Jonathan Stevenson, former staff member at the National Security Council, asks and answers a question: “Is Trump’s Foreign Policy Inept, or Radical? It’s Both” (The New York Times).
A two-part thought I’ve been thinking for the past two weeks: They have no idea what they’re doing. And they know exactly what they’re doing.
Saturday, February 4, 2017
Inept, or radical, or both?
Be prepared
From the Gilmore Girls episode “Those Are Strings, Pinocchio” (May 20, 2003). Richard Gilmore advises his daughter Lorelai: “Never be without a pen.”
Other Gilmore Girls posts
Escape to Stars Hollow : Shopping for supplies : “That bastard Donald Trump”
[How many times will Lorelai ask Luke for a pen, assuming that he’s carrying the one that he uses to take orders at the diner? Two times so far.]
Friday, February 3, 2017
Yet another Henry gum machine
Ownlife
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
This passage made me think immediately of Creon’s rebuke of Antigone: “Aren’t you ashamed to have a mind apart from theirs?”
Related posts
All OCA George Orwell posts : Antigone in Ferguson : Literature and reverence : Modest proposals : Susan Cain on “the New Groupthink”
[The line from Antigone is in Paul Woodruff’s translation, from Sophocles’s Theban Plays, trans. Peter Meineck and Woodruff (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003). For an excellent discussion of Creon’s question and Antigone’s apartness, see Diana Senechal’s Republic of Noise: The Loss of Solitude in Schools and Culture (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2012).]
Hamiet Bluiett needs some help
After a series of strokes and seizures, the baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett needs help with his recovery. To that end, his granddaughter Anaya Bluiett has established a GoFundMe project.
In 2014, a New York Times article recounted Bluiett’s earlier health struggles and his determination to continue working. The GoFundMe page says that he’ll no longer be able to work.
I’ve listened to Bluiett for years on recordings. In 2008, I was fortunate to be able to hear him play with Kahil El’Zabar’s Ritual Trio. What’s the chance that someone reading this post is a Hamiet Bluiett fan? Small. But that’s a chance I’ll take.
Thursday, February 2, 2017
Three rocks, no-release
[Zippy, February 2, 2017.]
For physical health, Zerbina rides her bike “hither and yon.” For mental health, it’s “three rocks no-release bowler poses,” daily. “Three rocks,” better known as “some rocks,” is a perennial element of the Ernie Bushmiller universe.
Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts, Nancy and Zippy posts, Zippy posts (Pinboard)
Du Bois and Niedecker
W. E. B. Du Bois, addressing the National Colored League of Boston, March 10, 1891:
Grandfather says, “Get a Practical Education, learn a trade, learn stenography, go into a store, but don’t fool away time in college.”Lorine Niedecker, in a 1962 poem:
It’s almost certainly nothing more than coincidence, but it’s a telling coincidence, with Du Bois and Niedecker both dissenting from ancestral authority.
Condensery is a wonderful name for a poet’s workplace. It owes something to Ezra Pound’s discovery in a German–Italian dictionary of condensare (to condense) as an equivalent of dichten (to write a poem). So making poems means condensing: a maximum of imagery, meaning, and music in the words, with nothing extraneous or redundant. Having always assumed that condensery is a nonce word (formed along the lines of, say, cannery), I was floored when a student discovered that it’s a word outside this poem: “an establishment where condensed milk is prepared” (Century Dictionary). Holy cow! That makes the word even better, with one kind of workplace turning into another.
Another Niedecker post
Keillor and Niedecker
[The source for Du Bois: “Does Education Pay?” in Writings by W. E. B. Du Bois in Periodicals Edited by Others, ed. Herbert Aptheker, vol 1., 1891–1909 (Millwood, NY: Kraus-Thomson, 1982). I came across the passage I’ve quoted in Russell Jacoby, Dogmatic Wisdom: How the Culture Wars Divert Education and Distract America (New York: Doubleday, 1994). Du Bois goes on: “Learn a trade, by all means, and learn it well, but Get a Liberal Education.”]
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Frederick who?
[Video accompanying the New York Times article “Trump’s Black History Talk: From Douglass to Media Bias and Crime.”]
Our president honors Black History Month: “They’re incredible people.” And: “You read all about Dr. Martin Luther King a week ago, when somebody said I took the statue out of my office.” And: “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more, I notice.”
Does Dunning K. Trump think Frederick Douglass is a living human being? Does he have any idea what Frederick Douglass is known for? And how would Trump have noticed that Douglass “is being recognized more and more”? What’s he even talking about? Like a student who hasn’t prepared for the test, our president is faking it — with no idea how obvious his fakery is. (That’s the Dunning K. part.)
Nothing about this presidency is normal. And nothing about this presidency is for getting used to.
*
February 2: Sean Spicer also appears not to know who Frederick Douglass was. Or if Spicer does know, he’s playing along with the boss. “Frederick Douglass” now has a Twitter account.
Resignation and courage (again)
Seeing visits today to a post from March 2016 makes me want to link to it again: useful words from Joseph Joubert about resignation and courage, words made for these times.
Related reading
All OCA Joseph Joubert posts (Pinboard)
Jon Stewart plays president
“Super-long tie, dead animal on head”: Jon Stewart visits The Late Show.
[As every tie-tier should know, “the tip of the tie should end in the middle of the belt buckle or waistband.”]
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