Motley Kamuka

Jan-Margaret Fuller- Women in 19th Century Feb-Emerson-Nature & Self Reliance  March-Narrative of Sojourner Truth & the topic of Abolition April-Frederick Douglass-his 3 autobiographies May-Jones Very & the topics of Mental Illness and Disability June-Julia Ward Howe-The Hermaphrodite (and/or HBStowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and/or LMAlcott’s Long Fatal Love Chase) July-Thoreau-Walden Aug-Elizabeth Peabody-Record of a School (Bronson Alcott’s Temple School) Sept-Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins-Life among the Piutes (ed. by Mary Peabody Mann) Oct-Nathaniel Hawthorne-Mosses from an Old Manse Nov-Thomas Wentworth Higginson-Army Life in a Black Regiment Dec-Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson (as much as we can fit in!) I'm so psyched! By March I was having other ideas. Maybe we should have read Frederick Douglass in February and focused women into March, Women's history month. But then I realized there was more of an emphasis on women, because the list was created by a woman--and I g...

I joined a transcendental reading group on Facebook, and I don't know how much I'll read along with the group, but to prepare myself I'm reading American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever. I posted the book to the Transcendental group and they went wild! Supposedly it's historical fiction, or really inaccurate history. Someone contacted Cheever, and she blamed it on research assistants. They wondered how much of it would be corrected in later editions, but nobody knew. So I read this book with a grain of salt! She says they were "seduced by the false authority" of John Brown , so I read a lot of the John Brown. He can be a saint or you can see him as the first person executed for treason in America.  There was a reference to a song about him, and that got me onto the song " Battle Hymn of the Republic " I feel like I'm doing some elementary history class, but I didn't really pay attention in history, or social studies, as they called it when I was ...

 

I liked the first season of Mandalorian and then I liked the first episode of the second season. When I see Amy Sedaris I hear Princess Caroline from Bojack Horseman.  I'm watching the latest episodes. Like the rollout of The Boys, and now The Expanse, the episodes need catching up on once in a while. Season 2 Episode 3 is the guy from Breaking Bad , telling Bosch ( Titus Welliver ) what to do, and Kara Trace has red hair and takes off her helmet, a non helmet strict Mandalorian.  The aliens are getting better, following Fascape, and Star Trek Discovery. They have a fish guy, an ant guy and a frog person.  I was 10 in 1977 when Star Wars came out. I'll have a weird desire to see all their stuff. Just like Star Trek seems to be spawning multiple shows, Star Wars is spawning lots of movies and shows. It's almost too much, but during the Great Quarantine of 2020 we need entertainment.  I feel like they watched every Samurai movie and then noted new things to try for ...

 For a while Corner Gas was on Amazon Prime, and it became my background default noise show. My daughter liked it too.  I grew up in Wisconsin, so Saskatewan wasn't too far away. Sometimes I think I might actually want to be a Canadian more than I want to be an American.  Last night I listened to Brent Butt, the creator, on the Podcast Toronto Mike . It wasn't bad, and it made me nostalgic for when I could stream it for free or without commercials. I've even watched the animated show. You can watch them both now in the USA on IMDB.  I'm so averse to commercials. Netflix and Amazon Prime have really spoiled me. I don't think my daughter has seen very many commercials.

Tale of Genji is a long haul and I needed a swift read. I read half of Hunger Games last night. Here are my thoughts: In a way it's a perfect adolescent narrative about the hypocrisy of adulthood, the contradictions of adulthood, the absurdity of adulthood. Parents have clay feet if they live, or become heroes of mythology if they die. The novel goes from natural to artificial, similar to that of the passage from childhood to adulthood. Then it's back to nature, but as an adult, it's cutthroat, literally in this novel. Susan Collins has a knack for names. What great names. A masterclass on naming characters.  Also there's a real feeling of controlled narrative. Things could expand or get obsessed with, but she doesn't bloviate. Crisp tight plot narrative. She allows Katniss to summarize what might have been off putting if we'd really gone close into her thoughts. Reading the book with Katniss the narrator, I began to think Jennifer Lawrence wasn't a good...

I Measure Every Grief I Meet by Emily Dickinson I measure every grief I meet With analytic eyes; I wonder if it weighs like mine, Or has an easier size. I wonder if they bore it long, Or did it just begin? I could not tell the date of mine, It feels so old a pain. I wonder if it hurts to live, And if they have to try, And whether, could they choose between, They would not rather die. I wonder if when years have piled — Some thousands — on the cause Of early hurt, if such a lapse Could give them any pause; Or would they go on aching still Through centuries above, Enlightened to a larger pain By contrast with the love. The grieved are many, I am told; The reason deeper lies,— Death is but one and comes but once, And only nails the eyes. There's grief of want and grief of cold,— A sort they call "despair"; There's banishment from native eyes, In sight of native air. And though I may not guess the kind Correctly, yet to me A piercing comfort it affords In passing Calvary,...

  A project for pandemic was moving the house around and now I've got all the CDs near the stereo, and I'm playing lots of music.  Mike Stern  Voices  (2001) has wonderful vocals with  Richard Bona . Turns out Bona was born the same year I was. I saw Mike Stern at Yoshi's with Brian Blade. Then I caught him at 55 Bar in NYC when I came back.  I've been listening to  A Night At Birdland  with Art Blakey Quintet from February 21 1954, with Clifford Brown, Horace Silver, Lou Donaldson and Curly Russell. Woof. Such an amazing capture. I love the live jazz recordings, with their imperfections. Tom Harrell's The Art of Rhythm is awesome.  Spotify

Tales of Genji is seen as an early modern novel in world history. Not much is known about Murasaki Shikibu . The book was written in Japanese between about 1000 and 1012 in the Heian Period of Japanese history. I'm taking a class in translation with Hidenori Jinno on EdX . It's a fairly short course that took me several days. I was expecting to complete a section but I finished the whole things. The EdX course is using the more recent (2001) Tyler text, and I have a copy of the 1976 Seidensticker translation. Yet another translation has come out in 2015. The Librivox one is of course even older.  My book is over a thousand pages, and includes artwork by Yamamoto Shunsho .  The Tale of Genji has 54 chapters. 1-33 are a rise in power of Genji chapters. 34-41 Genji's power is in decline. 42-54 are Genji's descendents Niou and Kaoru. 45-54 make a block, and 42, 43 and 44 are transition chapters. I can't imagine comparing the three versions, or the ones before it. It ...

I watched 3 movies of Sophia Loren in 2013 and really enjoyed them. They were movies from 1963/4. Netflix has 2 more. She's so beautiful. It's quite funny in The Sign of Venus , that men are swarming around her. It's as though it's OK to be a monster in Italy. It's as though they can't help themselves. In a way  Franca Valeri is the star of the movie. She doesn't find love, and everyone else does. It's a silly romp of a movie, but it has some funny dancing to jazz. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 28% Scandal in Sorrento gets 62%, also came out the same year 1955. At her height she did 8 movies a year, 1953, 1954.

I did a year abroad and studied at the University of Warwick 1988/9. One of the greatest years of my life, mostly because of rowing with my excellent friends, Rune, Guy and Paul, and finding my first wife on a trip to Russia. But that's another story.  The philosophy department at Warwick was pretty impressive when I was there. Susan Haack was there. A disciple of  Karl Popper, David Miller was there. But the head of the department was Roger Trigg . At the time, I thought his book Reality at Risk was a bit pedant, but it seems quite necessary now. The idea doesn't seem too radical--that we need an anchor, or nothing is wrong or right. So many ideas can drift into subjectivism. I remember  I cleaved towards subjectivism by becoming a psychoanalyst, for a time, the reality we believe can have more impact on what we do than reality. But I've always been a metaphysical realist. Sort of like GE Moore's common sense realism, though I could be attracted to Platonic realism ...

I've watched the last 4 seasons. Shows jump the shark usually after 4 seasons, but as a former psychoanalyst I like to work through things, and see where they go. It's not boring to see where things go after initial novelty wears off. The love people have for the show Big Bang Theory is equalled by the hate expressed. Just because they drop intellectual things in once in a while might distract people from a drama that is about people. Nerds and their beautiful partners. That is the gag, beautiful Penny mates with nerdy Leonard. Add in the egotistical autistic Sheldon and you've got drama.  America is so anti-intellectual that intelligent people are funny. Or maybe it's just a sitcom premise.  Favorite Links: All the photos in the intro Bookshelf : Little brag: I took a class with Eda Goldstein who wrote the Ego Psychology book. My previous post on an old blog