Egregious Reader

  Last night I finished Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut. Its one of his earlier works, published in 61. At the end his main character gives an interesting analogy on extremist like Nazis or the KKK, etc. He describes them as clocks from hell. Not exactly.   Clocks, at least in the past, were built on interlocking gears and it was the teeth lining up that kept the time. He said some people file teeth off. So then the clock tells time perfect for 4 minutes and 33 seconds, then misses, then another 2 hours and 52 minutes and then misses. These people in extreme political movements have access to see the world as all of us do, to know reality as we all do. But they take some of their teeth off with a metal file. They remove the vision of, lets say, little Jewish children being so similar to their own children. So then all their gears turn and they love Wagner and Brahms, perhaps even Prokofiev Peter and the Wolf (1936), but they file off the teeth for Jewish human-likeness.  ...

  Lectionary A – Fifth Sunday in Lent Psalm 130 - Out of the depths Ezekial 37:1-14 – Shall these dry bones live Romans 8:61-11 – with the spirit there is peace John 11:1-45 – Jesus wept                Out of the depths I call. This is not mere skeletons in the closet or the attic. It is a valley of dry bones. As if Gettysburg left the dead uncovered and unburied and became a desert. Hard grass and wind and bones. The wound of our nation stitched up wrong or not at all. What Wendell Berry named as our hidden wound.                Why go back this far? Well, it is the only war fought on U.S. soil. It spawned US terrorism which continues today. With the compromise of 1876, the efforts for what some historians call the second revolution were suspended and unfulfilled. They call it that because it culminated in efforts to make true in l...

I just finished a book which I don't want to name. It was by a really good parent and about parenting children with neurodifferences. It had great information and ideas in and and it came recommended to me by close friends who I love and respect and who are also exceptional parents. So I really don't have anything to say about the content of the book or the need for the book.  It was the tone. It was clear from many references this person was a certain type, an NPR listener, someone who used  to drink diet coke, fluent in a million cliches, etc. This type could be narrowed to white liberal, but lets just stick with liberal for the moment. One major beef liberals (which I consider myself in the completely impoverished terms we have for ourselves in this country) have with conservatives, is how narrow-minded they are and how they refuse to see various perspectives and have empathy for people who are different than themselves. Liberals typically wear the love of difference on the...

 I really enjoyed talking with Danny Brewer for his podcast The Curious Companion Podcast. You can listen on spotify and the apple app. Here is the link to spotify: https://open.spotify.com/ episode/ 4JuBwZahw5S5pv7IDfS3FH?si= 06f16c4efb5b44e9

  I am so tired of being a dumbass american. Dumbass here is technical for "one who never wants to know what others feel, think or experience." Sometimes it is active, demanding silence and erasure of other parties. Much of the time the desire to know is so absent, the american dumbass doesn't even think to ask a question. He is so sure of his own problems or successes or puzzles he never thinks of the other at all.  Take Vietnam as a country and a people, for example. What do we know about Vietnam? Only the war that we lost. Only what is called Vietnam Syndrome that set in after the war and new political division between hawks and doves. Or maybe you think of the peaceniks and hippies and draft cards being burned. Or maybe you think of the calls for raised-right men and grumbling old men who said the great generation never lost a war ....  Sadly, even when I ask google "What happened in Vietnam after 1975," I get articles titled 40 years after the fall of Siago...

WEB Du Bois is one of the greatest American thinkers and writers. This is a collection of essays meant as a follow on to Souls of Black Folks and published approx 20 years later. Like Souls, it is a mixture of genres ... essays interposed with fiction, poetry and prayers.  On these pages you see arguments for women sufferage, anti-poverty measures, raw explanation of the continued racial struggle in our country, perspective on WWI, Jesus in Texas --- where he witnesses a chain gang, has dinner with a wealthy white family and then witnesses a lynching, and more. I don't think you can be an american citizen without interacting with Du Bois.  To start-Credo; Of Work and Wealth and The Damnation of Women. For fiction, read The Comet.  Here is the very last paragraph of an essay called The Souls of White Folk: "Back beyond the world and swept by these wild, white faces of the awful dead, why will this Soul of White Folk,--this modern Prometheus,--hang bound by his own binding,...

  Audible has many books "included" which means you can listen for free. So I have been on a little George Eliot kick (I am sure you know, but this was her pen name, her real name is Mary Anne). Silas Mariner was a good heart-warming shorter novel. The Lifted Veil was victorian horror (not really what you are thinking, but creepier than Frankenstien, though no monsters ... just human ones). And yesterday I completed a listen of Felix Holt, The Radical.  I loved it. She is a deeply perceptive and wise author. Her plot is nearly as intricate as Dickens, though with less characters, and it feels more realistic, possible as if the events that converge were after all the ones bound to happen from the beginning. Which, of course, means they are not always as surprising as in Dickens, but it feels less of a magic show as they happen.  This is also a very unique love story, one that contains elements of Austin (surprise inheritance, etc) but in the end Esther must choose between ...