1.31.2023 – Some Somewhere where I

Some Somewhere where I
know I’ll someday go – finally
I’ll go Some Somewhere

From this bizarre book I am reading right now titled, The Great Glorious Goddamn of It All, a novel by Josh Ritter.

Hard to even describe the book or what is about but it is … interesting.

It’s basically about lumbering in Idaho at the end of 19th century.

Early in the book, the song Some Somewhere is introduced.

The first line of the song is:

Some Somewhere there are mountains topped with snow,
Some Somewhere where the wildflowers grow,
Some Somewhere where I know I’ll someday go,
When I finally go Some Somewhere.

When I drove to the Island this morning, the fog was so thick I felt I was going to some somewhere.

I was going somewhere.

Some Somewhere.

I am not sure where some somewhere is but it isn’t here.

Some Somewhere.

BTW – This is the same view in the sunshine.

1.27.2023 – fascinating thing

fascinating thing
practitioners of these kinds
of fabrications

is how easily
disprovable their falsehoods
turn out to be so

Adapted from:

The fascinating thing about Santos, and other practitioners of these kinds of fabrications, is how easily disprovable their falsehoods turn out to be.

If compulsive lying has its roots in something deeper and more complicated than mere self-advancement, you assume the risk-taking is part of the appeal.

Psychologically, Santos’s claims appear akin in scale, impulse and thrill-seeking to a man running across a football field naked, each more lurid and exposing than the last.

As it appeared in the article, George Santos’s lies are so big you almost have to admire them by Emma Brockes in the Guardian.

Ms. Brockes closes with:

It’s a serious thing to mislead the electorate and lie to members of Congress, with a much more damaging fallout than the lies of a fake heiress trying to score a free holiday.

Still, in both cases, the fascination with the workings of compulsive liars is the same.

Scrutinising photos of Santos’s blank and babyish face triggers the vertiginous possibility inherent in all really big grifts – and one, possibly, deserving of sympathy, although who knows – that he has come to believe all this stuff himself.

There are a lot of $5 dollar words in this article and I have to admire how Ms. Brockes weaves them into the narrative with seemingly so little effort.

As for the subject of the piece, well, with so many liars in America, don’t they deserve someone in Congress too?

1.22.2023 – prodigious number

prodigious number
people hanged by no means bad
time for criminals

Inspired by:

In spite of the prodigious number of people who managed to get hanged, the fifteenth century was by no means a bad time for criminals.

A great confusion of parties and great dust of fighting favoured the escape of private housebreakers and quiet fellows who stole ducks in Paris Moat.

Prisons were leaky; and as we shall see, a man with a few crowns in his pocket and perhaps some acquaintance among the officials, could easily slip out and become once more a free marauder.

As it appears in the 1926 title, The Book of The Rogue by Joseph Lewis French.

According to the Wikipedia, Joseph Lewis French. (1858–1936) was a novelist, editor, poet and newspaper man. The New York Times noted in 1925 that he may be “the most industrious anthologist of his time.”[2] He is known for his popular themed collections, and published more than twenty-five books between 1918 and his death in 1936. He initiated two magazines, The New West (c. 1887) and The Wave (c. 1890). Afterward he worked for newspapers “across the country” contributing poetry and articles. He struggled financially, and during 1927 the New York Graphic, a daily tabloid, published an autobiographical article they convinced him to write, entitled “I’m Starving – Yet I’m in Who’s Who as the Author of 27 Famous Books.”

The New York Times reports in his obit that Mr. French “insisted that the actual rewards of authorship were few.”

I have reproduced his obit here.

In his book of collected stories on pirates, Great Pirate Stories, Mr. French wrote:

It was a bold hardy world—this of ours—up to the advent of our giant-servant, Steam,—every foot of which was won by fierce conquest of one sort or another.

Out of this past the pirate emerges as a romantic, even at times heroic, figure.

This final niche, despite his crimes, cannot altogether be denied him.

A hero he is and will remain so long as tales of the sea are told.

So, have at him, in these pages!

A hero he is and will remain so long as tales of the sea are told

1.19.2023 – extremely online

extremely online
insulted as efficiently
as is possible

Extremely Online.

A condition where social media compels us to read thinly, strip out all context and get to the part where we can be insulted as efficiently as possible.

So writes New York Times Opinion Columnist, Tressie McMillan Cottom, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science, in her piece, The Enduring, Invisible Power of Blond.

The line in question reads, “I knew a lot of the anger had to do with my critics being Extremely Online, a condition where social media compels us to read thinly, strip out all context and get to the part where we can be insulted as efficiently as possible.“

The ability, no, the desire of some folks to read thinly and strip out all context and get to the part where we can be insulted as efficiently as possible.

I come back to that old saying, why going looking for trouble.

Besides, if you go looking for trouble, trouble will find you.

Which in a way I think is really funny when I try to put that into context with news and social media and trouble.

Back in the news business we had endless discussions that folks no longer had to seek out news, they did not have watch TV news, listen to radio news or buy a newspaper.

With social media, the news someone wanted to hear, the paradigm went, now found them.

News, like trouble, finds you.

And the part of the news that interest us the most is the part that we are insulted.

And being extremely online compels us to read thinly, strip out all context and get to the part where we can be insulted as efficiently as possible

OH the wonderful power of social media,

1.15.2023 – how did dare expect

how did dare expect
so much of life and how could
act so stupidly

I was in the library the other day and as I do in libraries, I walked down the H aisle of fiction to see how many Jim Harrison books were on the shelf.

I was pleased to see 8.

I looked them over and the book titled, “The Summer He Didn’t Die“, caught my eye.

I knew it was on the shelf at home among the remaining titles in my hard cover library and I also knew I hadn’t opened it in years.

To sidestep into the discussion of EBooks, EReaders and printed books, I am 100% in agreement with those who say there is something to the printed page and holding a book in your lap.

But I also say, move several times and your thoughts on a personal multi volume library will change.

I still say I love print, but am very THANKFUL for electronic versions of any and all books.

But I digress.

When I got home, I took The Summer He Didn’t Die off the shelf and sat in my rocking chair and opened it.

There are, as usual with Mr. Harrison, three long short stories in the book.

The first one was the title short story, The Summer He Didn’t Die, and it is part of the Brown Dog oeuvre.

If you never read anything else going forward, I ask you to find a copy of Brown Dog (what you don’t a free archive.org account?) which has all 6 of the Brown Dog stories anthologized in one volume, and enjoy the trip to world you never considered.

It’s the same world we live in, but it’s not the same world we live in at the same.

You won’t be in Kansas anymore.

The 2nd long short story is titled, “Republican Wives.”

I am sure I read the story when I got the book but I did not have any memory of it.

This was fabulous.

It was new ground or, at least, forgotten old ground, one of the few benefits of getting older.

Reading the long short story, on the 2nd page I hit this line:

How did I dare expect so much of life. And by contrast, how could I have acted so stupidly?

And I stopped reading.

30 minutes later I was still looking at that page.

In the book, The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk wrote about the hero, young Willie Keith, after a near death experience, sat back with a cigar and thought.

Wouk writes:

With the smoke of the dead sailor’s cigar wreathing around him, Willie passed to thinking about death and life and luck and God.

Philosophers are at home with such thoughts, perhaps, but for other people it is actual torture when these concepts – not the words, the realities – break through the crust of daily occurrences and grip the soul.

A half hour of such racking meditation can change the ways of a lifetime …

How did I dare expect so much of life.

And by contrast, how could I have acted so stupidly?

More than saying, But for the Grace of God, go I.

Thank God, and I mean THANK GOD, for grace.

But daring to expect so much of life?

Deep in my soul I think of Prospero in the Tempest.

We are such stuff, as dreams are made on.

Dreams?

Expectations?

Dare to dream.

Dare to expect much.

But, don’t act so stupidly, can’tcha?

Gee Whiz.