Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022) - IMDb… a really lovely tale in a Cinderella sort of way. Nicely done.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (2022) - IMDb

The Top 10 Films of 2022%20(according%20to%20Hyperallergic)

Hyperallergic is an outstanding source of news on the arts. This film list is a good one judging from the ones I have already seen.

10-04-2022

… HCR this morning mostly about the mounting trouble for various actors on the far right and the challenge to democracy… the noose closing around 45’s neck and the violence he seeks to sponsor to distract and prevent… it is a race to see if he becomes president before he is jailed, in which case he would never be jailed… the Oath Keepers go on trial… Moore v Harper was heard by SCOTUS… the conservative judges are flirting with giving states absolute rights to determine elections… the so called “independent state legislature” doctrine is being determined… 45 has been definitively tied to withholding documents from the government by a witness… Herschel Walker continues to melt down…

In an interview tonight, Trump accused the FBI or the archivists from the National Archives and Records Administration of planting or removing documents in order to frame him, saying that NARA is “largely radical-left run.”

… read with interest Zeba Blay’s review of Blonde… her main complaint is that it fetishize Monroe’s pain to no good purpose and that the movie was boring… H agreed with that assessment… i did not… i thought it effectively showed the appalling behavior of patriarchal males while not pandering to that behavior with highly erotic (to most people) scenes… to the extent that nudity and sex were in the film, and there was lots of both, it wasn’t very titillating, at least not to me… still, one needs to pay attention to women on the subject because they know things men will never know about being a woman in a patriarchal society…

… Sidelined No More: Reading List of Fiercely Political Women… so many books one could read… so little time… the article makes an extensive argument that women still are not taken seriously when they write about politics seriously and offers up a selection of books by women authors past and present…

Among the Washington Post’s columnists, who mostly cover politics, 57 are men and 26 are women. In the last two months, the New York Times’s opinion pages published 77 political analyses by men and only 29 by women. Half of those women-authored pieces had a male co-author.

Male domination of writing on politics in America is most extreme in the conservative press. In the National Review, 90% of the recent political analyses were by men, and the quarterly Claremont Review of Books—which prides itself on being the intellectual heart of the American right—has gone two and a half entire years without publishing a single feature essay written by a woman.

The problem isn’t, or isn’t only, a moral one. Readers are denied something by this exclusion. Sometimes women have an especially intimate way of writing about politics that’s both close-up—examining the psychology and the erotics of power—and carries an interesting objectivity and distance, thanks, perhaps, to their own history of being distanced from the political sphere.

… relative to HCR’s post above is J. Michael Luttig’s piece in The Atlantic arguing that the “Independent State Legislature” theory is bunk…

If the Court concludes that there is such a doctrine, it would confer on state legislatures plenary, exclusive, and judicially unreviewable power both to redraw congressional districts for federal elections and to appoint state electors who quadrennially cast the votes for president and vice president on behalf of the voters of the states. It would mean that the partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts by state legislatures would not be reviewable by the state courts—including the states’ highest court—under their state constitutions.

That as many as six justices on the Supreme Court have flirted with the independent-state-legislature theory over the past 20 years is baffling. There is literally no support in the Constitution, the pre-ratification debates, or the history from the time of our nation’s founding or the Constitution’s framing for a theory of an independent state legislature that would foreclose state judicial review of state legislatures’ redistricting decisions.

The state supreme court’s decision under the North Carolina constitution is conclusive under that constitution, and it is only reviewable by the federal courts and the Supreme Court of the United States thereafter for a determination of whether that decision violates the federal Constitution.

All of which goes to confirm that the Constitution neither contemplates nor permits federal constitutional commandeering of the states’ constitutions and their judicial processes. Rather, it contemplates and provides only for federal judicial review of the state supreme courts’ state constitutional decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court for consistency with the United States Constitution.

… we will know next summer how bad the current iteration of SCOTUS is… there is, unfortunately, reason to be concerned…

In the world of wordsmithing:

• I have been reading Etel Adnan’s Sea and Fog a few pages at a time. That’s how it is with poetry. I need to go low and slow. As if I am smoking a brisket, but poetically. This take on Photography stood out to me:

  Photography is akin to medieval thinking: it values the instant, is based on the microcosm, the atom which mirrors the whole, the DNA which identifies. To see is to arrest the world, to save it from submersion.

  Etel Adnan, Sea and Fog

• I learned about Eve Babitz from this article in The Atlantic.

  Eve Babitz was one of the truly original writers of 20th-century Los Angeles: essayist, memoirist, novelist, groupie, feminist, canny ingenue.

  Babitz was four inches short of that 5 foot 11, but she had other attributes that made her presence, and her femininity, impossible to ignore. Her most explicit attempt to address this challenge was “My Life in a 36DD Bra, or, the All-American Obsession,” a piece she wrote for Ms. in April 1976.

• And there was this interview with [Lisa Taddeo on Death, Desire and Her “Super Dark” View of the World](https://www.anothermag.com/design-living/14293/lisa-taddeo-on-her-short-story-collection-ghost-lover?utm_source=Link&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=RSSFeed&utm_term=lisa-taddeo-on-death-desire-and-her-super-dark-view-of-the-world “Lisa Taddeo on Death, Desire and Her “Super Dark” View of the World”) in AnOther Magazine.

  Lisa Taddeo’s Three Women (2019) was a work of devastating brilliance, flooring readers with its illuminating investigation of female desire. She spent eight years creating this compelling feat of literary reportage (which is currently in production as a new television series starring Shailene Woodley as the author). Immersing herself in the stories of her three subjects, Sloane, Lina, and Maggie, Taddeo moved cross-country multiple times, bearing witness to these women’s lives as they unfolded, exhaustively recording their testimony and speaking to those closest to the book’s trio of central figures. What emerged was a complex, candid, and deeply compassionate portrait of labyrinthine female sexuality.

  I purchased Three Women for Kindle. Anything to do with feminine sexuality attracts me. I expect to be titillated by it but also hope to be educated by it.

In the world of film:

• A review of ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’

  It’s just that modern competition revolves around the ability to claim persecution: In a land of modern strivers granted wealth and power the likes of which the world has never seen, she who can lay claim to the greatest number of handicaps and the lowest number of privileges is Queen Victim.

  A competition based on the greatest number of handicaps and least number of privileges strikes me as an apt metaphor for the present moment in America in lots of ways.

• Why Japanese Director Kinuyo Tanaka’s Films Are Criminally Overlooked

  Kinuyo Tanaka: A Life in Film, it explores the outstanding works of one of the country’s first-ever female auteurs – whose incredible and under-seen films have been newly restored in 4K. A screen icon in her own right (highlights from her incredible acting career, including collaborations with nearly all of the aforementioned filmmaking giants, are to be shown in September), Tanaka defied the male gatekeepers of the industry to carve out her own career behind the camera. She thrived in the process, delivering works that matched those of her male counterparts and often surpassed them.

  Though her directing career was short (Tanaka completed six films in nine years in total), the stories she told were vital tales of female agency and desire that were essential to the cinematic development of one of the world’s great filmmaking nations.

• Lena Dunham’s new film, Sharp Stick, seems like a must see to me, but then I am easily sold by the promise of sex on the screen. Still, this review in Hyperallergic and the fact that its Dunham, promises humor and intelligence in addressing the subject of a young woman setting out to loose her virginity.

In the World of my daily walks:

Leaf chatter as a breeze moves through the trees. Crickets. Cicadas.

In the world of art:

I liked Lucy Johnson’s - Reality Breakdown photography series.

Lucy Johnson (b.1986) is a UK artist who works in sound and visual art. Her work explores themes of the sublime, the mundane and the absurd in the human experience. She has self published two photo zines with imprint Pearl Press and her sound work has featured in The Wire, NTS Radio, Tusk Festival, Fact Magazine and Index Festival (Yorkshire Sculpture International). Alongside soundtracking her own visual art, she collaborates with artists of different disciplines in creating audio visual projects, some of which appear on ‘Soundtracks Vol.1’, released by Opal Tapes in 2020.

• A Show Traces Philip Guston’s Impact on Contemporary Artists - I have long been a fan.

  A Thing for the Mind at commercial gallery Timothy Taylor takes an altogether more creative approach to demonstrating influence, one informed less by strict historical evidence than by the curator’s creative interpretation based on painterly themes and similarities.

  

• Two Santa Monica Artists Create a Legacy Through Potlucks

  The backyard potlucks followed a consistent formula that worked because so many people stepped up to contribute and help out. Around 6pm on a Saturday night, a long table filled up with potluck delicacies — both store bought and homemade — while a drink table was stocked with wine and beer. Jon and his tech crew would set up for the artist slideshow as Kim greeted visitors in her studio at the back of the house.

  It’s always about connecting with other people. When we connect, when we talk face to face, that makes a difference.

In the world of human rights:

• Telling the Devastating Stories of Pre-Abortion Ireland(https://lithub.com/telling-the-devastating-stories-of-pre-abortion-ireland/)

  Decades on from the writing of Irish laws that caused the death and enslavement of women, the deaths and abduction of their babies, and the decimation of their families and communities, we are seeing similar laws being rewritten in America—the land of the free and a country that was once a sanctuary for Irish women fleeing shame and judgment in their country. And it’s slowly dawning on us that history can repeat itself if we let it. It’s down to us to tell the stories that help us to move forward, not back.

** In the world of politics:**

• News of the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago of course stands out. Of particular interest to me is this speculative line Heather Cox Richardson draws to Saudi Arabia in her August 11 Post.

  … what springs to mind for me is the plan pushed by Trump’s first national security advisor, Michael Flynn, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and fundraiser and campaign advisor Tom Barrack, to transfer nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.

  It seems clear that items of significant national security import were illegally removed from Washington and brought to Mar-a-Lago. We don’t know why or by whom, but the presumption is 45. We know that 45 is venal so the suspicion is that the materials were to be used for profit. Or perhaps have been. There appears to have been nuclear secrets among the materials.

  I detest the very idea of 45. That so many embrace him unquestioningly is baffling and frightening to me.

• I whole heartedly agree with this article in The Dispatch on Liz Cheney’s integrity. She is a shining example of politics with integrity. If 45 is brought down and the anti-democratic forces in this country are turned back, it will be because of her. She has changed my idea of what to look for in a politician. Integrity first, then policy. Polling makes it clear she will not be nominated by the Republican Party in Wyoming to her seat in congress. That is sad. What is it about humanity that values loyalty over integrity? I’ll take Liz Cheney any day. If she runs for president I may well vote for her because I see her as the sanest way out of the mess we are in.

• Tilting Our Politics Back Toward Democracy

  It seemed important to quote extensively from this article in The Bulwark:

  These constant struggles over eligibility and access are part of our constitutional birthright. The beauty in the story of America is not found in an uncritical adherence to the Founders’ design but, rather, in the struggle—in various groups’ demand, often resisted by others, that our democracy be more participatory and inclusive. For those who love liberal democracy, the one thing worse than letting vox-pop stars (election deniers, for example) touch our democracy is cutting off their access to it.

  Such unchecked anti-democratic actions are made possible by the toxic partisanship driving the country apart—today’s version of the factions about which James Madison warned in Federalist No. 10. More than half of adults view other Americans as the biggest threat to their way of life. Approximately half of Democrats and Republicans view the other as immoral, and a recent study shows partisans view their political opponents as more unintelligent than immoral, more “stupid than evil” as it were. These views make it easier for people to excuse the illiberal undertakings of elected officials because such activities are deemed necessary to defeat the existential threat presented by the other side.

  In contrast to this understanding of our political history as a series of deviations from a model republic—an understanding hardly convincing for the 90-plus percent of us who would not have been permitted to vote at the time the Constitution was first implemented—there is the other understanding I described earlier, which sees our political history as a never-ending struggle over eligibility and access. This alternative understanding makes it possible to look at our system of government with clear eyes to assess whether it has tilted too far toward democracy (toward becoming a tyranny of the majority) or too far away from it (toward becoming a tyranny of the minority or of minorities). Each direction carries risks.

  But pulling off a republican democracy that puts the demos in the driver’s seat will require trust and investment in the people—not an easy undertaking given the foundation of our democratic culture. But failing to do so will ensure we get more of the type of representatives Madison warned us about in Federalist No. 10: “Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, who may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.”

  We seem to be squarely in that place now. And the election deniers winning Republican primaries and state election offices with the intent of undermining our democracy out of self-interest may soon put the ridiculousness of the vox pops to shame.

  I struggle to resist the thought that people on the far right are “more stupid than evil.” I don’t always succeed. My assessment of the situation is that they are afraid of the brave new world that could be. The Multiarchy. They loose some privileges in such a world. It’s existential. It’s sad. I hope we can come back from the brink of civil war and make constructive choices. I have good and bad days on this. Like Democracy itself in the present moment.

• In other 45 related news, this observation from Heather Cox Richardson:

  It is an astonishing thing to see that a former president, the person who was responsible for faithfully executing the laws of our nation, has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

  Referring to his deposition in New York State this past week.

• How Trump’s top general worried the Hitler-curious president was seeking “a Reichstag moment."

  The President’s loud complaint to John Kelly one day was typical: “You fucking generals, why can’t you be like the German generals?”

  “Which generals?” Kelly asked.

  “The German generals in World War II,” Trump responded.

  “You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?” Kelly said.

  But, of course, Trump did not know that. “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him,” the President replied. In his version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted for his military. Kelly told Trump that there were no such American generals, but the President was determined to test the proposition.

  I remember worrying at the time that 45 would succeed in corrupting the military. It seems my worries were warranted, but then i knew that.

I think this is a good place to stop.

… 231.2 lbs…

… Heather Cox Richardson about the accomplishments of the administration, which are considerable… and yet, the people are not happy and Republicans may succeed in steering us to a one party state…

Love or hate what Biden has done, he has managed to pull a wide range of countries together to stand against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian attack in Ukraine, and he has managed to get through a terribly divided Congress laws to make the lives of the majority better, even while Republicans are rejecting the idea that the government should reflect the will of the majority. That is no small feat.

Whether it will be enough to prove that democracy is still a viable form of government is up to us.¹

… i believe in the messy multiarchy… i hope more people can look at what is going on and support democracy… i am pessimistic about that…

… last night we watched Blue Bayou, a movie centered on the deportation of a Korean American who was adopted but for whom the appropriate paperwork had never been completed… apparently there are 25K to 50K adoptees from foreign countries that have the same problem… how is it possible that there isn’t some kind of understanding in the system that it isn’t the adoptee’s fault that the paperwork was not done or done properly?… how are we so tied to the rules that we can’t see our way to making an exception for this class?… how are we sending people back to countries they have never known and can’t even speak the language?… i read the wikipedia write up on the movie and learn that a law passed in 2000 made many in this legalization limbo citizens, it did not cover those 18 and older at the time…

… i read about bird flu killing tens of thousands of seabirds… i wonder if this is something related to climate change… i read the article to the end… it’s not… i remember B warning us that the flu was going around and to mask and glove up when we cared for the chickens this past winter… i wonder about the meat birds coming… tomorrow i think…

… because we have at least one in town, this article on Little Libraries caught my attention… the trend started in Wisconsin as a memorial to the mother of Todd Bol, who was a schoolteacher…

… monkeypox continues to grow as an issue around the globe… i feel like i am reading too much about this new disease of concern… i have read it is only spread through direct contact… is that changing?…

… an article on Tony Wang in Ain’t Bad… i almost don’t click on it, but then do… wait… i know this guy’s work!… he showed at the last Salon… he showed the very work published in the article… he was testing the sequencing… way to go Tony… hope we see you again!…

… Kitchen and Coffee after a walk down Main Street… not many pictures… not much that inspired an effort… it’s Sunday so i treat myself to hot chocolate… it is a spiritual experience… i really have to try making it at home…

… published yesterday’s notes… getting ready to publish yesterday’s group of photos… the things i look at… pay attention to… Gilbert O’Sullivan, _Alone Again (Naturally)_ playing on the sound system…

… haven’t heard that song in a long time…

… signs of Beacon Open Studios around town… wanted to go to some of the studios but the heat dampened my enthusiasm… lots of evidence of people in town… lots of cars parked on streets adjacent to Main Street, where they aren’t during the week… not as many people on the street as there are when the weather is better…

… it’s no longer projected to be 100 today… top out at 96 or 97… cooler tomorrow but more 90 degree weather heading our way next week…

… some more Etel Adnan…

Within seconds, X rays and gamma rays have hit us at light speed. A cloud of nuclear particles at 5 million miles an hour engulfs everybody’s brain. We are monitoring the universe in real time.²

… i read from dot to dot… making my way slowly through the book… usually, there is a passage that jumps out… today it was the above… the idea of monitoring the universe in real time… do we have nuclear particle receptors and don’t know it?… will we one day figure out how to tap into them?… will our minds then expand to be the universe?… will we loose our selves when this happens?… will it be hive mind?… i think about how, in my society, everything is geared towards being the unique, outstanding (good or bad) individual… we are to brand ourselves… make ourselves into a recognized and marketable quantity… is this the right way to think about being?… should we, instead, enjoy our selfness quietly… i oscillate on this… being part of the fabric, undistinguished, doesn’t bring resources… it does bring community?…

… just now i am thinking about how the patriarchal Oligarchs want to remake American society… i hope we can stop them…

… paid the bills…

… edited this morning’s pictures…

… bought the makings of ratatouille at the farmers market… especially wonderful dish in the summer with fresh vegetables… i will cook it on the Green Egg with the hope that it will develop a smokey flavor on top of the oven caramelized flavors this recipe develops… i post my intentions to Micro.blog and Facebook…

…232.2 lbs…

… the dogs get me up at 3:30 AM… wanted to stay in bed till 4 but… Fiona pacing the room… i think an animal was passing through our neighbor’s yard… the other day we saw a skunk family pass through… we seem to finally have secured the perimeter of our fence so Fiona isn’t getting out and animals aren’t getting in… except for squirrels…

… H has become determined to attract humming birds to the yard… we’ve had many sightings of them this year… we have flowers in the garden they are attracted to… she wants them to come to the feeders… so far, not much activity there… we have many feeders now… she is trying to find the perfect one… i hope they come to her feeders…

… we made pizza on the green egg last night… tending a fire more bearable than i would have thought in this heat… today and tomorrow are the peak of the heat wave… high 90’s… 100 predicted for tomorrow…

… a story in Hyperallergic about a mural in Queens defaced by Sony Spider Man additions and now restored…

… the mural, “Queens is the Future,” created by Eve Biddle and Joshua Frankel…

… an article about Abby Manzella, a micro fiction writer and host of Micro, a podcast… her 400 word piece, Lepidoptera, mentioned… a story about a little girl in the midst of a pandemic… she wakes up with butterfly wings one day… a paragraph about how she writes into her phone at night to get ideas off her mind… how this one emerged almost fully formed… i think, yes, i write into my phone… i have been trying to write more… this will be inspiration…

… this from Maria Popova in the Marginalian this morning…

By the time we can even begin answering for ourselves the question of whether or not is worth living, myriad things have been answered for us by the fundamental forces that have conspired into the confluence of chance that is our self. None of us choose the bodies or brains or neurochemistries we are born with, the time and place we are deposited into, the parents we are raised by, the culture we are cultured in. Any sense of choice we might have is already saturated with these chance inheritances and is therefore, as James Baldwin so astutely observed, part illusion and part vanity.¹

… the post is about Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem, To The Young Who Want To Die… wait another day… see what’s coming around the corner… wait another day…

… i, myself, have never been suicidal… depression is not frequent with me and never very deep… i once played with suicide, as a kid, in the basement of my parents home… i made a noose… attached it to the steel beam supporting the joists of the house and carefully lowered myself to feel the noose tighten around my neck… i had no intention of swinging from the beam… i only wanted to know what it felt like… when i think back on it, i think… what if i had slipped and hung myself… the world would have thought i was sad… there would have been no clue as to why… i would have seemed a generally happy boy… i don’t think my troubles with my father had started by then, beyond his being a strict disciplinarian… there is a short story in this… i should try to write it… something involving Schrodinger’s cat… am i alive or dead?…

… an article in Mother Jones about an article in Axios that H told me about yesterday… it’s about how the MAGA group plan to remake government when they get in office… fill it with cronies… and then leave the subsequent administration with the choice of doing their own cronies make over or returning to the bureaucratic state of olden times… i think, what makes them think there will be another administration if that plan is successfully carried out?… this would be the mostly white patriarchy taking over and never letting go… this would be the end of the multiarchy… oh god, why must we contend with this shit?… 45 must never be responsible for anything in government again…

… an article about Pelosi’s planned trip to Taiwan and China’s threat to retaliate “forcefully.”… there seem to be so many ways the world could go sideways right now…

… another review of Nope further reinforces that i want to see it… H feels the same way…

… Ukraine is winning… i read the article… i nod to its arguments… it lightens my mood a bit, but, i wonder, i still don’t see the end game where Putin retreats with tail between legs… another one that could easily go sideways…

… a Jonathan Blaustein review of the photobook Kyanite Miners… i don’t share his opinion of the book… it’s slick, corporate, meant to promote the mining company… it’s competent… i don’t think it is pushing any boundaries…

… Kitchen and Coffee… the handsome bleach blond dude barista… he is less personable than the women… i wonder how women customers respond to his handsomeness?… he reminds me of a young Paul Hollywood…

… as i walk down Main Street i am thinking about writing a short story about a boy toying with a noose… i am thinking that i will write multiple stories within a story, one where the boy toys with the noose, satisfies his curiosity and then takes the noose apart and goes on with his life… another in which he slips and accidentally hangs himself… others in which various plausible scenarios play out, including that he wishes to die, is not only playing with the idea of death… could be a very interesting story…

… i am liking my return to routine and structured workflow… for so many weeks things were moving all about… i was making pictures, writing, but not in the routine and rhythmic way i am now… i have started posting titled journal entries on a daily basis… each day i publish the previous day’s entry… they are Notes On Attention Paid… each day i am posting a selection of photographs taken that day… they are also Notes On Attention Paid… it’s that simple…

… on the way here, a bunch of male sexual performance enhancement packaging on the ground… i photograph all of them… one has the words “rock hard” on it… i don’t know, sounds painful to me… anyway, i am thinking today’s image post will include a number of them, may be only them…

The starting point of infinity is always at the center, where mind resides. Behind an image there’s an image. Nothingness is Being’s foundation, put on stage by poetry, which makes the erotic and the intellect meet. It’s not life, it’s alive.²

… 231.8 lbs…

… stayed up to watch the J6 Select Committee hearing… it detailed 45’s determination that the capitol riot should stop the election from being certified by congress… there was not a huge amount of new information, but there was more flesh put on the bones, so to speak… whether it is yet demonstrable in a court of law, it is clear that 45 wanted and motivated the insurrection and that he had control of the mob, could have ended it at any time, but only did so when he saw the gambit had failed… of particular note to me was the way in which Liz Cheney reached out to women… she praised the women, by name, who had come forward to testify and reminded women of how hard they had to fight to win the right to vote… this from Heather Cox Richardson this AM…

At the end of the hearing, Cheney praised the witnesses, especially the women. She offered special thanks to Cassidy Hutchinson, who “knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump, and by the 50-, 60-, and 70-year-old men who hide behind executive privilege,” but had courage to testify nonetheless. Cheney mentioned the female witnesses by name, saying they were “an inspiration to American women and to American girls.” ¹

… and…

Speaking especially to the American women whose votes will be key to the upcoming election, she noted that the room in which they were meeting was where the committee on women’s suffrage met in 1918. We… “have a solemn obligation not to idly squander what so many Americans have fought and died for.” ²

… the committee reminded us that the threat is not over… that 45 is still trying to claim the election was stollen, still has the same devout followers enthralled and ready to go and still poses a threat to democracy…

… just posted a reply on HCR about Liz Cheney’s callout to women at the end of the hearing…

… this sculpture by Ai Weiwei is beautiful in appearance and concept…

… i read this review of Nope and confirm the already growing feeling that i would like to see it…

… an article on Crazy Kat and e e cummings is an intriguing read… i read it from beginning to end… one of George Herriman’s strips in the article…

… as i get the coffee ready for H, i am reminded of the sugar water spill she left last night… the floor a sticky mess… i get the mop out, set it up, leave instructions for how to use it…

… i head for Kitchen and Coffee… in a leisurely way… making photographs as i go… at one corner i stop to make a picture and two women in head scarves walk out from behind the building… they stop… i did not want people in the picture… one woman walks back behind the building… the other looks after her… i decide to make the picture with the woman in it… she turns at the instant i snap the picture and looks at me… i wonder if she somehow felt the camera on her… as i was editing yesterdays journal entry i ran across this…

… i think about this… divine attracts consciousness with the power of the sea’s liquid material manifestations… without consciousness, is there any divine?… the pansychic idea that everything has awareness… material at its most basic level has awareness, even if only attraction to that which attracts and in turn is attracted… this is the base level of awareness… to “know” something is adjacent…

… i am even more intrigued by the idea that she sensed me taking the picture and turned to see… i am not sure she liked that i did, but it was at a distance…

… loud talking barista is here today, though being relatively quiet… she is wearing a grey knit top and black stretch shorts down to just above her knees… i note that she has tattoos on both arms…

… the music is soft, easy to ignore… LM barista is talking about going to the pool after work…

… Etel Adnan…

In between there was Greece and Rome, but Rome’s gods, unlike Greece’s, seem to have left for good.³

… i think about this… it rings true… so much of western civilization resting on the foundations of ancient Greece, not Rome… EA observes that God “could be absolute darkness or absolute light,” and i think the only absolute is darkness, when it happens… the absence of light, the absence of consciousness… is there such a thing?… God, EA tells me, is “born out of the fear of pain, decay, or disappearance”… i nod, but my fears don’t create god for me except as absolute darkness… i reject the existence a separate from me they are everywhere and everything all at once… it is meaningless to consider God as some kind of apartness… which is the stance of worshiping, i and thou… rather… god… like the sea, is immersion, we simply can’t separate ourselves from God, if she exists… so what is worship but a kind of arrogance of the worshiper?… there is no point in naming Gods except to name ourselves… “eternity is death’s favorite name” EA tells me… “only consciousness is life,” and consciousness ends… or does it?… yes, in any way meaningful to me here and now… but perhaps not in general…

… a mother asking her toddler Ben what number he is… ten is apparently the right answer, i don’t know why… he’s a toddler, not a ten year old, so i don’t know the significance of ten to Ben… she makes a picture of him as he says to her “ten”… maybe a short video, that would make more sense… dad seems to prefer Benjamin to Ben…

… finished editing photos taken today… ran some errands to gather food for dinner and for dogs… on the way back stopped in a friends wine store and found out their son is sick… in the hospital… doctors not sure what is going on yet… they are waiting for more test results… then he told me his daughter’s dog had cancer and nothing can be done… a bad week he said… i did my best to comfort… glad he told me about it…

… chicken duties today… will plan to get there right at 5:30 as coup is likely to be hot… don’t want the chickens to be cooped up too early… some storms in the area… may cool things down a bit…

… i am delayed in my chicken duties by a thunderstorm passing through… as i am going to the car, a lightning bolt flashes in the near distance… i go back inside and watch the progression of the storm on my weather app… when it is safe i get in the car and go…

In the Films of Dore O., Feelings Create Their Own Reality

Dore O.’s beautiful, haunting work explores the juxtaposition between the mundanity of the real world and the extraordinariness of our inner lives.

Another Military Recruitment Video Disguised as a Movie

Is it any use pointing out that the first Top Gun was a ludicrous piece of shit? That it was a functioning part of the Ronald Reagan administration’s insane military buildup and aggressive pro-war policies of the 1980s?

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Over 40 Years Later, The Wobblies Is as Relevant as Ever

Newly restored documentary film, The Wobblies, making the rounds… is it me, or does it seem like there is a resurgence of labor organizing to beat back the Oligarchs?…

In this post I share an article on why Socialism is a turnoff for most of the people it might help.

I keep thinking that capitalism needs significant revision if not to be replaced by something altogether focused in a different direction. To me, it is obvious that the market capitalist system, built as it is on exploitation of resources and people, destroys as much value as it creates. Some form of socialism might help mitigate the situation and yet, working class and lower middle class American citizens have been taught that socialism is to their economic health as sunlight is to a vampire. Add to that the perception, not entirely unwarranted, that Democrats are elitist and out of touch with their issues.

Former Democratic Montana Gov. Steve Bullock has described the image of his party this way: “coastal, overly educated, elitist, judgmental, socialist — a bundle of identity groups and interests lacking any shared principles. The problem isn’t the candidates we nominate. It’s the perception of the party we belong to.”

In this post I share an article that explains the value proposition of capitalism, which is the pumping of wealth from “the periphery,”—cheap labor, undervalued resources—to the center where societies based on excessive appetite vacuum it up. The solution that is groped towards is to delink local economies by emphasizing the fulfillment of local needs with local and traditional production, while maintaining some international trade around things that might be unique to one place or another and of interest/value to a broader public because of its uniqueness, not a production cost difference.

It is important to note that delinking is often widely misunderstood to mean autarky, or a system of self-sufficiency and limited trade. But this is a misrepresentation. Delinking does not require cutting all ties to the rest of the global economy, but rather the refusal to submit national-development strategies to the imperatives of globalisation. It aims to compel a political economy suited to its needs, rather than simply going along with having to unilaterally adjust to the needs of the global system. To this goal of greater sovereignty, a county would develop its own productive systems and prioritise the needs of the people rather than the demands on international capital.

And then there was an article about the crisis of masculinity. What astonished me the most were the statistics about where women and men are, relatively, in the work force. It bares quoting again here.

Girls are now outperforming boys at nearly every level of education. They earn 60 percent of bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and comprise 70 percent of high school valedictorians. Women are also dominating many workplaces. Women today hold a majority of the nation’s jobs, including 51.4 percent of managerial and professional jobs—up from 26.1 percent in 1980. They make up 54 percent of all accountants and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs. As for men, they are dropping out at alarming rates. More prime age males are out of the labor force today than during the Great Depression.

That’s huge progress for women. It makes the blowback of the patriarchal structure even more comprehensible. Not only is the mostly white, male power structure under threat from minorities who collectively will be a majority in the country in the near future, but even more so by women in general who are overtaking men in every category. It is no surprise that there is a strong push by this patriarchal structure to overturn democracy, and to hammer women back to the dark ages where they had no control over their bodies. Thus, the increasingly draconian laws passed that criminalize abortion and the intention of the same conservatives in this crowd to outlaw birth control.

I posted one of my favorite Moby Dick quotes which I will re-quote here.

I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side, the country.

It seems to me that this sentiment, I would say truth, underlies an awful lot of significant film making and literature. Think, the Wizard of Oz (there’s no place like home), or, fresh in the theaters, Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. It also ties in with the delinking of local economies idea above. If the most important things are those that are close at hand, perhaps delinking is the way to go.

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… we are sneaking off to the movies at 3:30 PM… going to see Everything, Everywhere, All at Once… Rotten Tomatoes critic consensus gives it 97 and the audience 92… hoping it lives up to the hype…

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I feel a Jane Campion binge watch coming on…

John Keats on Film: Considering Jane Campion’s Exquisitely Rendered Bright Star

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A bunch of interesting movies that can be streamed right now…

Literary(ish) films to stream on 4/20.

Five Transcendent Films to Watch by Oscar Nominee Ryusuke Hamaguchi, James Balmont, AnOther

In a 2021 interview with MUBI’s online magazine The Notebook, Hamaguchi spoke of a profound experience he felt while watching director John Cassavetes’ film Husbands in his twenties: “For some reason watching those people on the screen, I felt as if their lives were more real and vivid than my own.” I can scarcely think of a better quote to describe the works of Hamaguchi himself. And that is what makes him the most exciting “new” director to emerge from Japan in years.

… oh man… a three hour must see film, with subtitles… argh!… hard enough for me but with H’s poor eyesight, it’s really tough on her… but how exciting that a foreign language film actually has a chance to win not just Best Foreign Film, but Best Film award at the Academy Awards?…

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The Worst Person in the World Is Among the Best Portraits of Modern Womanhood, Eileen G’Sell, Hyperallergic

Add this to my list of must see movies…

Like so many women her age seemingly basking in professional and personal freedoms of which earlier generations could only dream, these choices come with consequences that can prove more burden than boon. “The only way to learn is to make choices and live them through,” Reinsve reasoned. “Some of them will be really stupid, and you will regret them, but that’s what life is like.” In terms of what she learned about herself through playing Julie, Reinsve responded with touching candor. “By the end of making the film, I couldn’t really tell the difference between us,” she confessed. “At the start, Julie is not able to accept herself; she is so restless … but going through some really big, hard losses … she learns to surrender to the chaos of life. I learned a lot from that process — the value of finding peace, and being proud, by making choices that really make you happy. To have the courage to be in your emotions, even if they are fucked up and hard and complex. It’s the only way.”

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This looks interesting…

Museum of the Moving Image Launches Screening Series Focused on Extinction & Life as It Might Be

… The World, The Flesh and the Devil and The Woman in the Dunes are the first two offerings… both available to stream through Amazon Prime…

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This article on Letters Home, by Adolphus and Jonas Mekas catches my attention…

When Jonas Mekas died in 2019, aged 96, he left behind a monumental legacy. Widely recognised as the “godfather of American avant-garde cinema”, the auteur and poet’s boundary-breaking works propelled the New American Cinema movement of the 1960s and 70s to brave and brilliant new heights.

… it mentions Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg and Maya Deren as friends and collaborators with Jonas Mekas… i know of two of the four…

… Deren’s film, Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) “has been one of the most influential experimental films in American cinema history… the film is short and can be watched through its Wikipedia page…

… here lies a rabbit hole of substantial proportions…

226.6 lbs

… five days of weight loss… three while pursuing the No S diet approach… also meals low in refined carbs like pasta…

… it is the one year anniversary of the riot at the Capital Building… the facts available point to it as an insurrection and are beginning to detail a planned overthrow of the government… that planning continues and it is uncertain what, if anything , will be done to counter the efforts happening around the country to suppress the vote and rig the voting system… the most likely action is one flying under the radar screen, mostly… a reform of the Electoral Count Act of 1887… 45’s attempt to seize power in a way that would have the pale varnish of legitimacy was built around weaknesses in the ECA… the lack of clarity on the powers of the VP to certify being one of them… there appear to be bi-partisan efforts to shore it up… the most widely publicized efforts are a number of voting rights bills that have passed the house but are stalled in the Senate with no Republican support… some change in the filibuster rules will be required to pass any voting rights act which, at the present moment, seems unlikely… i have given up hoping on that one… and then there is the work of the January 6 Commission… it appears they will be able to demonstrate conspiracy to overthrow the government but the question is, can they do it compellingly enough to shift the narrative?… and, if so, will it shift enough?… time will tell…

… in all of this, Liz Cheny continues to be my hero for the stand she is taking… she is attempting to take down 45 and his cronies before the rabid conservatives of her state vote her out of office… she appears to be one of the few Republicans with …a spine…

… yesterday i spent much of the day trying to free the castor wheels of my office chair… so much animal and human hair was logged in them that they have become immobile and are scratching the finish of the floor in my studio… i was only able to return three of five to fully spinning order… i found replacement castors on Amazon and ordered a set with rubberized wheels designed for hard floor surfaces… if i had known when i started where i would end, i would have jumped to the end…

… we watched Matrix Resurrection last night… or, rather, H watched it and i slept through the bulk of it… alcohol has been doing me in for the last many nights… slow down on that and i might make it through an evening’s worth of viewing… my sense of it was that it wasn’t as good as the first three…

… news, via Heather Cox Richardson, that citizens are revolting in Kazakhstan… Russia and Belarus have agreed to send “peacekeeping” troops to assist… the people are fighting the corruption and poor service of their government, which is authoritarian… there appears to be worry that the protests will spread to Russia and Belarus… the internet has been shut down and there are reports of clashes between government security forces and citizens with casualties…

… ordered a cast iron pot/pan to replace the last non-stick coated pan i have in the kitchen… i am looking forward to its arrival… i am hoping to be able to make Persian rice with Tadigh in it… one needs a good non-stick surface to do that… cast iron can be mostly non-stick, but usually not completely… the advice is to use extra oil when making the tadigh… i used gift card money sent by R to purchase it… i also bought traction devices for my shoes… i had to curtail my walk yesterday because the sidewalks were slick…

… i don’t expect to be encumbered by any household tasks today… hopefully just photo editing, reading, writing then cooking will be the order of the day…

… this morning i lay in bed and tried to count my breaths up to ten… its remarkably hard to do… after about half an hour i managed it and then got out of bed… the usual routine… put water on to boil, grind coffee beans, feed the cat, take meds, let the dogs down and out… because Fiona is a clever and determined escape artist i have been escorting her out into the brisk darkness and watching her closely… i have all the holes in the fence repaired, but we have thought this so many times only to learn she has found and exploited a new weakness apparent to her but not us… it was fun to watch her sniffing along the ground, following the trails of night critters across or under the leaf litter… we all came back in and i gave them treats, which is what they are up for anyway… then they went back to bed and i prepared my coffee and came up to start the writing/reading part of my day…

First notes…

227.8 lbs

… first day of following No S diet… weight loss… it’s one day… i will see if i can keep it up…

… last night, as i was lying in bed i wrote a note… “i am beginning to imagine the unimaginable”… that is, i am beginning to imagine the United States as a failed democracy… i have started to give up hope that the ship can be righted… i did this partly on the advice of Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks, and partly out of real despair that the political stars are aligned against democracy right now…

… this morning i read Heather Cox Richardson’s posts from yesterday and today… hope flickered to life… the stage is set… a battle for the soul of the country will unfold in the coming weeks and months as the January 6 Commission makes its case to the public… and the Senate will try to amend the filibuster in order to protect voting rights… if enough people believe the findings of the J6 Commission, and the Senate passes voting rights legislation, all may not be lost…

… in the meantime, what i can do is help make sure the small levers of democracy where i live aren’t corrupted and make genuinely good information available to anyone who will read/listen… and, of course, i will vote like democracy depends on it…

… more broadly however, in the department of letting go of hope, i acknowledge that this democracy may well be reaching the end of its run… the cosmos, as Burkeman and so many before him have pointed out, really doesn’t care if democracy continues in the US or not… it simply unfolds and humanity responds in whatever way helps it survive… it may even be that the welling up of intelligence on the planet is pointed to an advancement that will have little to do with human freedom… i prefer to think not, but this is the trend of the “dominant culture”, for a few powerful elites to be in control and for the rest of us to be subsumed in effective slavery…

… i think to myself, nobody asks to live in a time when the social order turns itself upside down… i think to myself, i did not plan for my old age to be lived out in times of social order dismantling… i planned for it to run out in relative peace and quiet… i wonder if senior citizens overtaken by WW II felt this way?… looking forward to a little peace and quiet and not being challenged by the rigors of making a living and what happens?, a devastating war… as a white, middle class male, am i one of the few to have this blessing?… it did not feel that way as my life unfolded… there were certainly disappointments and challenges… but was i ever really challenged the way, say, a black man is challenged in our society?… we all have troubles… some of us from positions of relative advantage… even with that, there are troubles…

… i was thinking yesterday, why do people write?… originally, to express and communicate, to develop and record collective wisdom… i was thinking about this because i was thinking about how the dominant culture turns writing from expression and communication into a means for economic ends… we are made to believe that we must have an audience because we can’t monetize if we don’t have an audience… for this reason, we don’t accumulate wisdom and share it freely… we put a price tag on it… and because the ability to put a price tag on it means the work must be marketed, we start to see a world in which wisdom doesn’t prevail, only what is marketable prevails… words are useless if one can’t monetize them in this society… but really, reading and writing is about developing and communicating wisdom…

… we started watching Station 11 last night… central to the narrative is a graphic novel written by a young black woman… she writes and draws, but nobody has ever seen more than little bits and pieces of what she writes and draws… one day, she delivers a copy to her ex and says, “i finished it”… until that moment, she does it only for herself… this to me is the purest form of creation… work done entirely for its own sake… work done because we feel compelled to do it… that is what this blog, this Notes On Attention Paid is… something i do trying not to hope anyone will read it and doggedly pursuing it even though nobody reads it… i apply time out of my precious 4K weeks to doing it largely because i don’t seem to be able to not do it… it anchors me… it gives me something meaningful to do…

First notes…

228.4 lbs

… read two depressing articles in The Economist yesterday… one a broad discussion of how the United States might loose its democratic government, the other a discussion of how 45 stands a good chance of becoming president again, should he decide to run… i imagine he will… he has too many scores to settle… and, just like that, we are an authoritarian government… the news out of the Biden/Harris administration isn’t good… one wonders if Mitch McConnel will step in… perhaps he will help with voting rights… i struggle to maintain hope that things will turn out well…

… yesterday i began, after first notes, by reading a book rather than articles in my feed… it was a much more satisfying way to begin the day and i will do it again today…

… i have made the change over to Obsidian as my main writing app… i am refining my use of drafts as a note taking throughout the day app… yesterday, i reorganized the location of apps on my phone to reflect the apps i most use… i am feeling i have a near perfect suite of tools…

… we watched Don’t Look Up… it seemed an utterly useless movie… i understood it’s satire, it’s metaphor, but i suppose it hit too close to home on the stupidity of humankind and the present moment without offering anything that might compel change… i don’t find the present moment in time a laughing matter… H really liked it and claimed i don’t understand satire, and, as she often does, that i have no sense of humor… i have a good if somewhat dry sense of humor, but humor isn’t really what is called for in this moment…

The New West Side Story Brings the Show’s Father Issues to the Fore, Kyle Turner, Hyperallergic

… compelling review of Spielberg’s take on this classic reimagining of Romeo and Juliet…

Spielberg’s understanding of West Side Story and the role of inheritance in it (the love he’s inherited for the show, the love or hate the characters inherit for one another) is not uncomplicated. He doesn’t find a satisfying, saccharine answer around resilience the way he usually does in his characters, even though that idea easily could have manifested here in the form of María and Tony’s romance. Nor does he lean into the sentimentality of working on such a beloved title. His approach is dynamic, as shown by how he deepens (without “solving”) the story. Though evincing a classical Hollywood sensibility, he makes the personal and political violence more harrowing, their cyclical nature more tragic. The aesthetic in-betweenness — both breathtakingly old-fashioned and sharply modern — feels like his way of situating West Side Story within both his filmography and broader cinematic and political history. “Somewhere” is a utopian song, but finding a “new way of forgiving” doesn’t seem possible without grappling with the past. María and Tony ultimately can’t escape it, but can the show? Can Spielberg himself? Maybe “tonight” …

First notes…

227.8 lbs

… 24 hrs till departure… things are more or less on track… a few more dangling ends than i would like, but they should be tied up by end of day…

… we watched A Very Murray Christmas last night… it was generally good except for the patriarchal configuration which was generally pretty traditional and maybe more than a little outdated?… it contained the song Baby, It’s Cold Outside, which has come to be known in some quarters as the “date rape song”… as i was listening to it the only thing that stood out to me was the “what’s in this drink” line, which suggests to some in present day audiences that the woman is being drugged… i get that, but, as usual the situation seems more nuanced… it’s worth reading this wikipedia article which outlines the controversy over the song… it is interesting that as contexts change, meanings change too… i generally like the song and the most significant thing to me is that the woman, while resisting, essentially consents… at no time in any performance of the song does she seem out of control… the “what’s in this drink?” line did hang me up a bit… the wikipedia article explains that this line essentially quotes “a common idiom of the period used to sidestep social expectations by blaming one’s actions on the influence of alcohol.”…

… we also watched Chocolat, which was a great movie with a wonderful cast, Jonny Depp, Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin… it was a Babbette’s Feast movie except it’s more direct target was the Catholic Church entrenched Patriarchy of a small town… i look up Babbette’s Feast and just reading the Wikipedia article explaining the plot i am in tears… what a beautiful film and story… i discover it is based on a short story by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)… i find a pdf of the story and save it to Evernote… i want to read it…

… i’ve gone down a rabbit hole, one thing leading to the next… what bliss…

First notes…

… watched My Dad’s Christmas Date and i was bewitched by Olivia Mai Barrett… there was something about her that was utterly engaging… the movie itself was very watchable but we couldn’t escape the feeling that something missed a beat… a dad/daughter team navigating the territory of having lost a wife/mother in a car accident… it is two years on, Christmas, and both are still trying to cope… it had all the plot elements of a feel good tearjerker but in the end failed to deliver… neither of us could figure out exactly why… the acting was pretty good, the characters sympathetic, and in the case of Ms. Barett’s character, pretty engaging, at least to me… i looked up OMB, not to be confused with Office of Management and Budget, and found that she has not been in very many productions… i will be on the lookout for her in future, i feel like she had something…

… my main accomplishment yesterday was chicken stock… i made a bunch… H had lunch with friends so i was tied down to house, dogs and stock pot watching…

… lots to do before we leave… today i think the main thing is to get presents wrapped and sent to R and J…

What i read…

Heather Cox Richardson, December 15, 2021… about the January 6 commission and the noose tightening around the administration of 45… about the build back better spending bill and Manchin’s insistence that the price tag come in under 1.75 trillion over ten years… about a defense budget with 25 billion more than 46 asked for for a single year… there is money for new technologies while preserving money for old technologies that provide jobs to constituents…

Senator Manchin, Keep Holding Out on Build Back Better, the Editors, National Review… Manchin is the lynchpin of Build Back Better… Heather Cox Richardson reports above that he will accept a bill with a 1.75 trillion price tag over ten years… this article tries to hold him to a statement early on that said 1.5 trillion was his limit… i suspect something will get passed in the end…

Sinema Doubles Down on Filibuster Defense amid Democrats’ Pivot to Voting Bill, Caroline Downey, National Review… apparently Sinema remains a know on filibuster busting… a spokesman for Sineam:

“Senator Sinema has asked those who want to weaken or eliminate the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation which she supports if it would be good for our country to do so,” LaBombard told Politico. He said that there’s a risk that the measure gets “rescinded in a few years and replaced by a nationwide voter-ID law, nationwide restrictions on vote-by-mail, or other voting restrictions currently passing in some states extended nationwide.”

DeSantis Introduces Bill Banning Critical Race Theory in Public Schools, Private Company Staff Trainings… Caroline Downey, National Review… my understanding is that Critical Race Theory is not taught in any K-12 school anywhere… that it is taught at the college level only and mostly in law schools… this article suggests that DeSantis’ bill would not only ban something that isn’t happening from K-12 programs, but reaches up to the college level and into the training programs of private companies… that would be a huge overreach that is suspect would not hold up in the courts… so, is he proposing it without expectation of it passing just to check off a box on his expected run for President?…

Are the Parents of the Michigan School Shooter Guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter? Jacob Sullum, Reason.com… this article argues that they may have been negligent, but that their actions, or lack thereof, do not rise to Involuntary Manslaughter… i suspect the author is correct on this point and so, this case becomes an argument for tighter gun control laws…

The Attempted Republican Coup Should Be the Democrats’ Leading Message. A. B. Stoddard, The Bulwark.… i agree wholeheartedly with the opinion expressed in this article and have for some time… the threat to Democracy is the number one issue that needs to be dealt with…

The events of January 6 were clearly planned and coordinated to some extent—to what extent we have yet to learn. And the same is true of the post-coup cover-up.

Republicans must be made to answer for these facts at the next election. For two reasons: If they are not made to answer for it in 2022, then they never will be. And if aiding and abetting a coup doesn’t prove to be a political liability, then such attacks will be incentivized in the future.

‘West Side Story’ and the American Melting Pot. Christian Thrailkill, The Bulwark… a glowing review of the new movie by Spielberg, though i already knew i wanted to see it… this was one of my favorite films growing up as i have always beens a sucker for stories of romance against the odds… accomplishments of any kind against the odds really…

Aleksei Navalny: The Man vs. The Symbol. Benjamin Parker, The Bulwark… this article is interesting… heroes are rarely pure as the driven snow, often, far from it… we work with the heroes we have is the point of the article… it also gets me thinking about any kind of accomplished individual that has broken ground in new or courageous or new and courageous territory… humans are imperfect creatures, to say the least, and society moves forward none the less, often carried by heroes with major flaws…

Does it degrade the thoughts of Navalny’s fans, employees, and followers to support such a man? It’s tempting, especially for Americans, to argue that racism and xenophobia ruin even the most vigorous advocacy for human and civil rights. But Russia has no equivalent of the 1619 Project. They went through a period of iconoclasm in the 1990s, tearing down Lenins and Stalins all over—and then they stopped.

Perhaps one day, Russians will have the luxury of arguing over whether to dismantle statues of Navalny for his manifestations of bigotry. But that luxury is, at this point, so far in the future that it is hard to even imagine. It would mean that democracy in Russia is so entrenched, so stable, so unthreatened that it would no longer need reminders of his sacrifice. Perhaps before we worry about whether or not a man such as Nalvany deserves statues, we ought to get to a place where erecting a statue to him is an option.

Where’s the beef? Brent Orrell, The Bulwark… it strikes me as significant that this article is published in The Bulwark, a conservative leaning publication created at the beginning of the Trump Administration by conservative journalists who could not abide Trumpism and still can’t… there are some particularly interesting acknowledgements in the article:

Over many decades, the American economy has depended on a seemingly endless supply of workers (documented and not) willing to work for the sometimes parsimonious wages on offer in our advanced, globally-integrated, highly competitive, and skills-biased economy. If employees didn’t like conditions, well, there was always someone else anxious to take the work. Just five years ago, McDonalds had 50,000 applications lined up for 13,000 jobs.

… note the in parenthesis part about workers, documented and not… i have long thought there was conservative hypocrisy on the issue of immigration and that their protestations of loose border policies had more to do with ensuring an undocumented (and therefore cheap) flow of workers into the country… that is how it looks to me anyway… sure, we need well controlled borders and immigration policy is a mess… but part of the reason for the mess is our unacknowledged dependence on undocumented labor… again, my opinion…

But it goes beyond just working conditions and into less tangible, but no less real, issues with how the people who do this work are viewed and treated. Meatpacking jobs were (and are) disproportionately held by undocumented, refugee, and other immigrant workers in mainly conservative, rural states that left workers exposed to employer and government pressures and community indifference during the opening chapters of the COVID crisis. (emphasis added) The status of these workers as essential “outsiders” aggravated long-standing problems in an industry that had come to take access to a continuous flow of cheap labor as part of its business model.

… and then there is this:

We didn’t get here overnight. As one meat processing plant manager commented to NPR a few years ago, “Workers are really cheaper than machines. Machines have to be maintained. They have to be taken good care of. And that’s not really true of workers. As long as there is a steady supply, workers are relatively inexpensive (emphasis added)”, a quote that summarizes the situation better than anything else could. No doubt the market will eventually bring wages and working conditions into balance with supply and demand. For now, we know the answer to the age-old question, “Where’s the beef?”

… inflation has become a big worry… as we are mostly on fixed income at this point, i am certainly not a fan of it… but to the extent it is about better wages, working conditions for workers, and a rational immigration policy, i am happy to learn to live with higher prices for the goods i purchase…