Indiana's Ruling Junta Backs Down on Restricitng Voting, Is Coming for Democratically Elected Prosecutors; Reading Thursday

 Another 2.5 hour day at work. I was back here by 11 AM. I worked my way the emails, wrote a couple, and did some reading.

 The political news is from The Indiana Capital Chronicle, which is doing great work on keeping an eye on Indiana's General Assembly.

Senate kills early voting cuts, closed primary bills — and backtracks on municipal election changes 

County prosecutors could get less discretion over local decisions under proposal 

But Rep. Matt Pierce, a Democrat from Bloomington, deemed it a “slippery slope” that takes power away from local voters.

“Every four years, the voters get to decide whether they like the way that prosecutor allocates their resources and how they’re prioritizing which crimes to prosecute,” Pierce said. “… I think that if you’re gonna be for a democracy and for the idea of people making decisions for themselves through their elected officials, I think we should respect that.

Otherwise, duly elected prosecutors who “make decisions that we don’t like” will have “four or five other prosecutors looking over their shoulders and then deciding if they’ve done something wrong,” Pierce said.

Other Friday readings as of 1:13 PM.

7 Books About the Midwest by Asian American Writers (Electric Lit) - one touches on Purdue University; we forget that Asian American writers do grow in the Midwest. 

Why Am I Still Attracted to White Men? by Jeneé Skinner (Electric Lit) - opened my eyes to things beyond my imagination. This white man cannot give the writer any other advice than to keep writing like she has in this essay.

I just read a review about Olivia Wolfgang-Smith's latest novel, and here I am reading Ms. Wolfgang-Smith on 8 Contemporary Novels with Omniscient Narrators (Electric Lit). Of the books she sites, I have read only Ragtime. E.L. Doctorow's novel is great, and I am glad to see someone that keeps in the light. Still, I am not sure if this is a technique I can use. It tempts me, though, as I look forward to getting to work on "Chasing Ashes."

A reminder to start re-reading Montaigne's Essays: Jared Marcel Pollen's The Painter of Thought: On Montaigne’s epistemic style (The Point).

For me, the unique pleasure of the essays has always been that they capture, with astonishing accuracy, the life of the mind. To be an essayist is to conduct part of one’s intellectual life in public—to dramatize one’s own intellectual process in front of others. Montaigne, who was arguably the first to do this, understood that the epistemic task one undertakes in the essay—to figure out what one knows—is inherent to its form. If I have found him instructive, which I have, it is not because he has taught me “how to think,” but that how to think and how one thinks are different versions of the same thing. Beyond this, I hesitate to say anything definitive, for that would be very un-Montaignian indeed.

If you have not read Montaigne, then you need to so ASAP. He is enjoyable company, and does what enjoyable company does best, he makes living interesting. 

Hunting Egypt’s lost pharaoh: Briton makes ‘find of the century’ (The Times) - because archeology has always interested me.

I have been bingeing on The Doors, going through the albums I did not have back before I got tired of them. Turns out Jim was wrong - "they" have the guns and the numbers.

 Time for my first physical therapy session.

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