day I ‘cultivate’
books … day I’ll know I’ve truly
failed as a human

As soon as I saw the headline, Do You Have ‘Bookshelf Wealth’?, in the New York Times, I said to myself, don’t read it.

It will just … well I didn’t know for sure what it would do but I knew it would do something to me.

In the end, it gave me hope.

It was an article that dealt with the reaction of book people to people who decorate with books and book shelves and book cases.

Here is the gist of it:

Kailee Blalock, an interior designer in San Diego, posted a video to TikTok last month that sought to define bookshelf wealth and school viewers in achieving the aesthetic in their own homes.

“These aren’t display books,” Ms. Blalock, 26, cautions in the video, which has been viewed over 1.3 million times. “These are books that have actually been curated and read.”

This literary look, she went on to say, goes well with pictures hung willy-nilly on the walls, sometimes even partly blocking the shelves, as well as mismatched fabric patterns and a bit of clutter.

In an interview, Ms. Blalock expanded on her advice. “I think to really achieve the look and the lifestyle, someone has to be an avid reader and has to appreciate the act of collecting things, especially art and sculpture,” she said.

Though Ms. Blalock did not originate the term “bookshelf wealth,” her video has spurred plenty of online discussion. “The day I ‘cultivate’ books instead of buying what I like to read is the day I’ll know I’ve truly failed as a human,” one user commented. Others remarked how bookshelf wealth was less about reading and more about regular old wealth.

Breana Newton, a legal coordinator in Princeton, N.J., who posts regularly about books on TikTok, was one of the people who responded to Ms. Blalock’s video. “I am going to show you bookshelf wealth,” Ms. Newton, 33, says in a video of her own. “Ready?”

She then gives viewers a brief tour of her home, showing books everywhere — on shelves, in overflow piles here and there, and strewed across the bed. Absent is the sense that the rooms have been staged, or that the books were bought with the consideration of how they would look on Instagram.

Been through this discussion before.

I am reminded of the artist played by Max von Sydow in the movie, ‘Hannah and Her Sisters”.

His character, a struggling artist, throws a rock star prospective client out of his gallery when the rock star asks, ‘What do you got that would go with a red ottoman?’

I always end up with the self graded quiz on CLASS in the book, CLASS, by Paul Fussell.

Mr. Fussell writes:

Bookcase(s) partially filled with books – add 5
Any old leather bindings more than 75 years old – add 6
Bookcase(s) filled with books – add 7
Overflow books stacked on floor, chairs, ETC – add 6

The reported comment, “The day I ‘cultivate’ books instead of buying what I like to read is the day I’ll know I’ve truly failed as a human,” warmed me all over.

So long as buying the books someone wants to read is a sign of being human, I feel that we still got a chance.

my soul is sick with
every report, wrong, outrage
with which earth is filled

Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more! My ear is pained,
My soul is sick with every day’s report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.

Adapted from The Task and Other Poems: The Timepiece Book II, by William Cowper (CASSELL & COMPANY, LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK & MELBOURNE – 1899).

I guess it is the same old question of wars and rumors of wars.

If I ignore the rumors, do the wars go away?

If I ignore the news, does the news go away?

The news and news reporting and the endless commentating is like the work of traffic engineers.

Traffic engineers can’t fix traffic, but they can spread it out over a greater area.

I stole that line from Bill Bryson.

Back in the day, the World and National News was a 15 minute show.

Now it’s a never ending endless story.

If you remember that terrible kids song, the song that never ends, the news cycle never ends and leaves me brain dumb and stupefied.

Does that make the news any less important?

What is the definition of important news?

When I wake up, all I want to know about is my morning drive.

And that want has stayed they same whether I am in a small city in Michigan, a major metropolis like Atlanta or the low country of South Carolina.

And I know that any news about traffic that I get on the news is news too old to be of any use to me.

I am reminded of a story from history back when young Theodore Roosevelt (when do you mention Theodore Roosevelt without the preface ‘young’ … but then he was 41 when he became President and as John Hay, the Secretary of State said, “Theodore, you have made a fine start in life and we have high hopes for you … when you grow up), when he was 36, he was President of the New York City Police Commission.

In charge of the Police and responsible for crime management, Commissioner Roosevelt found himself in the middle of a crime wave with the 12 or so New City Daily Newspapers suddenly being filled with the reports of crimes, big and small, all over the city.

Commissioner Roosevelt checked and found there was no increase in Police activity, but there was an increase in crime … reporting.

He called in the newspaper reporters.

They admitted that under pressure from their editors to step up crime reporting, the reporters had figured out that the shift reports by the Police were left out in the open at the Sergeant’s Desk in Police Precincts all over the city.

The reporters could read these reports and have access to the facts of any and all crimes throughout the city and the reporters reported them.

Commissioner Roosevelt ordered the shift reports be locked up and the crime wave came to a stop.

If I stop watching the news will it all go away?

Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness,
Some boundless contiguity of shade,
Where rumour of oppression and deceit,
Of unsuccessful or successful war,
Might never reach me more! My ear is pained,
My soul is sick with every day’s report
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled.

How is the world ruled?
lie to journalists and then …
believe what is read

How is the world ruled and how do wars start?

Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what
they read.

So wrote Karl Kraus in his book, Aphorisms and More Aphorisms back in1909.

An aphorism, not to be confused with aphorismus (from the Greek: ἀφορισμός, aphorismós, “a marking off”, also “rejection, banishment”) is a figure of speech that calls into question if a word is properly used (“How can you call yourself a man?”). It often appears in the form of a rhetorical question which is meant to imply a difference between the present thing being discussed and the general notion of the subject, but an aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: aphorismos, denoting ‘delimitation’, ‘distinction’, and ‘definition’) is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by tradition from generation to generation.

Don’t ask me, I copied that right from Wikipedia.

I copy a lot from Wikipedia but then I site my source, not that that means I am qualified to be the President of an Ivy League School, not that I would want the job if I was and if I was I most likely be remembered by having a building like Haven Hall named after me.

Haven Hall is the ugly brick late Ramada Inn style building BEHIND Angell Hall and its 8 marble columned entrance that is a University of Michigan Landmark.

But I digress.

The subject was aphorisms.

Again, Wikipedia says, aphorisms are distinguished from other short sayings by the need for interpretation to make sense of them.

That is the beauty of “Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what
they read.”

Who needs that interpreted?

Mr. Kraus also said, “The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.”

I got no problem understanding that one either.

Mr. Kraus was a social critic for his times and was confined to publishing his own works.

He would, it is said, agonize over the placement of a comma and the use of the correct, best words.

I can only imagine what Mr. Kraus would have made of the world today and the access to the world made possible by social media.

On the other hand maybe it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine what Mr. Kraus would have said today because he said it back then.

Mr. Kraus once wrote, “The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.”

All that is missing today is the twitter, I mean X account.

reasonable but
nevertheless too often
we slow down for fog

Adapted from, You Came with Shells by June Jordan.

You came with shells. And left them:
shells.
They lay beautiful on the table.
Now they lie on my desk
peculiar
extraordinary under 60 watts.

This morning I disturb I destroy the window
(and its light) by moving my feet
in the water. There.
It’s gone.
Last night the moon ranged from the left
to the right side
of the windshield. Only white lines
on a road strike me as
reasonable but
nevertheless and too often
we slow down for the fog.

I was going to say a natural environment
means this or
I was going to say we remain out of our
element or
sometimes you can get away completely
but the shells
will tell about the howling
and the loss

In a borough that has landmarks for the writers Thomas Wolfe, W. H. Auden, and Henry Miller, to name just three, there ought to be a street in Bed-Stuy called June Jordan Place, and maybe a plaque reading, ‘A Poet and Soldier for Humanity Was Born Here,” said American playwright, journalist, librettist, novelist, poet, and screenwriter, Thulani Davis.

Nevertheless.

We slow down for the fog.

Too often.

We slow down for the fog.

What might be in the fog?

Giants maybe?

Windmills?

Tie Sherlock Holmes with Don Quixote and you get the line from the movie, “They Might Be Giants where Mr. Holmes comments:

“Well he had a point.

Of course, he carried it a bit too far.

He thought that every windmill was a giant.

That’s insane.

But, thinking that they might be…well…all the best minds used to think the world was flat.“

Sometimes you can get away completely …

But the shells …

They might be …

Reason?

Reasonable?

But the shells.

Will tell about the howling.

And the loss.