Motley Kamuka

“  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...