“The safest shelter”

Stefan Zweig, Erasmus of Rotterdam  , trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (New York: Viking, 1934).

Zweig knew this feeling. I think many people in November 2016 know it too.

Other Zweig posts
Destiny, out of one’s hands : Erasmus ekphrasis : Fanaticism and reason : Happy people, poor psychologists : Little world : School v. city : “A tremendous desire for order” : Urban pastoral, with stationery : Zweig’s last address book

Nell Irvin Painter on the election

Nell Irvin Painter in The New York Times on whiteness in the Trump era:

Conveniently, for most white Americans, being white has meant not having a racial identity. It means being and living and experiencing the world as an individual and not having to think about your race. . . . The Trump campaign has disrupted that easy freedom.

[No arguments here, please. I’m sharing this link because I think it’s good food for thought.]

Leon Russell (1941–2016)

The musician and songwriter Leon Russell has died. The New York Times has an obituary.

Leon Russell was only occasionally on my radar. But many years ago, I held a microphone up to the television set and recorded this performance on a cassette, Furry Lewis and Russell and company performing “Furry’s Blues.” Watch the way Russell and the rest of the band adapt to Lewis’s flexible sense of time.



The whole show is at YouTube too.

Mark Shields on the election

From his syndicated column:

A friendly suggestion to Democrats: This blame-the-customer explanation is self-defeating. We basically have two political parties; if you demonize the people who support the other party’s candidate as moral lepers and ethical eunuchs, you’re probably not going to win either their goodwill or their votes.

I always like seeing Mark Shields on the PBS NewsHour , but I haven’t watched a minute of television news since Tuesday night. I’m reading instead — Shields’s column among other things.

[No arguments here, please. I’m sharing this link because I think it’s good food for thought.]

Naomi Klein on the election

“Neo-fascist responses to rampant insecurity and inequality are not going to go away. But what we know from the 1930s is that what it takes to do battle with fascism is a real left”: in The Guardian , Naomi Klein writes about neoliberalism and the Democratic party.

[No arguments here, please. I’m sharing this link because I think it’s good food for thought.]

Local color

[For fashionistas and fashionistos only.]

Here’s Elaine Fine, wearing the dress she made from fabric designed by our friend Jean Petree. It’s a dropped-waist Laura Ashley-like dress, from a mid-90s pattern.

*

5:20 p.m.: Washing softened and shrank the fabric. The dress fits perfectly.

[We didn’t realize until after the fact that, like Homer’s Penelope, Elaine is standing next to a column. But unlike Penelope, she is smiling.]

Hot mess

Elaine and I were idly wondering about the origin of the expression hot mess . And lookit: Emily Brewster of Merriam-Webster explains.

Robert Vaughn (1932–2016)

From the New York Times obituary:

[N]o character he played was as popular as Napoleon Solo. From 1964 to 1968, in the thick of the Cold War, millions of Americas tuned in weekly to The Man From U.N.C.L.E. to watch Mr. Vaughn, as a superagent from the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, battling T.H.R.U.S.H. (Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity), a secret organization intent on achieving world domination through nefarious if far-fetched devices like mind-controlling gas.

Far-fetched? Napoleon Solo and fellow agent Illya Kuryakin (David McCallum) were major inspirations in my espionage-filled boyhood. This post has a couple of details.

Bernie Sanders on the election

“I am saddened, but not surprised, by the outcome”: in The New York Times , Bernie Sanders writes about the election. His description of depopulated rural towns with empty storefronts and few prospects: that’s much of downstate Illinois, among many other places.

Sanders also contributed to the Times in June: “Democrats Need to Wake Up.”

Frank Bruni on the election

I think Frank Bruni must have had a bug near our kitchen table for the past many months: “The Democrats Screwed Up” (The New York Times ). But he didn’t get the Bloomberg bit from our household.

I don’t want to argue here. I’m sharing this link because I think it’s good food for thought.