it’s like reading an
aggressively abridged book
soulless messy gist

Adapted from the line, “It’s like reading an aggressively abridged novel in which every adjective has been deleted and blackberry jam smudged across parts of every other page. You get the gist, but in a soulless, messy fashion.”

This line appeared in Frank Bruni’s For the Love of Sentences section of Mr. Bruni’s Opinion Piece, Chris Christie Is Doing Something Very, Very Important in the New York Times on June 21, 2023.

According to his writer blurb in the NYT, Mr. Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter.

I liked this a lot more before I got to the Duke part.

Like almost every house I have been in growing up, my house was filled with the Reader’s Digest Condensed books.

They looked nice on the shelf.

I even opened them up on occasion and read some of the books.

As I kid I understood condensed orange juice.

Though to this DAY, I am mystified that for my ENTIRE life, orange juice and lemonade comes in the same size can but orange juice needs three cans of water while lemonade needs 4 and 1/3 cans of water.

First I wondered why lemonade made so much more juice.

Then I wondered what was wrong with the lemonade.

Then, over the years, I wondered why no scientist ever came up with a condensed version of lemonade that also needed three cans of water.

I new of condensed milk.

How were books condensed?

And once condensed, how were these Reader’s Digest volumes printed and distributed.

And WHY were so many made.

In the age of ZOOM and remote TV News interviews nothing makes me discount any expert’s expertise faster than a backdrop of a book case … filled with Reader’s Digest condensed books.

It might not have happened but in my mind there is a story about HL Mencken and Reader’s Digest.

According to the story, Mr. Mencken was told about the plan to take the best parts of all the stories in newspapers and magazines and republished these ‘best parts’ or ‘digested parts’ in a single magazine.

Mr. Mencken is reported to have said something along the lines of, “No one ever went broke underestimating the American intellect.”

As I watch TV today and the commercials roll by for dog insurance and dog DNA and wonder drugs I cannot pronounce for ailments I have never heard of, I can vouch for the statement’s accuracy if not is provenance.

So much of life today seems to be aggressively abridged.

It is has been rendered soulless and messy but you get the gist.

eating a mouthful
of afternoon winter sun
take bite of the cake

Hey wait a minute.

How can I post a haiku about the afternoon winter sun in June?

Well, see, the inspiration for today’s haiku comes from and article written in Australia where it is wintertime.

That is something I know in my head but my heart has a difficult understanding.

That it is winter in Australia along with those folks are down under and hanging upside down, attached to the world by their feet.

Anyway, this story appeared in the Guardian, which has some pretty good stories about food.

Recently, the Guardian published, ‘Lunch of suffering’: plain ‘white people food’ goes viral in China, that describes how the Chinese, sampling a traditional American Brown Bag lunch with a cold sandwich and raw veggies and a ‘lunch of suffering’ and that it must be designed to make American’s appreciate being at home even more.

Today’s haiku is taken from the article, I spent the day eating like Nigella Lawson – and lived to tell the tale where the writer, Ann Ding, describes trying to eat at the places named by someone named Nigella Lawson eats at when Ms. Lawson visits Australia.

I have never heard of Nigella Lawson.

Apparently she is a Martha Stewart type in Britain but has managed, during a long career, to fly under my radar.

Regardless, she eats great food made at great restaurants.

Though, as Ms. Ding points out, that a high end Sydney restaurant named, Bondi, “… an institution for beautiful people. I think this may be because – while the food is delicious and looks sexy – Icebergs occupies that juncture of “modern Australian dining” which mostly just means “Italian”, and I don’t really need to go to Bondi for that.“

Ms. Ding is a food writer and like art and music writers, they get to use the best word and word combinations in painting word pictures.

They also get to build in a sense of the tactile sense of taste which is really great work to have if you can get it.

Ms. Ding writes of “… a piece of lemon, almond and ricotta cake.

As we lounge at the edge of the botanic garden, I take a bite of the cake – the lemon curd and whipped cream is like eating a mouthful of the afternoon winter sun.“

And I like that.

I like that a lot.

… the lemon curd and whipped cream is like eating a mouthful of the afternoon winter sun.

Not sure I would go to Australia to get a piece.

But I will think about it.

And I will think about word pictures the next time I am eating.

anybody who’s
educated can write but
reading’s like breathing

“There are editors who will always feel guilty that they aren’t writers,” he explained. “I can write perfectly well — anybody who’s educated can write perfectly well. It’s very, very hard, and I just don’t like the activity. Whereas reading is like breathing.”

From the obit, Robert Gottlieb, Eminent Editor From le Carré to Clinton, Dies at 92 by Robert D. McFadden in the New York Times

share, with dignity
society culture that
values live, let live

This country — this whole region — will thrive only if these four women can share the same beachfront promenade with dignity, in a society and culture that values live and let live.

Everyone is just too intertwined now for anything else.

But live and let live takes work and the right leadership, whether it comes from heads of government or next-door neighbors.

From From Tel Aviv to Riyadh By Thomas L. Friedm

Live and let live takes work and the right leadership.

Whether it comes from heads of government …

or next-door neighbors.

dramatically
flickering repeatable
afterimages

Warhol neither rips off nor transcends his sources.

He retains them as flickering, repeatable afterimages while dramatically changing their pictorial appearance and effect.

That’s what turns “something not his into something all his own.”

Warhol’s slightly off kilter, Day-Glo brilliant pictures change the way we look at celebrity and consumer culture.

His work, at its best, transforms us.

From The Supreme Court Is Wrong About Andy Warhol, a Guest Essay in the New York Times on June 5, 2023. by Richard Meyer.

Mr. Meyer is a professor of art history at Stanford University and the author, most recently, of “Master of the Two Left Feet: Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered.”

Mr. Meyer writes that, “As an art historian and Warhol scholar, I was asked to write an amicus brief on behalf of the Foundation.“

Mr. Meyer also said, “There is much about Warhol and the question of originality, however, that I left out of my brief.“

I am reminded of the story of a friend of Ansel Adams who had come into possession of some original photographic prints by, I think, Paul Stand.

The friend gave the prints to a an Art Museum and took a huge tax credit for his gift.

The IRS questioned the claim and asked for some provenance on who this Paul Strand was and why this prints could be valued so highly.

The friend asked Ansel Adams to write a reply.

Based what Mr. Adams wrote, the claim was allowed and word was passed along from the IRS to thank Mr. Adams for his 10 page document explaining the life and work and value of Paul Strand.