Reading
Halldor Laxness
THE FISH CAN SING
[Brekkukotsannáll[
Translated by Magnus Magnusson
Thursday, July 25, 2024
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DONALD J TRUMP
After lengthy deliberation and thought, and considering the tremendous talents of many others, I have decided that the person suited to assume the position of Vice President of the United States is Senator JD Vance of the Great State of Ohio.
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SENATOR JD VANCE of the GREAT STATE OF OHIO
When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don't have kids. Let's face the consequences and the reality. If you don't have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn't get nearly the same voice.
Now people will say - and I'm sure The Atlantic and The Washington Post, all the usual suspects will criticize me about this in the the coming days - doesn't this mean that non-parents don't have as much of a voice as parents? Doesn't this mean that parents get a bigger say in how our democracy functions?
Yes. Absolutely.
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Wednesday, July 24, 2024
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NINA SIMONE
"Four Women"
My skin is black
My arms are long
My hair is woolly
My back is strong
Strong enough to take the pain
inflicted again and again
What do they call me
My name is AUNT SARAH
My name is Aunt Sarah
My skin is yellow
My hair is long
Between two worlds
I do belong
My father was rich and white
He forced my mother late one night
What do they call me
My name is SAFFRONIA
My name is Saffronia
My skin is tan
My hair is fine
My hips invite you
my mouth like wine
Whose little girl am I?
Anyone who has money to buy
What do they call me
My name is SWEET THING
My name is Sweet Thing
My skin is brown
my manner is tough
I'll kill the first mother I see
my life has been too rough
I'm awfully bitter these days
because my parents were slaves
What do they call me
My name is PEACHES
Tuesday, July 23, 2024
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Playing
RHAPSODIES ON BLACK
Music and Words from the Harlem Renaissance
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Including:
Ethel Waters, Eubie Blake, Mamie Smith,. Ida Cox, Rosa Henderson, Bessie Smith, Trixie Smith, Cleo Brown, Ma Rainey, Margaret Johnson, Gladys Bentley, Alberta Hunter, Victoria Spivey, Eartha Kitt, Georgia White, Blind Willie Dunn, Fats Waller, August Wilson, Betty Carter, Fletcher Henderson, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS
Before I was elected vice-president, before I was elected United States senator, I was elected attorney general of the state of California, and I was a courtroom prosecutor before then. And in those roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds: predators who abused women, fraudsters who ripped off consumers, cheaters who broke the rules for their own gain.
So hear me when I say, I know Donald Trump’s type.
Daily Painting
Norman Rockwell
THE PROBLEM WE ALL LIVE WITH (1963)
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From The Kennedy Center website:
This is what actually happened to Ruby Bridges on her first day at William Franz Elementary School in New Orleans on November 14, 1960. Ruby was the first African American child to attend the school after a federal court ordered the New Orleans school system to integrate. The public outcry was so great that white parents withdrew their children from school so they would not have to sit with a Black girl. Ruby spent an entire year in a classroom by herself.
Artist and magazine illustrator Norman Rockwell is known for his idyllic images of American life in the twentieth century. But his work had a new sense of purpose in 1960s when he was hired by LOOK magazine. There, he produced his famous painting The Problem We All Live With, a visual commentary on segregation and the problem of racism in America. The painting depicts Ruby’s courageous walk to school on that November day. She dutifully follows faceless men—the yellow armbands reveal them to be federal marshals—past a wall smeared with racist graffiti and the juice of a thrown tomato. The canvas is arranged so that the viewer is at Ruby’s height, seeing the scene from her perspective.
Rockwell’s painting, created a few years after Ruby made her fateful entrance at school, was produced at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. It is now considered a symbol of that struggle. Bridges never met Rockwell, but as an adult, she came to admire his decision to tell her story: “Here was a man that had been doing lots of work, painting family images, and all of a sudden decided this is what I’m going to do…it’s wrong, and I’m going to say that it’s wrong…the mere fact that [Norman Rockwell] had enough courage to step up to the plate and say I’m going to make a statement, and he did it in a very powerful way…even though I had not had an opportunity to meet him, I commend him for that.”
Monday, July 22, 2024
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BONNIE 'PRINCE BILLY / WILL OLDHAM
“Trees of Hell”
The trees they now surround us with their girth and with their might
Prismatic saplings take particular delight
In creeping ever closer, in hemming us all in
With inherent knowledge that the burning will begin
Gasping for black air, for black anything we reach
Black punishment, black rage, black reply for all and each
My eyes they look for green among the trees of hell
There's only black and red and gray as far as I can tell
Satan did a dance with me and I danced right along
Maybe somewhat purged I'll be by making up this song
The trees have come to take back what wе took away from them
We yanked thеir roots, claimed their branches, pulled them limb from limb
We stole and violated all that would have been shared swift
We saw inherent harmony, assumed it was our gift
One tree ripped my stomach out, one branch tore my eyes out
Blowing leaves whipped and tore the skin from off my back
They held at bay the mourners and kept away the worms
Made provisions for a sense of everlasting lack
Satan did a dance with me and I danced right along
Maybe somewhat purged I'll be by making up this song
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Sunday, July 21, 2024
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J. D. VANCE
On why it's better it's better for children to watch their father beat their mother than to allow the woman to divorce (aka christian values)
This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy, and so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term, but it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages. That’s what I think all of us should be honest about, is we’ve run this experiment in real time. And what we have is a lot of very, very real family dysfunction that’s making our kids unhappy.
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Saturday, July 20, 2024
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THOMAS PAINE
The Age of Reason (1794)
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. The declaration, which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, is contrary to every principle of moral justice.
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Friday, July 19, 2024
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GEORGE ORWELL
1984
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
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Thursday, July 18, 2024
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Playing
Johann Christian Bach
WOODWIND CONCERTOS VOL. 1
Anthony Halstead
Anthony Robson, Rachel Brown, Jeremy Ward
The Hanover Band
- Concerto For Oboe with String Orchestra and 2 Horns in F Major, CW C81
- Concerto For Flute with String Orchestra and 2 Horns in D Major, CW C79
- Concerto For Bassoon and Orchestra In E-flat Major, CW C82
KŌHEI SAITŌ
Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto
When [John] O’Neill examined quality of life relative to environmental damage, his research proved that the more stable a nation’s social foundation was, the greater the tendency for that nation to overshoot planetary boundaries. Almost every nation satisfied social demands by sacrificing sustainability.
This is an incredibly inconvenient truth to uncover. It means that using developed nations as models when helping emerging countries raise their living standards to attain the minimum social foundation will inevitably, when seen from a planetary point of view, lead us down the path to total destruction.
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Wednesday, July 17, 2024
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Tuesday, July 16, 2024
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JAMES MADISON
Fourth US President
Signer of US Constitution and known as "Father of the Constitution"
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient allies.
During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
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