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“  The worse the gender inequality is, comparative research shows, the more women deny its existence, because it makes them feel better. [11]  This denial also makes it harder to change. Ending all this is what will liberate women. Resisting ending it is what keeps male (meaning masculine) power systemically in place.” Source

I'm reading a lot of books right now. Yesterday it was Morbo , about La Liga, and I finished the chapter on the Basque teams--regional pride can easily blend into racism and hooey. I started the chapter on Barca, which was deflating, Phil Ball doesn't buy the hype and I do, so you know, disillusionment is probably good, right?  Before that I'm reading about Thoreau who grew up in the wild west of Concord. The tragedy of Native American history has to be rewritten to be more empowering, but man that's hard given the fustercluck hand they were dealt. It's the fight against being natural and the swarming hordes. Someone told me there are probably twice as many people in the world since I've been born and that kind of freaks me out. I'm also reading Inverting The Pyramid , a sort of history of soccer tactics from the English perspective. I didn't know there really were paying off refs in the 70's. I'm always so surprised when sports are corrupt, beca

The threat to wreck the economy and the blame game is tedious, probably won’t happen but if it did it would really turn up the heat on an already hot campaign. Biden is too old, he can't unite the ununitable. Trump will be in jail because he can’t stop implicating himself. DeSantis is full out fascist. America will never accept what he’s doing to Florida. Utter insanity. I’m predicting the 4th ranked person after them wins. Not Pence, anything but that fake pius Pence. Not Haley, that fake man.  Ramaswamy  is good, anyone who writes a senior thesis on the ethical questions raised by creating human-animal chimeras has my vote. Actually I'd hate him too.  I don't care if Marianne Williamson  can't win, she's looking pretty good for 70 years old. A socialist Jewish woman has my vote. In the primary anyway. Anyone who sings Gershwin standards in a nightclub has my vote. No democrats are challenging Biden, so there is no 4th candidate. This year, like every year, you vot

  I lined the cover up with a pink curtain to get a pink hue. I've tried to read this before, but I'm thinking more and more I just want to read books about Thoreau and Lincoln. These are the two America saints. I've recently read around Thoreau and the Transcendentalist, learned about Fuller, Emerson, read poems by Channing and Very. On the one hand reading the actual Transcendentalists is quite hard. On the other hand I find biographies and background information absolutely fascinating.  I know Thoreau started a fire accidentally that ravaged a section outside the town. He spent time on Walden, but he was close to home, and it wasn't quite the sojourn in wilderness you perhaps hoped it was. I tried to read A Pilgrim At Tinker Creek , but couldn't get through it. Into The Wild is about what real going into the wilderness can happen. I read sections of the book Walden in high school and have read it in full later, but I haven't read it recently and really shoul

The opposite of NIMBY is YIMBY.  I was walking the other day and I saw a lawn worker blowing the lawn trimming and garbage across the street to the neighbor. I kind of think that's how America is run. Push it off on someone else. A friend who has no children but likes political causes, was irate that school children in Brooklyn didn't get recess in a gym because there were refugees there. I saw in the paper that Adam had removed the refugees from the gym, so the crisis of recess was averted, sorry for the inconvenience. It's nice outside anyway, play outside in this glorious spring we're having.  I have a visceral disgust for the New York Post headline: Dems are lying: There is no law that says NYC must house the world. Politics is a complicated subject that requires maturity. I've shirked that maturity most of my life ignoring the feelings politics stirs up. But Covid and the president whom we shall not name shattered my illusions about America.  We'll see if

"As a young man, Lincoln was barely a Christian in the conventional sense. He was skeptical of the Bible’s miracles, read freethinkers like Thomas Paine and may even have been the author of a tract attacking religion. (We don’t exactly know, because if it did exist, a friend burned it.) Had it surfaced in 1860, when Lincoln was first running for president, we might be living in two nations. As it was, he lost the vote of one constituency — only three of Springfield’s 23 ministers voted for him." From a review of Lincoln's God  by Joshua Zeitz in New York Times  by Ted Widmer. I think they just wrote a counterfactual historical novel for me. I can't wait till we have an atheist president, or a Buddhist president. We have a Buddhist second husband. Other power is a projection onto an imaginary object, that comes back to you in psychologically fruitful ways. Yesterday I chanted the 21 verses of praise to Tara to Willow Lake . Tara is about removing obstructions. Avalokit

I'm not a crazy Depeche Mode fan but I remember them from my teens and thought I'd give their new album a listen, while I read up on them. I have a friend on FB who is crazy about them. People are people might be a top hit of theirs, preaching tolerance for others. Never Let Me Down is another.  Of course it's new print media that reminds me of a band. The New York Times has an article about their new album. Dave Gahan and Martin Gore are the main guys on this album, in a band that has rotating personnelle. "...the sound is foreboding and sleek, sardonic yet soulful — music for lovers in black-leather-upholstered bullet-train compartments, racing toward ominous destinations." And, "“Death is everywhere,” Gore wrote years ago, in a song called “Fly on the Windscreen,” whose narrator goes on to beckon, “Come here, kiss me, now,” because you never know." Reading up on them, I read Sasha Frere-Jones has a good article : "Americans can handle aestheti

“All truth is comprised in music and mathematics.” Margaret Fuller Nebraska  (1982) isn't a Springsteen album I've groked, so when I saw this article which gave some background, I played it a few times to begin to understand the artistry of one of Rock and Roll's great artists. " Flannery O’Connor trusted that her readers could see in her grotesques something more. Her fiction, and her Catholicism, hinged on that. Though Springsteen didn’t work with what could be called grotesques, he did create characters caught in their own blocks of stone. Nebraska closes on “Reason to Believe,” which might be summarized thus: there isn’t one. “It’s a common misinterpretation of ‘Reason to Believe,’ that it’s a hopeful song,” Springsteen told me. “It’s hard to find a basis for that misinterpretation. I suppose the title does it. But it was one of the darkest songs on the record and it was the way I decided to finish that album. In that density.” It might have been O’Connor who let

Helping my daughter get dressed this morning, putting on her t-shirt, she pushed her arm through and punched me in the face. I started singing, "He had it coming," and a musical I saw many many years ago came through. Searched it up online and we watched some of the video. She's seven, so I'm sure my talk to her about how musicals can be emotionally gratifying, but I don't want her to go to school today and punch someone, probably went over her head. She's mostly sugar and spice, but there were a few occasions where she was righteously angry, which I disagreed with, and could override her steady state of kindness and assertiveness. No idiot compassion with this one, she is strong. I explained what passive/aggression was, but I don't think she got it yet, not sure I get it yet, I learn every day along with her. We journey for virtue every day together. I love mornings with my daughter. Started watching Schmiggadoon . Love Cecily Strong. I have a feeling I&#

I was hoping to consolidate my blogs into one blog, but I've gone the other way, I think blogs need specifics. So I'm converting this blog to just literature, no politics. Reflecting on politics does not leads to happiness. I do think it's a good developmental swerve to articulate and learn more for a while. And I'm still going to pay attention. I don't need to write any more about politics. I was encouraged when my friend liked my medium essays . I quit medium because they wanted me to pay to read others. I'm not into paying. I trundled along because I liked thinking about politics and putting it all together in my head. I don't think it matters to put it all together. Making connections doesn't really improve the world, it makes me feel more bleak. I understand political apathy, but that's not what I'm going for. I'm just not going to use my mind to write this way any more. Still going to be an informed voter. I looked at my blogs, to see

 

I've gotten 2 very strong opinions expressed to me playing chess online. A French flag flying person thought I was Russian because I put the international flag. Part of signing up you pick a flag to represent you and when Trump was president I was too ashamed to brag that I was American. And as a Buddhist that's the most important thing about my identity, nation isn't that important. I do get goosebumps when there is a good national anthem at sporting events. I am proud of a lot of things about America, that we abolished slavery, that we gave the women the vote, and on and on. There are so many things that seem to so obvious to me, that we don't do like restrict guns somehow so the ongoing slaughter doesn't continue.  Anyway, this French person thought I was Russian and quit the game in disgust.  The second irate person didn't like that I used the fool's trap, attacking f7. He really was offended that I used that on him and scorned me, and then sent me a mes

Milton dictating to his daughter by  Henry Fuseli Found a great series of lectures on Milton by John Rogers . He articulates a righteous rebellion. If God was really all powerful would he be begging for you to worship him? Why so much fear about evil? Milton dismisses Satan, but we can see the critique as deeper than the superficial dismissal. Is Milton a dead white man who we shouldn't read any more? John Milton was born in 1608 (Shakespeare will still be alive till he is 8). He died 1674.  Paradise Lost is the classic he wrote that still is read today. It came out in 1667 when he was 59, second edition in 1674. He was the first modern writer to employ unrhymed verse outside of the theatre or translations. He was blind and impoverished when he composed it 1658 to 1664. He sold the book for £5 (equivalent to approximately £770 in 2015 purchasing power). The first run was a quarto edition priced at three shillings per copy (about £23 in 2015 purchasing power equivalent), published

"Did you ever, in the street, see a man that you knew, in the instant, must be Jesus Christ not hoped he was, or caught some resemblance -but knew. The Deliverer, returned and walking among the people, just the way the old stories promised . . . as you approached you grew more and more certain--you could see nothing at all to contradict that first amazement . . . you drew near and passed, terrified that he would speak to you . your eyes grappled . . . it was confirmed. And most terrible of all, he knew. He saw into your soul: all your make-believe ceased to matter. . .” P.325 GR Later he goes on to talk about the routinization of charisma, a Max Weber concept. I'd like to read more into that.  Past GR Links: holy aardvark In The Zone Squalidozzi Wired Article About GR Un Perm' au Casino Herman Goering Recent thoughts on Gravity's Rainbow Recent thoughts on Gravity's Rainbow Recent Gravity Rainbow thoughts Gravity’s Rainbow Start Thomas Pynchon From the graphic nove