8.23.2023 – Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker
said there is no Gertrude Stein?
terrible thing to say

Dialogue from the book, Unstrung heroes : my improbable life with four impossible uncles by Franz Lidz, (Signet, New York, NY, 1995).

“There, there, Sidney,” said Shirley.

“Dorothy Parker said there is no there there,” he said.

“I believe it was Gertrude Stein,” she said.

“You mean Dorothy Parker said there is no Gertrude Stein?” I said helpfully.

“That’s a terrible thing for her to say,” said Uncle Danny.

This is here just because when I read it, I laughed out loud.

Being of Dutch heritage, it takes a lot to make me laugh out loud.

I don’t mean that I don’t laugh, it’s that I laugh like I was raised Dutch because I was raised Dutch.

I had a conversation once with a my very Dutch (a Not-Dutch? Not-Much! feller) brother in law in church as we watched a visiting Preacher get more and more frustrated as he told funny illustration after funny illustration and not get one snicker from the congregation.

I told my brother in law we needed to leave a note in the pulpit that if the people are smiling, most other audiences would be laughing.

If people were smiling and nodding, that was equal to continued, loud laughter.

If some folks smiled, nodded and held out one hand and dropped it down to soundlessly slap a knee, well, that was just about over the top, rolling on the floor, laughing.

But we were Dutch.

I wanted a quote from the movie Unstrung Hero’s and I hoped I might find in the book of the same name.

Sorry to say, I could not find the quote I was after but I did come across this bit of writing and it made me laugh.

The words.

The pacing of the conversation.

The subjects.

It was just funny.

That, for any Dutch person, is reason to write down and share the experience.

8.22.2023 -palingenetic

palingenetic
ultranationalistic age
meet the enemy …

In the book, The Winds of War, Rhoda Henry is in Berlin and sees all the Third Reich icons and says to her husband Pug,

“What on earth does NSDAP stand for?” Rhoda said, peering out of the window of the embassy car at the multitudinous gilded poles.
“National Socialist German Workers Party,” said Pug.
“Is that the name of the Nazis? How funny. Sounds sort of Commie when you spell it all out.”

I like words and I write this blog to recognize unique word usage but when I ran across palingenetic ultranationalistic this morning in the article, US businessman is wannabe ‘warlord’ of secretive far-right men’s network by Jason Wilson (The Guardian, 8/22/2023) I had to stop and say, “What on Earth is palingenetic ultranationalistic.”

According to Wikipedia, palingenetic ultranationalistic is the effort .. to attract large masses of voters who have lost their faith in traditional politics and religion by promising them a brighter future.

The palingenetic myth can also possibly stand for a return to a golden age in the country’s history so that the past can be a guidebook to a better tomorrow.

… there will be one great leader who battles the representatives of the old system with grassroots support. It appears as one mass of people with only one goal: to create their new future. They have infinite faith in their mythical hero as he stands for everything they believe in. With him, the country will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of corruption and decadence.

Sounds sort of Commie when you spell it out.

North Korean type Commie.

Joseph Stalin kind of Commie.

But it seems to the be the basis for a secretive, men-only, invitation-only far-right network here in America.

Still sounds sort of Commie when you spell it out.

Not that spelling it out helped me too much.

Wikipedia tries to help explain by using palingenetic ultranationalistic in a sentence.

National-anarchism has been argued to be a syncretic political ideology that was developed in the 1990s by former Third Positionists to promote a “stateless palingenetic ultranationalism”.

Have to say I haven’t seen so many poly syllabic words is so short a sentence in a long time.

I did notice that according to the article this far right network is a registered non profit under section 501(c)(10) of the Internal Revenue code.

Jim Harrison once wrote something along the lines of if you really want to take a stand and protest against the government, stop paying your taxes.

So I feel a little less threatened that these folks are concerned about their non-profit status.

Or should I feel more threatened?

Kind of like Tony Soprano hustling around to get his W2 ready.

Never the less, the article was chilling and the comments about warlords and maximum leaders brought to mind Mr. Big Brother from George Orwell’s 1984.

” … on the face of the coin [was] the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrapping of a cigarette packet — everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.”

Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.

Who are these people?

Where did this people come from?

As Pogo said back over 50 years ago, we have met the enemy and they are us.

8.21.2023 – thinking of death but

thinking of death but
dressing it in the raiment
lyric, metaphor

Most of the people I like, or love, or can barely stand are between the ages of forty-five and sixty-five, give or take a year or two at either end, and only about three of them are capable any longer of achieving what was once casually called, and is now wistfully called, a good night’s rest.

For ours is the age of the four “A”s: anxiety, apprehension, agonizing, and aspirin.

People are smoking more and enjoying it less, drinking more and feeling it more, and waking around three in the morning to lie there gloomily staring at the mushroom-shaped ceiling, listening for the approaching drone of enemy bombers, and thinking of death but dressing it in the raiment of lyric or metaphor: the gate in the garden wall, the putting out to sea, the mother of beauty, the fog in the throat, the ruffian on the stair, the man in the white coat, the sleep that rounds our little lives.

From The Watchers of the Night in Lanterns & Lances by James Thurber.

For ours is the age of the four “A”s:

Anxiety,

Apprehension,

Agonizing,

and Aspirin.

Change Aspirin to Advil and change mushroom-shaped ceiling to and waking around three in the morning to lie there gloomily staring at the ceiling fan and counting the blades as they go around and you got me, nearly 70 years after Thurber wrote these lines.

I agonize about my apprehension over my anxiety so I take an Advil.

Then though, reading this, I seem to be right on schedule.

One less thing to agonize over.

One thing to feel apprehension over.

One less thing to fuel my anxiety.

One less Advil to take.

I am right on schedule!

8.20.2023 – when Carl Sandburg sings

when Carl Sandburg sings
I know a lover of all
the living sings then

In his autobiography, The Big Sea, Langston Hughes writes about his time a Cleveland Central High School:

Ethel Weimer discovered Carl Sandburg for me. Although I had read of Carl Sandburg before—in an article, I think, in the Kansas City Star about how bad free verse was—I didn’t really know him until Miss Weimer in second-year English brought him, as well as Amy Lowell, Vachel Lindsay, and Edgar Lee Masters, to us. Then I began to try to write like Carl Sandburg.

Little Negro dialect poems like Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s and poems without rhyme like Sandburg’s were the first real poems I tried to write. I wrote about love, about the steel mills where my step-father worked, the slums where we lived, and the brown girls from the South, prancing up and down Central Avenue on a spring day.

… about Carl Sandburg, my guiding star, I wrote:

Carl Sandburg’s poems
Fall on the white pages of his books
Like blood-clots of song
From the wounds of humanity.
I know a lover of life sings
When Carl Sandburg sings.
I know a lover of all the living
Sings then

8.19.2023 – but cannot in good

but cannot in good
conscience support candidate
unworthy unfit

I shall continue to affiliate with the Republican Party, but I cannot in good conscience support for President a candidate who was not the real choice of his party and whom I regard as unworthy and unfit to be the Chief Executive of this nation by the tests of ability, public policies, official record and independence of character.”

The above quote from Illinois Politician Harold Ickes appeared in the New York Times today, but 103 years ago in the article, H.L. ICKES DESERTS HARDING AS ‘UNFIT’. (NYT, August 19, 1920)

103 years ago, political parties were pushing candidates unworthy and unfit to be the Chief Executive.

Mr. Ickes was talking about Warren Gamaliel Harding, who had just been nominated by the Republican party for their candidate for President of the United States at the 1920 convention.

Mr. Ickes would later go one to serve as United States Secretary of the Interior for nearly 13 years from 1933 to 1946 under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S Truman.

The 1920 Republican convention was the one that made the term ‘smoke filled rooms’ famous.

The convention took 10 ballots to nominate Mr. Harding, who according to legend, was called into a meeting with the Party Bosses, in a smoke filled room and the Party Bosses asked Mr. Harding if there was anything … ANYTHING … in his background that might cause problems if he was nominated.

Mr. Harding, according to that legend, asked for 1 hour to think about it and came back and said nope, nothing in my background.

About Mr. Harding’s acceptance speech, Mr. Ickes said, “He proclaims himself a reactionary. He would turn back the hands of the clock and satisfy the aspirations of men’s souls by talking of a full stomach. No more uninspired and uninspiring utterance from a public man is on record in American political history.”

You remember Mr. Harding?

Even he himself felt the he was in over his head as President.

President Harding once said, “Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind.

But I don’t know where the book is, and maybe I couldn’t read it if I found it!

There must be a man in the country somewhere who could weigh both sides and know the truth. Probably he is in some college or other.

But I don’t know where to find him. I don’t know who he is, and I don’t know how to get him.

My God, this is a hell of a place for a man like me to be!”

According to Wikipedia, “In 1923, Harding died of a heart attack in San Francisco while on a western tour, and was succeeded by Vice President Calvin Coolidge.

Harding died as one of the most popular presidents in history, but the subsequent exposure of scandals eroded his popular regard, as did revelations of extramarital affairs. Harding’s interior secretary, Albert B. Fall, and his attorney general, Harry Daugherty, were each later tried for corruption in office. Fall was convicted though Daugherty was not. These trials greatly damaged Harding’s posthumous reputation. In historical rankings of the U.S. presidents during the decades after his term in office, Harding was often rated among the worst.

We, as a country, are once again in a cycle where the election mantra might be I cannot in good conscience support for President a candidate whom I regard as unworthy and unfit to be the Chief Executive.

Seems like folks who should be saying this, are not saying this.

For us and this country, my God, this is a hell of a place for us to be!