Mary Miller, outcast

Chris Welch, the Illinois House Speaker, is in Washington to raise money and meet with members of Congress. From the Chicago Sun-Times:

There are five Republicans in the Illinois congressional delegation. Welch said he will try to meet with four of them — but not freshman Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., whose husband is state Rep. Chris Miller, R-Oakland. Both of them are strong Trump loyalists. “She’s not on my schedule,” Welch said when I asked if he would seek her out. “With regards to the Congresswoman, I just don’t know if there’s any issues that can bring us together because she’s been focused on such extreme, extreme items.”

Mary Miller has tweeted or retweeted eighteen times today. Her latest tweet boasts about being fined $500 for not wearing a mask in the Capitol.

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We heard what we heard

On CNN, earlier this evening: “And who will be getting the first penis from the January 6th committee?”

She said “subpoenas.” But we heard what we heard, the two of us.

Slow down, CNN. Diction is everything.

“The Invention of ‘Introvert’”

A new episode of the podcast Word Matters, with help from Science Diction : “The Invention of ‘Introvert.’”

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“So smooth and clear”

To his much younger wife Livvie, Solomon looks “a different and smaller man” when he’s lying in bed, even when he’s awake.

Eudora Welty, "Livvie," in Thirteen Stories (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1965).

For me “Livvie” is the most interesting story in this volume, a Welty variation on Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. No pear tree, but there is a chinaberry tree in a dream, and a peach tree and a pomegranate tree in the front yard.

Useful reading

A ten-point checklist from Samuel L. Perry, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma: How can we spot #ChristianNationalism in the wild?

My representative in Congress, Mary Miller (R, Illinois-15), hits on at least eight of ten. I don’t know enough to decide about nos. 4 and 8.

No. 7 seems especially appropriate to consider today. Miller is in the news now as a co-sponsor of legislation to deny federal funding to colleges and universities that provide mifepristone and misoprostol (“the abortion pill”) to students. But also:

Do vaccines work?

This completely undercuts the message to get vaccinated over the last 8 months. https://t.co/hqIm4KSRW7

— Congresswoman Mary Miller (@RepMaryMiller) July 27, 2021

Here’s Perry on no. 7, “Culture of death”:

This one’s tricky cuz CN will be strongly anti-abortion. But CN will also be pro-guns, pro-military, pro-death penalty, anti-mask, anti-precautions, and anti-healthcare for the poor. The abortion stance is authoritarianism, not concern for the vulnerable.

Truth

“You’re downplaying an event that happened to the country itself, to democracy, to the rule of law”: Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, a few minutes ago, commenting on those who would minimize the events of January 6, 2021.

Parisian hand-bills

Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight. 1941. (New York: New Directions, 2008).

Strange to move from one novel to another and find a similar moment, also on a Paris street.

Emmanuel Bove. My Friends. 1924. Trans. from the French by Janet Louth. (New York: New York Review Books, 2019).

Griffy and Zippy and Hi and Lois

[“A Dirty Job.” Zippy, July 27, 2021. Click for a larger view.]

Today’s Zippy, first panel. Look closely.

Venn reading
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A leaking pen

[Nancy, November 15, 1955.]

“I’m ready for Irma’s party,” said Nancy. “Now don’t soil your nice white dress,” Aunt Fritzi warned. But things happen.

Yesterday’s Nancy is today’s Nancy.

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[Decent fountain pens don’t leak.]

Walking with Pete

I was walking with Pete Seeger back from a protest. Pete was wearing his usual 1960s–70s uniform: jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with a dense floral design. He heard someone calling his name from a window. It was a third-story window in a three-story apartment building.

Pete stepped away and climbed up the side of the building. There appeared to be handholds and toeholds to make that possible. He made it to the third story and had a conversation with the person at the window, all the while hanging on to the gutter with one hand. It looked effortless. And then he climbed down.

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[I know: what?!]