That’s what this article claims.
I didn’t realize that 2012 was the centenary of Durrell’s birth, but I will certainly honor it. He was a big influence on me for a while, but I have trouble see him as being anything but very much tied to his time, partly because he will always be linked in my mind with Henry Miller. But also, his experimentalism seems very much of a time with his contemporaries. And the ‘globalism’ of his Alexandria was the globalism of the Mediterranean, which had always been multinational because of the relative ease of sailing its calm (compared to the nearby Atlantic) waters. It was global when Alexandria still had its library.
The Devils Backbone Brewery has a beer called ‘Belgian Congo Pale Ale.’
I don’t know if this is a new beer or if it’s been in my grocery stores for years and I just didn’t notice.
But, it’s quite simply offensive.
The Belgian Congo was the scene of some of the worst and most depraved and shameful excesses of western colonialism in Africa. Quite simply, it was a horror show of genocide and slavery.
‘Pale’ northern Europeans came into the Congo and raped the land and its people (in many cases, quite literally raped).
Unless there is some political message I’ve missed (and please let me know if I have missed one), Devils Backbone has needlessly honored a terrible time in history and a crime against humanity.
It’s Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when the last U.S. was officially freed (though not to say that the goal of freedom was accomplished, even today).
I have a friend who is your classic blunt speaking, book reading, cigarette smoking, semi-alcoholic Frenchwoman.
I forget how the topic came up, but back in 2006, she indicated that she took it as a matter of simple fact that, yes, of course Lance Armstrong doped. Apparently, in France, this is taken for granted.
And yeah, the evidence is mounting. I don’t believe it, but I am sufficiently self aware to know that the reason I don’t believe it is because I don’t want to believe it.
I caught a glimpse of him racing by in Paris in 2008 on the final day of his first win. But it wasn’t until 2002 that I actually started watching the Tour de France.
I was in Council Bluffs, Iowa, spending the night in the home of a Democratic candidate for state house (he eventually switched parties, which pissed me off, because I really liked the guy). There was a tv above the bed and I turned it on and scrolled through the channels before happening on the Tour de France.
It was a mountain stage and I completely transfixed.
Laurent ‘Jaja’ Jalabert won that stage. It was a very aggressive day, with frequent attacks – frequent enough that a beginner could see how tactics and strategy played into the stages.
But Jalabert didn’t win by strategy so much as guts and desperation. He was thirty-four years old and this was to be his last Tour de France, so he put everything into winning that Pyrenees stage. He attacked and pulled in front and just gutted it out until the end.
I was hooked.
Armstrong may have doped, but I don’t want to believe it, because I don’t want that magic night tainted.
Recently, this article in the Atlantic cast doubt on the reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the Watergate break-in and subsequent cover up.
Well, that duo has penned a response.
The short version: ‘Are people seriously giving credence to the idea that Nixon wasn’t a corrupt criminal?’
Longer version: ‘When we wrote our most celebrated pieces, we did not have all the facts and certainly made some mistakes, but there’s little doubt that series of crimes against the Constitution, the law, and our Democracy were committed at the direct orders of President Nixon, so take your Atlantic piece and shove it.’
Ron Silliman muses about the various California poetry ‘scenes.’
the coffee philosopher 