New Directions turned 75 years old last Friday!
In case you don’t know who they are, New Directions are they guys who keep modernist greats like Ezra Pound (including my Cantos), William Carlos Williams, and Marianne Moore in print.
Ezra Pound: Canto LXIII
The Sixty-Third Canto, short though it is, confused me greatly.
In the first place, we have abandoned China. Well, mostly. There is the Chinese character (pictured) which Pound inserts something less than 2/3 of the way into the Canto.
So far as I can tell, it is the diary or correspondence of a lawyer (that much is mentioned: …So that I/believe no lawyer ever did so much business/for so little profit as I did during the 17 years that I practiced) commenting on the various things he has read recently – from history to current news to literature.
Byron and Shakespeare are mentioned (Timon of Athens, specifically, in the latter case). Jefferson, Adams (pere et fils), Franklin.
Bike Trails
Why am I not shocked to hear that Republicans are trying to eliminate funding for bike trails?
There’s a beautiful right by where I grew up in Florida, called the Pinellas Trail.
But maybe those GOP’ers are right. After all, surely Americans, especially are children, are currently spending too much time out doors and getting too much exercise. Because, really, Americans are in too good of a shape. We should spend less time on bike trails and more time on our couches.
New Orleans’ Streetcars
I’ve always thought that the streetcar should be brought back into wide use, mainly because it’s far less expensive to set up street car lines than to dig the tunnels needed for a subway.
This article seems to agree.
The piece talks a good bit about the St. Charles streetcar in New Orleans. I have some wonderful memories of riding that line with my friend Dzifa, taking it from her Garden District apartment to the bars and restaurants of the French Quarter.
Is John Rawls Behind The Occupy Movement?
No, not really.
But this article does posit him as a guide for how the movement might push America towards building a more just society.
Sigmund Freud
I like Freud. I understand his deep flaws and limitations as a thinker, to be sure, but he has definitely been an influence on my own thinking (make of that what you will.
The quote below gives me some ammunition, I feel, in defending that influence:
Connie Mack Running For Senate
He’s actually in.
This probably hurts LeMieux and McCallister the most. LeMieux because he will no longer have the “moderate” tag to himself. McCallister because he was never really doing well because people liked him, but just because they weren’t sold on Hasner and LeMieux – and now Mack will be the new shiny object for folks to look at.
The question now becomes whether Mack will be able to pull in the DC money that was flowing more to LeMieux and how much will state based interests put into independent expenditures on Hasner’s behalf (the corollary being whether Mack can raise enough to deal with those IEs).
Also, how much heat will he get for being married to a California congresswoman? It makes for a fine argument that he’s not really as deeply attached to Florida as he ought to be – presumably he’s spending not insignificant time in her Palm Spring district, as well spending a lot of time keeping house together in Washington. I don’t pretend to know the answers, but someone’s going to make hay out of this.
In 2014, This Man Will Be The Most Powerful Person In Florida
Chris Dorworth will become the Florida House Speaker in 2014.
As you can see here, he appears to be a combination of the kind of stupidity that gives heft to the argument against evolution (‘If evolution were a fact,’ said the philosopher of intelligent design, ‘shouldn’t Chris Dorworth have been killed and eaten by a hedgehog by now?’) and the sickly sweet smell of semi-legal corruption.
Another Reason Why Los Angeles Is Better Than San Francisco
‘Where Is Our Culture Heading?’
That was the question Warren Adler asked in this piece.
Leaving aside his pompously self-conscious and clearly deliberate, “old-fashioned fuddy duddy” voice, does he have a point?
I know that before a million channels of television, internet at home (can you believe that I used to only use it at work or in the university computer lab?), I read a lot more. Is there something to his concerns? It’s something I have wondered about before.
Of course, it is very, very hard to get beyond Adler’s irritating style and attitude, so I won’t blame you if your conclusion is ‘no, because that guy is just an a–.’
the coffee philosopher 