Friday Into Today
What I Did
I thought Friday would be different. I figured out putting the inserts into my shoes helped with my hip and lower back, so I thought I'd be more peppy when I got home from work. Instead, I about fell asleep on the bus. Back in the room, I managed a meal and a little time with the email before deciding against staying conscious any longer. That was around 6 and I set the alarm for 7:30. I left the radio via the internet on, listening to Readie Righteous on WPRB. The alarm went off, the radio stayed on, but I did not get up until around 9. I piddled a little bit with the email. There was a call to K while I was on the bus heading homeward. Oh, yeah, I texted my sister. I just remembered I have to call her. There was no visit to McClure's. That was this morning. Nothing really accomplished for all I need to do so.
Up at 8 am, I see there was a text from CC. We exchanged a few this morning, and she is to come over tomorrow. It is cold. I may need to make one more trip to McClure's. I listened to Backwoods while writing a query for Ploughshares. I decided against it last night, looked up some other places for an essay on Raintree County, and then changed my mind today.
Lunch is done. I need to finish work for Paul S., clear out my tabs on Firefox, get to work on a piece for Excerpts. YouTube providing the musical accompaniment for the next little while.
What I Read
Lisa Marie died. I should call TJ.
Famous fans say farewell to the B-52’s: ‘They got me to question my own prejudices’. Not one of my favorite bands, but a great one, nevertheless.
I skimmed Walt Whitman's DEMOCRATIC VISTAS for my proposal. I read it first about 40 years ago. This is an essay every American should read:
Political democracy, as it exists and practically works in America, with all its threatening evils, supplies a training-school for making first-class men. It is life's gymnasium, not of good only, but of all. We try often, though we fall back often. A brave delight, fit for freedom's athletes, fills these arenas, and fully satisfies, out of the action in them, irrespective of success. Whatever we do not attain, we at any rate attain the experiences of the fight, the hardening of the strong campaign, and throb with currents of attempt at least. Time is ample. Let the victors come after us. Not for nothing does evil play its part among us. Judging from the main portions of the history of the world, so far, justice is always in jeopardy, peace walks amid hourly pitfalls, and of slavery, misery, meanness, the craft of tyrants and the credulity of the populace, in some of their protean forms, no voice can at any time say, They are not. The clouds break a little, and the sun shines out -- but soon and certain the lowering darkness falls again, as if to last forever. Yet is there an immortal courage and prophecy in every sane soul that cannot, must not, under any circumstances, capitulate. Vive, the attack -- the perennial assault! Vive, the unpopular cause -- the spirit that audaciously aims -- the never-abandon'd efforts, pursued the same amid opposing proofs and precedents.
I learned 8 More Words for Inept People.
So much for my sentence deterring others.
Never underestimate the stupidity of ourselves or other humans: Muncie man arrested after woman's fatal overdose. And drugs do not make you smarter.
I passed up some writing workshops - I do not have the time.
I pass along Interesting Literature's The Curious Meaning of ‘Yesterday’ by The Beatles, even though I think the headline overstates its case, the following is a truth that came late to me:
The song is also about how love gives us the illusion that all our troubles have disappeared from our lives. When we fall in love and meet someone new, all of our various woes and stresses can melt away – or appear to. But as the song’s lyrics say, they only seem to be far away from us. They’re still there, and as soon as that temporary euphoria has lifted, they will return.
The singer’s determination to continue to ‘believe’ in yesterday and the memory of the past shows an unhealthy avoidance of his present situation, as he retreats into nostalgia as an escape from his current woe.
More from Interesting Literature: The Symbolism of Cheever’s ‘The Swimmer’ Explained. Which is also a Burt Lancaster movie. If you have ever seen the movie or read the story, this may help with the strangeness of what you saw or read. Great story. I think Key Quotations from Blake’s ‘The Tyger’ Explained self-explanatory.
Read Father of the Scottish Enlightenment? Thursday or Friday, I am getting too forgetful.
There cannot be many Scottish philosophers who are read by Presidents of the United States, but consider the entry of 16 January 1756 in the diary of John Adams of Massachusetts, the second President of the United States: 'A fine morning. A large white frost upon the ground. Reading Hutcheson's Introduction to Moral Philosophy'. It is also arguable that Thomas Jefferson, the third President, was influenced by Hutcheson, specifically in his approach to the Revolution of 1776.
Hutcheson is often said to be 'the father of the Scottish Enlightenment'. There is a sense in which this is true. By his teaching, and especially his celebration of Greek philosophers such as the Stoics, he did create a culture in Scotland in which ideas could flourish more easily. He frequently acknowledges his debts to Cicero, Marcus Aurelius and Aristotle. Indeed, in the portrait of Hutcheson by Allan Ramsay (in the Hunterian Art Gallery) Hutcheson is portrayed as holding a book by Cicero: De Finibus (Concerning Ends). This book stresses the importance of harmony among the elements of human nature, of society and of government. These ideas were central in Hutcheson's political and social thinking, and indeed to Allan Ramsay's approach to portrait painting. Soon after he was appointed to the Chair at Glasgow University (1730), Hutcheson was justifiably called a 'new light'.
Hutcheson is not so well-known as Hume, partly because his writings existed mainly in scholarly (and expensive) editions. The Scottish publisher Birlinn asked me to remedy this and I edited a slim volume with a selection of his main works and added an introduction explaining his ideas.
The Paris Review's On Three Plays provides three thumbnail reviews of plays I have never heard of and will probably never see, but they do give me an interest in seeing. The plan is next month to see Shakespeare at Ball State with CC. She has never been to a play. I will not tell her it will be Shakespeare. Now if her health will hold up.
AI worries: ChatGPT and Open AI: We Are *Totally* Forked from The Bulwark. The title almost gets the nature of the discussion - and it does discuss the pros and cons - and I guess we ought to be worried. This morning, Smerconish delivered a piece he later disclosed as being drafted by ChatGPT. It sounded like him.
Epiphany sent out "Seam" by Iva Moore which has a line I like:
"You told
me my complaining
could be done in a more productive
manner."
What I Wrote For This Blog
I got around to doing nothing more than:
Published this morning but written much earlier were:Misc
Just got an email from KH about my Ploughshares proposal. He thinks it sells the idea.
I need whether to spend the money to enter The Georgia Review Prose Prize.
Finally, I submitted "Colonel Tom" to Spanking Carp. Let us hope my PO does not confuse carp for monkey; he has enough concerns over spanked monkeys, no need to expand his worries.
I forgot to publish this:
Thank you for sending us "Colonel Tom". We appreciated the chance to read it. Unfortunately, the piece is not for us. Good luck elsewhere.
Sincerely,
Annie, Hannah, Michael + Philip
Legal research now.
sch 2:49 pm
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