We were coming back from voting when this utterly serious girl zoomed out of her building. I wouldn't say she was a good driver, exactly, if good is defined by going in a straight line rather than caroming off everything around you. But this was the coolest car & she gave nothing away.
Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.
~ Adam Smith
For once I have nothing to add.
Oh! except that it will be a pleasure to stop rebuking the Republicans with every quote.
I should be happier. Thrilled as I am that Biden-Harris have dispatched tRump-Pence, I am disturbed at how many people who did nothing beyond voting are not only taking credit ("we did it!") but clearly ready to go right back to their uninvolved ways. In her speech last night, Kamala Harris quoted John Lewis: "Democracy is not a state," he said. "It's an act." We must act. We must be ever-vigilant. We must let our respresentatives know what we expect & pressure them to deliver. We must pay attention.
Beto O'Rourke's close race in Texas two years ago galvanized the Republicans, & they took back the state in a big way this election. The Democrats seem to have assumed that once the move to blue was begun, it could only increase.
Look, I could have done more. The places where I focused did come through Dem, so I can feel like my hundreds of phonecalls & dozens of postcards maybe were a drop in a bucket that filled up blue. But there is always more to do, & I don't know how to convince anyone that it matters that they participate (more than on Facebook!).
Maybe I'm burying the lead by mentioning the death of Jonathan Sacks, the modern Orthodox chief rabbi of Britain, only at this point. While not in sympathy was some of his positions, I admired him enormously for his moral leadership & clear writing. His short video on antisemitism is an important reminder that we cannot let down our guard. We must pay attention.
As I write, Biden's lead is increasing in Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada. PA alone would put him over. Looking good.
But of course nothing is looking good. Tens of millions of people still prefer the cruel criminal. Why? So many theories & all depressing as hell. I'm sure anyone reading this has their own ideas & probably all or most of those ideas have merit. There simply ISN'T one reason for what's going on. It's mis/disinformation, education, expectations, personality, geography & you-name-it.
Johnny in the hospital after falling many times. The election another mystery. I am trying to access my inner karateka to stay positive but not totally succeeding. Don't know why I'm even posting. Well, yes, I do—I don't get a star on the calendar if I don't. Yeah, this counts.
I guess if you didn't vote, it's too late by now. Who could sit this one out? How can anyone sit out any election, for that matter. The right to vote is a privilege that people have struggled for, died for. Hoping now for an outcome that means people want peace, harmony, & an end to chaos.
Man is free, but his freedom ceases when he has no faith in it.
~ Giacomo Casanova
I suppose that's true about freedom & liberty, too, or when we have the wrong idea about it. Or about a lot of things: marriage, art, love.
Why So Glum, Chum?
where does it hurt, Burt?
is it time to go, Joe?
don't fall down, Nauen.
set yourself up, Pup.
will you pass muster, Buster?
ain't we got fun, Hon?
you still do the hora, Laura?
get you gone, John
back outta here, dear
please—more tea, Vee
Aw, the kids at karate were so cute today. My favorite was the penguin, whose suit was so puffy the kid couldn't do pushups because her arms didn't reach the floor. The teachers did pirate voices & games. Fun!
Definitely times I'm not proud of my home state. Like when I find out that mask use there is the lowest in the country & infection rates the highest. C'mon, people!
It's a joke I've repeated for years: Vote early, vote often.
Today I was so moved to go to the polls with my fellow citizens that I really did wish I could vote every day. I know voting isn't all there is to democracy, but I think at every election of my dad, who had no citizenship at all for 10 years. Germany took it away & America made him wait. Voting meant he was a citizen, a participant in his country & community, a man of worth & substance. It's possible that I have never missed a single election since my first, when I voted for my home state senator George McGovern.
Vote, people!
My mom (Joyce), Hazel, Beryl, & Pat were cousins who were close in age & grew up together in Liverpool. Joyce (daughter of Jack Phillips) married an American GI & moved to the States, while Hazel & Beryl (daughters of Ernie) & Pat (daughter of Maud) stayed in Liverpool. I didn't know that side of the family as well as the Woodlands, my grandmother's side, but I got to know Hazel when she flew on her own to Arizona for my mother's 90th birthday celebration, she herself only a couple months shy of 90. She lit up the room with her blue hair, her jokes & her joie de vivre. When I visited her in Liverpool a couple of years later, I was expecting to sit around & look at family photos but she whirled me around the area (what a lead foot driver!), to Lewis Carroll's childhood church, a park, historic spots. the Cathedral, & to the house my mother had grown up in & Anfield Cemetery across the road, where my granddad & numerous other relatives are buried.
The day I had train tickets from Edinburgh to Liverpool to see her this March was the day I had to scramble for a flight back to New York. I was disappointed but planned to go back as soon as it was possible. Then came her news that she was "yellow as a banana." Then an operation & daily morphine & today an email from her son with the sad news. As my mother said, She was a darling.
As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression.
~ William O. Douglas (1898-1980)
Noted defender of the First Amendment, one of the youngest-ever Supreme Court justices (appointed by FDR at age 40), & apparently a terrible person in his private life. But this is a good reminder to remain vigilant & not take any rights for granted. I'm thrilled to see the long lines of people voting!
I left Manhattan for the first time since mid-March. Robyn & I rode our bikes over the Williamsburg Bridge & hung out in Domino Park. I hadn't been to that part of Brooklyn since 2014, when we went to see Kara Walker's Subtlety, a "sugar sphinx," before the old Domino Sugar factory was razed. It was weird-not weird to have a normal afternoon of hanging out with a friend, doing something a little different, chitchatting about our lives & not about the topics that seem unescapable so much of the time.
I'm thinking about how much I hate the word survivor. "L--- says she survived sexual abuse by M---." Meaning what? He didn't kill her? She didn't kill herself? Am I a survivor of arthroscopic surgery for a torn meniscus? "As a survivor of a sprained ankle…" What else have I survived? Tens of thousands of miles of hitchhiking, my mother's cooking, family drama, 1960s TV, 11 karate promotions, the air of September 12…. I'm a survivor of B--- sticking his tongue in my mouth thinking that's social kissing. A survivor of Sei Shihan Walter's 10 o'clock class. A survivor of Miss Kleinsasser's senior English class. Of my own ridiculousness.
Because I am taking an intensive language & culture class in Norwegian, I not surprisingly have been giving a lot of thought to language, grammar, & the like. Part of it is why one language appeals or not. I think I am drawn to Norwegian because my dad was German & there are a lot of similarities, without some of the drawbacks; because it is illuminating my own language to me, in a way that Spanish probably wouldn't do; because i grew up around Scandinavians & it's a somewhat familiar world; and because some unknown spark captured me.
It's making me think about how much we can learn about early people through linguistic archaeology. Is that a real thing? It has to be... yes! Although almost every NYPL title on the topic sounds like a PhD theses. Isn't there someone who can write a popular history that connects language with history? We know who we are because we figure out who we were.
We had the word "isbjørn" in class last night, which I realized meant polar bear, mostly because the sentence said you could see isbjørner in the streets of Svalbard, an island off (& belonging to) Norway that is home to many bears. Polar bears were once symbols of ferocity & adventure, and now represent a sad outcome of our assault on nature.
It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.
~ Frank Herbert
That's pithy but comes from a longer, equally thought-provoking quote:
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.
When I lived in Maine, each of the 4 other people I lived with read Dune (the best-selling science fiction novel of all time) & got depressed, which lasted till the next person finished. That was a grim month & I skipped my turn. I know nothing about Herbert, except that it's his centennary this month, although he died in 1986.
I'm always excited when I remember to look at nature, although this odd tree would be hard to overlook. Except for snow, there never seems more to say about trees, sunlight, bugs. They have their world, I have mine.
The Norwegian word for "birch" (which this isn't) is "bjørk."
Possibly the most extravagant thing I/we have ever done is buy these two paintings. Each enhances & refers to the other, somehow. I hadn't noticed the line across the top of the one on the left (the one we bought first) until I saw a similar line on the other.
In this photo they are flanking the Wedding Shelf. I no longer remember who gave us anything except the Welsh love spoon, a gift of my Auntie May, who lived in Cardiff.
Janice Biala was Ford Madox Ford's last girlfriend/wife. I love that I have this tangible link to my favorite author. I love the paintings too—they are both restful and energizing.
I've known & loved Johnny way more than half my life. In my book about him, My Marriage A to Z, I wrote this:
Quotidian. At a certain point, the anecdotes and highlights run out. It's the dailiness—the quotidian—that matters. It's recognizing his tread on the steps of our building, knowing his exact look in some specific situation. Once I called from the other room, "Can I read you something?"
He said, "Is it the caption of a New Yorker cartoon?"
"Oh, do I have a special voice for that?"
So it seems. His knowing this one exact thing about me seems to be as important as anything else in our whole life.
That was years ago. The other day, he said, Oh wow! I said, is there a basketball game. And there was. It seems he has a special voice for that, one I recognize. It pleased me to be heard by him & just as much to hear him. This is our life.
I'd like to meet the person who wrote this. The few, the birthdayers, the ridiculous. That's me (& pretty much my whole family). Our calendar is a birthday calendar. Our song the birthday song.
I've probably posted this in my blog before, but in sorrow at & in honor of the passing of the Chairman of the Board, the great Whitey Ford (3rd Hall of Fame pitcher to die within a few weeks):
I. The Five Greatest Poets of the Twentieth Century
Hank Williams
William Carlos Williams
Ted Williams
Esther Williams
Tennessee Williams
II. The Five Greatest Mechanics of the Twentieth Century
Henry Ford
Ford Madox Ford
Whitey Ford
Betty Ford
Tennessee Ernie Ford
When Mark & I went to Mexico in 1981, I wanted to buy a toy typewriter to take with me. I couldn't find one & made do with a giant notebook. Now I own that toy typewriter, an iPad that weighs a pound. In 1981, any typewriter that could do what this iPad does was unimaginable.
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. ~ Thoreau
that's the iPad feeling, indeed.
I like it & am happy I bought it
but it distracted me for days
The relic of the tooth of Buddha (Pali danta dhātuya) is venerated at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, a Buddhist temple in the city of Kandy, Sri Lanka, in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy. It was completed in 1595. There are others of his teeth in various places, one of which, in California, is said to still be growing & is now 3" long.
I forgot I was doing the panoramic shot of my office piece by piece. This is in front of me as i sit at my main desk. So many treasures.
Today was one of those busy days of satisfying errands: biked over to the west village to drop off 50 postcards to Michigan votes (half of them done by my neighbor Louis), did a tech check for a little reading I'm doing on Monday for the Brooklyn Rail. My goodness, they have such lovely & competent young women, who are so reassuring. I got to step foot into my synagogue for a minute, pick up & drop off library books, buy the nice fluffy pita from Holy Land. Very early I went to Key Food, which continues to have Old People Hours, for cat litter & tricolor rotini. And baba ghanoush, which I don't think I like. How can I cover it up & still eat it? What about mixing it with cottage cheese, which Johnny bought but doesn't really like. I bought printer ink & a pair of pretty socks. I've been printing a lot of poems & a lot of text for my Norwegian class. And there's still some karate to come! Assuming I can stay awake for another hour.
And now for something completely different......
Laughing on Ice
Come with me & let the moonlight
turn to ice in our hands
Find the stars in our pockets
spend them on diamonds
Come with me & let ice turn to moonlight
& fall from our fingers
The endless fascination of trying to communicate with an alien. He kisses me with blinks so I know he loves me, but he uses his sharp little teeth & claws way too freely. His latest game is to moan to go out. He goes up a flight of stairs then calls for me. I go into the hall & he meets me on the steps, pushing his head into mine & purring loudly. Then he follows me home. He often sleeps nearby. So sweet ... & so many timeouts.
A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom. He fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.
~ E. B. White
I had sort of thought I would go somewhere else this week, but here I am. Hopeful!
