Bear with me… Henry James appears, in this quote from this article , to be on the “Art”, not the “Theory” side: “We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, what the French call his donnée; our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it. Naturally I do not mean that we …
Tag: Random Weirdness
Unlikely?
From Lauren McGough: a rather sweet photo of the late Christopher Hitchens that doesn’t fit any stereotypes, just because:
A Familiar Place…
The road runs straight south from the ancient city of Sanliurfa in Turkey (actually “Urfa”– the title is a post- Ataturk designation) to a border, or, in our fraught times, perhaps, a BORDER, like our southern one. The land is almost flat, dry, but productive since the dam on the Euphrates, which drowned may old …
Another day’s wait …
Before regular traffic begins. A productive day, but at 8:21 PM I am unlikely to blog much after a day spent working and answering correspondence at this desk. I should leave you all with an image or two to hold you from… what? Something surreal? Poignant? Beautiful? Art or artifice or nature? Aahh, I know. …
Post- Apocalyptic Images
NOT Detroit. Think more maritime. Haunting, IMAO… UPDATE: My brother- in- law George, who took these, explains: “Glad you’ve enjoyed these. This is the former Naval Ammunition Annex, a WWII fabrication facility in a closed area, Wompatuck State Park, Hingham, MA. It’s been abandoned for over 40 years, the state finally has the funds to …
Curriculum
Trying hard not to spend much time here but some things are too interesting to ignore. Via Prufrock I found this excellent suggestion for early education, by a poet, in the NYT. Its real effort echoes my spontaneous reply to an academic in Amherst Mass, back in the 70’s, who demanded at a party what …
Found Object
From Paul McCormack:
My home town
… for once, not my long- chosen Querencia of Magdalena, nor a vague gesture to “Boston”, but Easton, the southern Massachusetts town my parents moved us to from a three- decker tenement in Boston’s blue- collar Dorchester when I was four, and where I lived until I left town at seventeen, After that I returned …
Guy in Scotland…
Our Gyr man from Fort Collins is in some library in Scotland, and says he is “channeling Bodio”. I think I am complimented…
Observation
John Davila, one of my oldest NM friends, is an unreconstructed Catron county rancher, an unconventional soul who used to raise game chickens in the old days, not to mention cattle and stranger things. I bet he likes the quote from a distant relative, 20th century philosopher Nicolas Gomez Davila, courtesy of David Zincavage’s Never …