First I read some Tolstoy, then I made a list of editorials I wanted to read from the last month. Dude, then I read them! The first one I read was about Spirit Photography, where photographers used very juvenile photo tricks to great effect: the living shared the frame with the dead. This picture is an "anti-spirit" self-portrait, which I thought was interesting. E. Buguet, having admitted to the fradulent practice of his darkroom manipulation, began taking photos that mocked Spirit Photography. There's something about a guy using simple photographer's tricks to first woo the public, as a medium would, and then mock them ostentatiously that fascinates me. Usually people go one way or the other, but both? It says a lot about our culture now, let alone the late 19th century.
I also read an article on Peter Viereck, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, and the first conservative. I didn't know it, but Bush and his cronies are considered Neo-Conservatives (or NeoCons). One thing I really liked about this guy is this comment he made on realism (Realism?): "Reality is that which, when you don't believe in it, doesn't go away." Not sure I agree, but it has a certain ring to it. A ring of what, I don't know. At the time he said he was a conservative, 1940, the word had bad connotations. He gave the word a good connotation, at least for a bit. Conservative coincided with reactionary. Which is hard to imagine. But among my friends, and among most of the people to which I acquiesce, the word is very reactionary. I think it was the same for Viereck. This historian put it best: "They [people like Viereck] are uncomfortable with democracy, if democracy means majority rule. They think majorities are mostly wrong. They're happiest when they are being denounced. They know they must be right then." I guess it's best to consider him the first liberal who considered himself a conservative.
Read about the comedian Sarah Silverman, whom you may remember as the girlfriend of Jack Black's roommate in 'School of Rock'. Which reminds me that I want to see
this. Here's one thing I laughed pretty hard about. I mean, I was cracking up. "'Everybody blames the Jews for killing Christ. And then the Jews try to pass it off on the Romans. I'm one of the few people who believe it was the blacks.'" Everything she says is offensive and funny. So she's at least in the right field.
What else did I learn - do you want to know? That Noah Webster, the star of "An American Dictionary of the English Language, " was a hater. No joke. Here's his definition of people:
People, n...
2. The vulgar; the mass of illiterate persons.
I would have said humans, you know - everybody. But to each his own, I guess. Here's what I took from the article. The slave revolts, like Amistad and Madison Washington, were instrumental in getting the gag rule, which I didn't even know about, voted down. The gag rule prohibited any member of the house from discussing slavery, either for or against, but mainly for those against. With the slave revolts some 7,000 members of the house had the courage to speak up, in a sense. That's not entirely uninteresting.
Next I read an article called "Breaking Ranks" about Brent Scowcroft, a sobering realist in the line of Viereck who is opposed to Bush but 'crazy about' his father. That's right, those are
his words. I'm not sure what he does now, but during the first Bush Administration he was the foreign-policies expert, like Condeleeza Rice is supposedly today. He believes the US must act out of self-interest and never out of strict concern for morals. E.g. he winces at Bush's phrase 'evildoers' and 'axis of evil.' A couple of years ago, I would have disagreed with him on principle. Basically, and he's obviously right, he says, "'There are a lot of places in the world where injustice is taking place, and we can't run around and fix all of them.'" Are we naive enough to think the US ever actually acts out of sympathy or altruistically? There is one supposed recent example: the US involvement in Somalia during the first Bush Admin, when we sent troops over to feed starving civilians. The truth is we wanted to appear humanitarian because of accusations that the US was acting out of self-interest. In essence, as Scowcroft put it, "'The United States acted selflessly out of self-interest.'" That sounds about right.
I read "The Children" by William Trevor about the remarriage of a father to his daughter's best -friend's mother, after his wife dies. (Did you follow that? Try harder) They end up not remarrying because the girl whose mother died needed to cherish the memory of her mum. It wasn't a bad story, I guess. I was just so subtle. It opened with a
nice picture though. I'll post one of her pictures above, if you're lucky.
I also learned that Hemingway had a huge penis, though that was only an aside in a rather boring article entitled, "The Spanish Prisoner: When Hemingway and Dos Passos went to war." How did I learn that Hemingway had a huge penis? One of his women, Martha Gellhorn, had vaginoplasty to stretch herself out. And here I thought vaginoplasty involved gender modification. Silly. Anyway, it was about the Spanish Civil War, which I knew, and still do not know, anything about. Russia? Franco? Class War? Ballsacky?
Next up: food!
