2.6.2025 – I have stood on the

I have stood on the
peaky mountain in rainbows
harp, sword in my hands

Adapted from this passage in Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston (JB Lippincott Company Philadelphia, 1942), where Ms. Hurston writes:

Well, that is the way things stand up to now. I can look back and see sharp shadows, high lights, and smudgy in-betweens. I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen and licked out all the pots. Then I have stood on the peaky mountain wrappen in rainbows, with a harp and a sword in my hands.

My kinfolks, and my “skin-folks” are dearly loved. My own circumference of everyday life is there. But I see their same virtues and vices everywhere I look. So I give you all my right hand of fellowship and love, and hope for the same from you. In my eyesight, you lose nothing by not looking just like me. I will remember you all in my good thoughts, and I ask you kindly to do the same for me. Not only just me. You, who play the zig-zag lightning of power over the world, with the grumbling thunder in your wake, think kindly of those who walk in the dust. And you who walk in humble places, think kindly too, of others. There has been no proof in the world so far that you would be less arrogant if you held the lever of power in your hands. Let us all be kissing-friends. Consider that with tolerance and patience, we godly demons may breed a noble world in a few hundred generations or so. Maybe all of us who do not have the good fortune to meet, or meet again, in this world, will meet at a barbecue.

2.5.2025 – sovereigntism means

sovereigntism means
doing what it wants limited
by what it can do

Adapted from the passage in the opinion piece “Is This the End of Pax Americana” By Bret Stephens, where Mr. Stephens writes:

Sovereigntism means a country doing what it wants to do within only the limits of what it can do. It means the end of self-restraint within a framework of mutual restraint. It means an indifference to the behavior of other states, however cruel or dangerous, so long as it doesn’t impinge on us. It means a reversion to the notorious claim, uttered (according to Thucydides) by the Athenians before their sacking of the neutral city of Melos, that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

Sovereigntism also means an end to something else: Pax Americana. Though it takes its name from the Pax Romana of the first and second centuries and the Pax Britannica of the 19th, Pax Americana was something different: The application of American power for the benefit of more than just Americans.

According to Google Search AI:

The Pax Romana began in 27 BCE when Augustus became the first Roman emperor.
The Pax Romana was a time of great expansion for the Roman Empire.
The Pax Romana was a time of relative peace, but there were still wars and revolts.
The Pax Romana ended with a period of instability and internal conflict.
The end of the Pax Romana led to civil wars, political conspiracies, and assassinations.
The end of the Pax Romana led to a period of inflation, foreign wars, and religious wars.

Glad so many people voted for it.

2.3.2025 – were abhorrent and

were abhorrent and
anaphylactically
abominable

In their weekly opinion piece, The Conversation, in the New York Times, columnists Gail Collins and Bret Stephens discussed “A Presidency That’s Off the Rails. It Took Only Two Weeks.“

Of Presidential Cabinet appointments, the conservative, right leaning Bret Stephens wrote:

“ … both Gabbard and R.F.K. Jr. were … atrocious, abhorrent, anaphylactically abominable. The idea of having a director of national intelligence who for years was a leading apologist for dictators like Bashar al-Assad and traitors like Edward Snowden is hard to stomach. But maybe not as hard to stomach as a legal shakedown artist, conspiracy theorist and medical misinformer in charge of the American federal health system. So I guess my vote for worst nominee in U.S. cabinet history goes to Bobby Baby Chickens in the Blender K.”

While I applaud the use of atrocious, abhorrent, anaphylactically abominable I must point out that it is all part of the plan to keep our eyes on the bright and shiny object while Elon Musk is given the keys, without any objection, to the Treasury.

I was talking with a friend who has a sister who lives in Nova Scotia.

My friend told me that his sister says they now know what it is like to live in South Korea.

2.2.2025 -growing good of the world

growing good of the world
is partly dependent on
unhistoric acts

Adapted from the line:

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

In the George Eliot Novel, Middlemarsh.

According to Wikipedia, Middlemarch, A Study of Provincial Life is a novel by English author George Eliot. It appeared in eight installments (volumes) in 1871 and 1872. Set in Middlemarch, a fictional English Midlands town, in 1829 to 1832, it follows distinct, intersecting stories with many characters. Issues include the status of women, the nature of marriage, idealism, self-interest, religion, hypocrisy, political reform, and education. Leavened with comic elements, Middlemarch approaches significant historical events in a realist mode: the Reform Act 1832, early railways, and the accession of King William IV. It looks at medicine of the time and reactionary views in a settled community facing unwelcome change. Eliot began writing the two pieces that formed the novel in 1869–1870 and completed it in 1871. Initial reviews were mixed, but it is now seen widely as her best work and one of the great English novels.

Notice the pronoun in the last sentence.

… now seen widely as her best work and one of the great English novels.

You see, George Eliot was the pen name of one Mary Ann Evans.

Who, again according to Wikipedia, … was known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era.[3] She wrote seven novels: Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Romola (1862–1863), Felix Holt, the Radical (1866), Middlemarch (1871–1872) and Daniel Deronda (1876). As with Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, she emerged from provincial England; most of her works are set there. Her works are known for their realism, psychological insight, sense of place and detailed depiction of the countryside. Middlemarch was described by the novelist Virginia Woolf as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people” and by Martin Amis and Julian Barnes as the greatest novel in the English language.

Pronouns.

Really?

The number of headlines today that start with that man’s name is beyond understand until you grasp, that is what they want.

LOOK AT THE MAN behind the curtain.

WATCH WHAT he is doing, while the real people in charge remove pronouns and other acts so egregious it is beyond words.

And as long as the focus is on that man, they are winning.

Even this morning, the Toronto Star led with, WHO WILL STAND UP TO THAT MAN …

As long as the focus is on the man, the real damage and the real danger is hidden, right there in plain sight.

I guess it is right that the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”