Enjoyed the John Lewis essay. I must admit I lost some respect for him when he praised Hillary and shunned Bernie's civil rights efforts. I think he too was bought or succumbed to power, however he was a man of courage in the 60's and 70's.

Got some nice avocados at Trade Day this AM. Bought some non-ethanol gas for my old tractor while in town and went grocery shopping. After a week with the box scrape working the new gravel on the road, and then a few days with the back scoop spreading manure, I'm finally back to a long over due mowing. It will take a few more days to get caught up. Really it is nice to have the chores to keep me occupied and not focusing on the mess we're in.

Hope you are doing well, smiley (and all the rest of the c99 community). Have not been around much this week because of all the activities. Take care everyone.

blessing the boats

by Lucille Clifton

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

smiley and all. I have been doing a bit of reading on reading which was inspired by phillybluesfan's essay of yesterday.

One thing that puts me off from reading nonfiction is its preoccupation with what seems to me irrelevant minutiae and is indulgence that is just absurd at this time. I don't find any comfort in it. On the other hand, I want to read authors who at least try to grapple with the serious issues that we are confronting. That approach does give me comfort.

An article in the L.A. review of books brings up this question of relevance of fiction in these times.

Ghosh points out, contemporary novels have been unable to face up to the most urgent human question — that of our survival in a world where we have played fast and loose with these delicate connections. Fiction is supposed to dream up possibilities, so why has it shied away from imagining or presaging this looming reality? Novelists (and he does not always exempt himself) largely come across as self-involved and petty-minded in his coruscating analysis, busy with minute dramas while the earth is falling to pieces.

Anjum Hasan, the author of this article concludes with;

“Art celebrates life and not the other thing, not the opposite of life. And art raises the stakes, increasing the store of what might be lost,” Martin Amis wrote in Einstein’s Monsters (1987) — a collection of stories that, in evoking the everyday dread of nuclear conflagration, also sought to think the unthinkable. Can fiction do both — make beauty by upholding life as well as lament its passing? It seems like a tall order.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/world-without-end/

Another view on reading by Alice Blackhurst in the Prospect echos how I imagine many readers feel.

To say that I spent lockdown mostly re-reading would be an appealing lie. As much as I indulged the fantasy of using quarantine to re-acquaint myself with classic novels, most of them stood mutely by my bed, functioning as makeshift coffee coasters as I panic-scrolled through social media, or devoured other people’s “pandemic journals.” Though the latter came to blur into one, sourdough-flavoured unit, reading them seemed preferable to reaching back to Camus, Flaubert, or Defoe. The present moment offered more than enough stimulation. Escaping into other timeframes held not only the appearance of indulgence but demanded an internal ice-sculpture of discipline I did not possess.

Even those not in lockdown because they are considered 'essential workers' are obsessively scrolling through the available online media for information. It makes one wonder if the arts have relevance. I think so but it seems to be a notion that calls for a clearer explanation.

I was amused by this sentence;

the American writer Vivian Gornick’s essay collection Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader, published in more innocent times (February) could register as a relic of the old, undistanced world.

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/vivian-gornick-unfinis...

Things have changed so absolutely everything is called into question.

Music can still work?

of how the mechanisms of power really work in Washington was still in it’s embryonic stage during Obama’s first administration, but then 2016 happened and changed all that. The fissures that divided the powerless and the powerful suddenly cracked open wide during Hillary’s campaign revealing all the grotesqueness that is our current politics and the character of those in power who sell their constituents down the drain to keep that power.

I don’t doubt that Mr. Lewis did brave things in his youth before he acquired his appetite for power. I also don’t doubt that at the end of our lives we harken back to what really matters. Death seems to have a way of bringing those feelings into full relief. But I saw the true character of John Lewis in 2016 when he was a powerful man holding on to his power. Which, frankly, for me is the litmus test I use to judge a person’s character; What they do when they have all the power, not what they say when their power no longer can be of use to them.

Appreciate the sentimental nature of a dying man’s words as he reflects over his life, but there are plenty of other people whose words don’t make it in the newspaper, who never betrayed their people as a public servant, that I much rather honor.

I’m sorry to speak this way about what was clearly a lovely essay, but I just couldn’t reconcile his final words with the person John Lewis was when it really mattered.