The Good Lord Bird

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. Yikes. I'm not trying to throw up people, expel them. I don't think anyway.

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Manet and Degas

Brilliant video explaining the exhibit. Go to the Met and see the exhibit! It's really quite special. In the last gallery the painting this sketch is based off of, of the execution of a Mexican president. The painting has been cut into sections, and the surviving Degas has reassembled them. NY Times review

Silo

This is a dark show that I'm reluctant to watch. Slow burn with reveals along the way. Lots of padding and important small details you have to pay attention to, which sometimes I don't because I'm looking at my phone. The TV competes with the phone. Either I'm playing chess, or another game, or surfing for news about my favorite soccer team NYCFC. They're supposed to sign some new players and can register them tomorrow, but the team usually doesn't do things in a timely way, they're messy. The first few episodes of the 10 episode first season are about the sherif and his wife, played by Rashid Jones . Then there's like a buffer action episode where the generator almost goes kaput. Then it becomes Longmire, a woman sheriff who doesn't know the protocols and rules, and doesn't care, she just wants truth and answers. Everyone lives in the Silo, it's huge and mysterious and you can't have relics, things from the past, that might clue you i...

Introduction

Robert B. Palmer's introduction to his translation of Walter F. Otto's Dionysus: Myth and Cult (p. ix-xi) Gods of Hellas, gods of Hellas, Can ye listen in your silence? Can your mystic voices tell us Where ye hide? In floating islands, With a wind that evermore Keeps you out of sight of shore? Pan, Pan is dead. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING The Dead Pan W H E N Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote these lines which sound so pessimistic and so limited to any lover of the beauty and truth of Greek mythology, she had in mind a famous passage out of Plutarch's De Oraculorum defectu {Mor. 419 A-E) in which it was reported on good authority that Pan had died. But let Plutarch tell the story (Philip is speaking): As for death among such beings [i.e., deities], I have heard the words of a man who was not a fool nor an impostor. The father of...

Motley Kamuka

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