read the history of JFK’s and RFK’s discussions over the the LBJ pick for VP, I think JFK got what he wanted from RFK.
Maybe this should be made a Cabinet position.
A lifetime appointment for someone designated to tell the President when he is wrong.
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, sure.
But again, I can understand, with the team this feller had in place, this fellers perspective.
And, by the way, who wants to be the bearer of bad news?
With that in mind, if you were this feller, how cannot you want to quote Joe Jacobs out loud and say, WE WUZ ROBBED?
Richard Nixon yelled ‘WE WUZ ROBBED’ back in 1960.
The Republican Party called for a recount of votes in Chicago and Cook County, Illinois where Mr. Nixon lost by around 8,000 votes.
If I remember it correctly, it was in the book, BOSS, about Chicago’s Mayor Daley by Mike Royko, that explained how the Cook County Board of Elections managed the recount.
Mr. Royko explained that all the ballots were thrown at the ceiling.
Any ballot that stuck was considered a Republican vote.
Guess how the report came out?
Can’t you see today’s Twitter videos of this?
Mr. Nixon didn’t like it but he accepted the report.
But I digress.
Perspective.
So much of what is presented in the news today are impossible problems.
Impossible problems that are still strangely plausible.
They are mind-boggling creations where dimensions collide and normality dissolves.
Try to maintain one’s perspetive.
Try to follow the arguements without losing one’s perspective.
You go up one side, then the next, then the next – and then suddenly you are right back where you started.
MC Escher and his paintings.
In his mind-boggling creations, dimensions collide and normality dissolves.
Normality dissolves.
And, just for fun, remember what was said in the book Godel, Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. (At least I think this is where is was said.)
“All Escher paintings,” wrote Hofstadter, “are connected from the back.”
To convict the parents of involuntary manslaughter, the state will have to prove that the parents were “grossly negligent” in allowing their son access to a firearm, and that their gross negligence caused the deaths of the students.
Gross negligence means more than just carelessness. It means willfully disregarding the results to others from the failure to act.
Thursday night in the NFL, the Dallas Cowboys beat the New Orleans Saints without their head coach due to Covid 19 Protocols.
Defensive Coach and one time Atlanta Falcons Head Coach Dan Quinn took over for the game.
Asked about the win, Coach Quinn said this.
“I think it’s really an example of leadership from Mike and to say what happens when the leader is not here.”
“Everybody had to chip it in and say, ‘No job is not your job right now. By any means necessary, we’ve got to get this job done.'”
Thinking back to the legal analyst and the sentence, It means willfully disregarding the results to others from the failure to act.
Thinking hard about the failure to act.
Thinking hard about the failure to act, I want to say, “No job is not your job right now. By any means necessary, we’ve got to get this job done.”
