NYT commentary

Better late than never: The New York Times has a running commentary on today’s impeachment hearing, with seven reporters. Very helpful.

Thuggery

Watching Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony (on my phone, while getting an oil change), all I can think is thuggery, thuggery, thuggery. Complete with witness intimidation in real time! How much longer will this president’s enablers permit his thuggery to continue? As long as it takes, I fear.

Toni Morrison’s pencils

Toni Morrison, from a 1993 Paris Review interview:

What is the physical act of writing like for you?

I write with a pencil.

Would you ever work on a word processor?

Oh, I do that also, but that is much later when everything is put together. I type that into a computer and then I begin to revise. But everything I write for the first time is written with a pencil, maybe a ballpoint if I don’t have a pencil. I’m not picky, but my preference is for yellow legal pads and a nice number two pencil.

Dixon Ticonderoga number two soft?

Exactly.

[From Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (dir. Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, 2019). Click for a larger view.]

No Ticonderoga in the documentary. That’s a Paper Mate SharpWriter. But it is a no. 2.

Related reading
All OCA pencil posts (Pinboard)

Nancy’s blog

[Nancy, November 15, 2019.]

Click here to learn more!

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

Ben Leddy hosts The Rewind

Here’s the latest installment of WGBH’s The Rewind, “War Photography and Public Domain,” hosted by our son Ben. You can find all episodes of The Rewind at YouTube.

Planet Madeleine

[Click for a larger treat.]

When we journeyed east a couple of weeks ago, our friends Jim and Luanne had madeleines for us. Homemade madeleines, Jim-made madeleines. They were great — slightly spongy and deeply flavorful, with a touch of lemon. This picture makes me think of Jim and Luanne, and their friendship, and, uhh, madeleines.

Related reading
All OCA Proust posts (Pinboard) : Madeleine, the word

Two Frosts

From my story “The Poet,” in which Robert Frost visits the Lassie world:

Timmy had been right: Mr. Frost was an old poet. He looked tired. Even his clothes — a baggy shirt, baggy pants, a tattered scarf, and a rumpled jacket — looked tired.

Here’s Frost in a short documentary, heading off to a reading:


[From Robert Frost: A Lover’s Quarrel with the World (dir. Shirley Clarke, 1963). Click for a larger view.]

Granted, there’s no scarf. But I think I must have seen this film years before I wrote the story. Either that or I’m just good at imagining tired old poets.

Object vs. subject

I’m impressed by William Taylor’s distinction between Ukraine as object (a nation to be exploited, manipulated) and Ukraine as subject (a nation seeking to exercise agency, autonomy).

Everything George Kent and Ambassador Taylor have said this morning is a rebuke to the clownish lies and obfuscations of those seeking to defend Donald Trump. High seriousness is winning the day here.

NYT commentary

The New York Times has a running commentary on today’s impeachment hearing, with eight reporters. Very helpful.

[But so far: no mention of George Kent’s dangerously uncapped Nalgene water bottle.]

Gods and mud

I was in a colleague’s house, standing in the kitchen next to a salad bar where you weighed your plate to determine how much to pay. Then I walked downstairs to an event sponsored by my department. The gist of it: each participant, faculty member or student, chose the identity of a god and rolled around on a floor full of mud. Jesus, predictably, was already taken. “What about the Father and the Holy Spirit?” I asked. “Are they still available? Because it’s one God in three Persons. Write this down: A question from Thomas Aquinas.” I stripped to my T-shirt and underwear but couldn’t bring myself to roll in the mud, so I walked back upstairs to dress. I had two or three shirts to choose from. A friend from high school was standing next to the refrigerator. “We should really try to stay more in touch,” I said.

This is the seventeenth work-related dream I’ve had since retiring, and the first about a service activity. The others have been about teaching: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16.

[Playing god and rolling in the mud might both be considered elements of academic life. In waking life I did neither.]