Motley Kamuka

  The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had by Susan Wise Bauer . It promotes self education and then summarizes the major writers and thinkers through time. I can't read such a book through, but it's fun to page through. I suppose this is where I am at the moment. I read through Shakespeare and keep this motley kamuka blog to document my travels.  I was surprised she didn't mention Margaret Fuller. She doesn't see Thoreau as a naturalist, but as the Anti-Franklyn, making lifestyle suggestions. No entry for Emerson. Can't read this book. Only 3 of the 44 major works of  Shakespeare? I suppose it's easy to criticize, but really lost interest in this book. Links to all things ancient Greek and Roman: Documentary: Lifestyles in Ancient Greece  (YouTube) Hadestown on Spotify:  https://open.spotify.com/album/1J1yxODbNlqKbwRqJxYJUP

My decision to follow Transcendentalism for 2021 , as much as I can stay on any topic, author, movement or genre, has been met by 2 amazing shows. I have written about Dickinson , which has easily rocketed to my top 10 favorite shows.  Now, at the recommendation of a friend, I have found The Good Lord Bird . Hawke is wonderful as John Brown, combing his beard with his fork at Frederick Douglass' dinner table.  Daveed Diggs is great as Douglass. These two shows are amazing.  In the disappointing Susan Cheever book on Transcendentalism, she can't get over the murders orchestrated by John Brown, but in my readings I have a hard time forgetting the head blown off a slave who went into a river in an attempt to avoid punishment, as reported in the Frederick Douglass biography. I almost tried to read Cheever's book on sexual addiction, but I've given up. But not before in paging through and reading that I got to disturbing idea that sexual addiction in men is like Bulimia. Y

My daughter is really into My Friends Tigger and Pooh . The show was #1 for children 2007-9. I got out my old books that are a relic of my childhood and she was looking at them. She liked the map of the 100 Acre Woods . Here are some sentences I found interesting in Milne's Wikipedia entry : "One of his teachers was H. G. Wells " He got a degree in mathematics at Trinity. He was good at cricket: "His teammates included fellow writers J. M. Barrie , Arthur Conan Doyle and P. G. Wodehouse ." "On 7 July 1916, he was injured in the Battle of the Somme and invalided back to England." "During World War II, Milne was one of the most prominent critics of fellow English writer (and Authors XI cricket teammate) P. G. Wodehouse, who was captured at his country home in France by the Nazis and imprisoned for a year. Wodehouse made radio broadcasts about his internment, which were broadcast from Berlin. Although the light-hearted broadcasts made fun of the G

Live Your Life So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.  Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death,  so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to liv

I want a dirty Anniken poncho. I showed my daughter the original Star Wars: A New Hope. She asked why the guys got married at the end. They were getting medals for saving the rebel cause.  In the second one I tried to video tape her finding out Darth Vader is Luke's father. She wasn't having it, and I think I distracted her because she wasn't even following it close enough to register shock. I showed her videos of kids being shocked, but she wasn't interested. In the 3rd one she walked away, abandoned the ending of the trilogy at the Ewok party. Maybe she was too young. I couldn't even get her to watch prequel trilogy. Rewatching the Star Wars, I realized I don't think I saw the middle three movies when they came out, only later with my sons.  In Community, Abed makes fun of the midi-chlorians , but I just heard for the seemingly the first time that they are a symbiotic species. That makes it much more interesting.  Anniken blows up the power supply to take down

I love chess, and now play every day with people all over the world. The world has really changed since I was born. I love the Petrov's Defense: Urusov, Lichtenhein Defense. I just beat someone in 5 moves. I have tutored kids. I love forks and pinning a piece protecting the king. My rating went down when I got Covid. I wonder if it's also documenting my cognitive delays. I also had difficult breathing but I just kept pushing and pushing walking and I think that's gone away. 1079 was my peak rating, and I sunk to 862 rating. The flat line is when I was doing blitz instead of rapid because I wanted to speed up my game a little by playing games with less time. Sometimes my desire to play is stronger than my desire to protect my rating. I think that accounts for the dip at the end there.  I don't play after 5pm, usually even after 330, because I get tired at night. When I don't care about my rating and want to play in the evening I do. My rating is so low, I know it'

I want to read that one. My daughter's last year of preschool, next year is kindergarten, is doing a focus this week on the author Jan Brett  (Wikipedia). Her  personal website  links to her YouTube channel where she teaches others to draw and reads her books. The Mermaid is amazing, I love it.

In the show Rita, I was struck by Hjordis' husband calling fooling around in bed, to take a tumble.  I thought about that song: I'll tumble for ya by Culture Club . Now I'm listening to "Wait for till the midnight hour/ that's when my love come tumbling down." Google (Oxford) defines it: fall suddenly, clumsily, or headlong.

Flannery O'Connor  (1925 - 1964) is a southern gothic writer.  Alice Walker grew up on the farm next to her. She went to Iowa Writers Workshop and spent time at Yaddo, but retired to the family farm rural Milledgeville Georgia when she found out she had Lupus. She grew up in Savanna, spent some time in Atlanta, even lived in NYC for spell. She lost her father when she was 12. Wise Blood is a novel about weirdos and misfits, and the skulking presence of Christianity. I need to see the John Huston movie based on it. They picked him to make it because he was an atheist. He's quoted as saying after it was done, wistfully, it was about Christianity. American Masters has a wonderful 120 minute documentary on Flannery. We're on a first name basis. These things are available in ephemeral ways, and go behind firewalls unexpectedly, so watch it if you like the history of American writers or are interested in well crafted art that somehow transcends. They want you to buy the DVD for

" The critic Irving Howe cracked that the “cruelest thing anyone can do with ‘Portnoy’s Complaint’ is to read it twice.” Howe had it all wrong. Roth turned self-obsession into art. Over time, he took on vast themes—love, lust, loneliness, marriage, masculinity, ambition, community, solitude, loyalty, betrayal, patriotism, rebellion, piety, disgrace, the body, the imagination, American history, mortality, the relentless mistakes of life—and he did so in a variety of forms: comedy, parody, romance, conventional narrative, postmodernism, autofiction. In each performance of a self, Roth captured a distinct sound and consciousness. The tonal and stylistic road travelled from Roth’s “Goodbye, Columbus” to his “Sabbath’s Theater” is as long as that from Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” to his “Interstellar Space.” There are books among Roth’s thirty-one that I have no plans to revisit—“Letting Go,” “Deception,” “The Humbling”—but in nearly fifty years of reading him I’ve never been bored."

I follow Emily Nussbaum on Twitter because I like her writing on TV shows in the New Yorker, and I met her once, and it gives me some erzat feeling of hanging out with the literati of NYC.   She asked the question, what oral history are you wanting? Someone said Styx and someone posted a book (sadly out of print) with a mini review: "It gets bogged down in the latter half, but the story of their rise, the payola involved, and the rise of Denis DeYoung as the creative leader was really interesting." I started listening to Styx. Then I created an 80's kitsch playlist of songs I almost like but don't, and I listened to them a million times on classic rock radio.  I met Richard Davis in Madison, so it wasn't all pop glop. I moved to NYC in 1990 and never looked back at classic rock, except when I was on a road trip and that's the only kind of station you can find sometimes. I know, I play podcasts and whatnot not, have finely curated playlists, but somehow I thin

  My friend recommended this 6 book series. It starts off on a meditation on death, and hiding death. It has a vivid memory of being a kid. He talks about being a father and comes to the conclusion, "I am probably as far from the person I aspire to as possible." This autobiographical novel is starting to grow on me. Knausgaard is like Roth , nothing is off limits, but Karl Ove doesn’t think his shit doesn’t stink, nor does he worry about his reputation after he’s dead. 

They destroyed the team who's mascot is heels. The Badgers broke Obama's brackets, and will play his choice for winning it all--Baylor Sunday at 245PM. Meanwhile the Inter Milan game is postponed due to Covid. Opse, meant for sports blog .

 2019 2010 Thinking about moving to New Mexico in 2-10 years. Is the crime rate about poverty?  Pecos tribe used to live in Santa Fe.

 

 

Gift by Leonard Cohen You tell me that silence is nearer to peace than poems but if for my gift I brought you silence (for I know silence) you would say "This is not silence this is another poem"  and you would hand it back to me.

Seems like she could fight off a swan.

"Texas governor Greg Abbott says that if coronavirus spreads further in his state, it will not be because of his order to get rid of masks and business restrictions, but because President Biden is admitting undocumented immigrants who carry the virus." ( Heather Cox Richardson ) When did Republican politicians become such obviously pikers who can only perform flip the script bullshit? I had to unfriend four rabbid high school classmate because that's all they did.  Worse is people refusing to take the vaccine because they want to sabotage Biden. Sad world. It's more important to poison the well than it is to protect other Americans. That sums up Republicans in a nutshell. Why haven't they decided to all use cocaine. That would up productivity, and improve the all important bottom line. The mind practically sprawls with modest proposals .

"I’ve studied the video from the Los Angeles show, frame by frame, many times, trying to figure out what is even happening with their hands. It all seems vaguely impossible. Beck is slouched, barely moving his wrists, creating an entire soundscape from flurries of drum strikes; DOMi sits straight-backed, each hand working through more overlapping ideas than you’d think one person could have brain space, let alone fingers, to execute. When they finish, the crowd erupts, and DOMi puts her phone up to the mic to amplify a series of fart noises — an introduction to the next song, which is called “Bathroom,” because, Beck explains, that’s where they wrote it."  Ryan Bradle in NY Times about THIS . Someone wrote in the comments, "They sound like two kids who stumbled upon some magical radioactive shit in the woods that gave them jazz superpowers and they’re just fucking around and figuring out what they can use them for"

 "To emerge from the repression of a repression constitutes an unheimlich for a woman in our society." p. xiv-xv. Looking up a word led me to the Emily Dickinson lexicon . Turns out Daneen Wardrop is also a poet Name name is a windy thing quiet down a hall                             leaks through hinges does it want to be caught? I don’t know, tipped fangs, fire-points—                                         want to be caught? I think people bundle a name with them from place to place in a basement, a bottle of wind a bottle of turn-it-over I have so much holler in me

Cut the cord but probably watched more TV online without commercials. I hate commercials, except they do give you time to go to the bathroom, and hunt for snacks. Well, cost cutting measures by the person I was leeching off, no Netflix, no Amazon Prime. Down to Disney Plus and I've already seen Mandalorian and I can't get into WandaVision. Star Wars Rebels isn't bingeable to me, but I'm slowly chipping away at the cannon. Someone mentioned My Boys on Twitter, and I remembered I loved that how. I love the ensemble romcom. I've spent time in Chicago. I like sports. But it's on Crackle and I get commercials. Ugh. Now I know the Trulicity guy . Yikes. I'm worried the meat commercials are going to challenge my veganism. I'm getting squeezed in more than entertainment, food is scarce. But if you believe in truth in advertising, the soughdough king only has one patty unlike the ad that has 2, and is 2 for $6 in NYC, not $5. Another problem is that Crackle unf

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. I'm reading the  David W. Blight biography, which is absolutely gutting. Links: Wye House  (Wikipedia) 5 min video intro  (YouTube) animated photos they have come out with lately (Reddit)

Watching the movie American Beauty, I realized white supremacists can collect artifacts that they must keep secret, except during the Trump years when it was OK to come out of hiding.  The family of  Theodor Seuss Geisel , who make a lot of money from publishing his books, decided pull 6 racist titles :  “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street”, “If I Ran the Zoo” “McElligot’s Pool,” “On Beyond Zebra!,” “Scrambled Eggs Super!,” and “The Cat’s Quizzer." I have read Go Dog Go so many times now my eyes bleed. My mother said she read The Sleep Book more times than she would have cared to. Clearly the non-racist books are still classics. What people are objecting to is the family deciding not to publish 6 books that most people don't read.  I think I read the first one and wondered at one of the photos.  Now I'm imagining white supremacist rushing out to buy the book. Of course the death cult lying red herrings party has  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy reading Gr

The Old Drift is Ms. Serpell’s first novel. There are a lot of words I googled, and there was no entry that fit the word.  review hopefully to come Links: Some complaining about the inaccessible language  (Reader Witch) No spoiler review . (The Man of Words) "Complicated, untidy, brilliant, chaotic and happening all the time everywhere so much. It may not be the future some readers were expecting and it’s almost certainly not the “genre” you had in mind, but it’s doors are wide and welcomingly open and trust me, what’s inside is absolutely worth the journey." Won the Clarke Award (Guardian) Victoria Falls (Wikipedia) David Livingston (Wikipedia)

I found books for Firefly. Not sure of their quality but I'm going to read the first one. I guess I'm enjoying the umpteenth rewatch so maybe I'll give the books a try. There are 5. The show came out in 2002. I watched it after it came out, and have watched it again a few times. But, I hardly remember it! Nobody told me one of the benefits of getting older was that you could watch your favorite TV shows every few years again like they were new. Some of the vocab, since now I could see it in print: Gubbins—scraps Ya ma de—fuck Khazi—toilet Dong ma—understand Gorramn --A conversion of the words "God" and "Damn" gǒu shǐ --canine excrement, dog poo, bullshit I am having trouble reading it, I've stalled on p. 80. Rewatching on Facebook, no Netflix or Amazon Prime, my malicious ex is squeezing me. Loved the Christina Hendricks episode entitled "Our Mrs. Reynolds". Love her character in general and her beautifulness. Saffron: "I do know my Bi

Lawrence Ferlinghetti died at the tender age of 101. I read the Beats in my 20's, and at some point found them to be a bit sloppy. I liked their revolutionary message, but I didn't experience their writing as exact or sublime. I thought it was cool that Kerouac was inspired by Bird. I saw Ginsberg on the street when I lived on 12th street, but I never talked to him. Ferlinghetti had a bookstore and a publishing company, so his support of the arts was also a bit like Emerson of the Transcendentalist, he supported the movement in many ways, as well as being one of the movements most articulate examples. He was probably the most educated of the beats with a Ph.D from the Sorbonne. His first poetry book sold over a million copies, which is quite a lot for a poetry book in 1958. Here is a poem from that book that I read today.  I am Waiting (1958): I am waiting for my case to come up    and I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder and I am waiting for someone to really discover Americ