Heather Cox Richardson’s August 15 installment of Letters from an American is well worth reading.
Monday, August 16, 2021
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Michael Leddy“Orange Crate Art” is a song by Van Dyke Parks and the title of a 1995 album by Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. “Orange Crate Art” is for me one of the great American songs: “Orange crate art was a place to start.”
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
“Who are we as a country?”
Michael Leddy
Don’t look for premiums or
coupons, as the cost of
the thoughts blended in
ORANGE CRATE ART pro-
hibits the use of them.
Comments are welcome, appended to posts or by e-mail. I moderate comments to keep out spam, so please be patient.
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Words to live by
Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in the face of certain defeat.
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
*
Νέος ἐφ’ ἡμέρῃ ἥλιος. [The sun is new every day.]
Heraclitus
*
Every day is a new deal.
Harvey Pekar, “Alice Quinn”
*
Nos plus grandes craintes, comme nos plus grandes espérances, ne sont pas au-dessus de nos forces, et nous pouvons finir par dominer les unes et réaliser les autres. [Our worst fears, like our greatest hopes, are not outside our powers, and we can come in the end to triumph over the former and to achieve the latter.]
Marcel Proust, Finding Time Again
*
Surely, in the light of history, it is more intelligent to hope rather than to fear, to try rather than not to try.
Eleanor Roosevelt, You Learn by Living
*
I don’t really deeply feel that anyone needs an airtight reason for quoting from the works of writers he loves, but it’s always nice, I’ll grant you, if he has one.
J.D. Salinger, Seymour: An Introduction
*
I’m not afraid to get it right
I turn around and I give it
one more try
Sufjan Stevens, “Jacksonville”
*
L’attention est la forme la plus rare et la plus pure de la générosité. [Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.]
Simone Weil, in a letter
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Nancy, October 19, 1950.
comments: 4
Bush-Cheney I & II. Obama-Biden I & II. Trump-Pence I. Biden-Harris I. Yup. Republicans and Democrats. Democrats and Republicans. Think there is a choice? Iraq. Afghanistan. Syria. Libya. Sudan. More, should one care to look. And the Brits and Germans joined right in.
Therefore, in no time at all, it will always be someone else's fault. Someone else's, because that's how it works. Worked before. Why not now?
If you read HCR’s latest, you’ll see that she sees plenty of blame to go around.
Whether there’s no difference between Democrats and Republicans is another question. But all I wanted to do in this post was to point its reader to something worth reading, by a historian with a much greater understanding of the matter than I can claim.
Very heartsick to another rush to leave a country not unlike the fall of Saigon in the 70's.
And definitely lots of blame on both sides. The most appalling is not including the Afghans in the talks aka big brother knows what is best for you. Along with the R's deliberately removing it from their website.
For a most fascinating read on that area of the world, you may want to read Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game.
Kirsten
Yes, it seems that the story of our Afghanistan departure will be rewritten as the story of January 6 is being rewritten.
Thanks for the book recommendation, Kirsten.
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