Trash, Tom Joad's Ghost, Sheep, and CC - Sunday in Muncie

I picked up the apartment and started a writing project before church. CC had called Saturday night, she is (again) out of rehab. I agreed to see her after church. Only I did not get back when I thought I would. It was closer to 2 than 1 PM. I did too much talking. It was close to three when CC showed up and about 7 when she left. We took a walk down to the convenience store, it was getting cold. Snow started spitting while she was there.

Long talks about what her addiction problems and religion and her legal issues. She enjoyed my vegetable fry up - but I still have leftovers. She also tried hummus for the first time. We had a good talk, but I am still uncertain if she will follow up her talk. She can argue both sides of the argument - usually against herself. 

It was the longest time she had been here since mid-summer.

Her visit did keep from getting any work done. Writing took up another two hours. Then I decided I needed to call it a day. If I helped CC, it was time well spent. Today, I must get work finished.

Some readings I want to pass along:

 The American cultural boom a century on: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos and Louis Armstrong (EL PAÍS English) - I have few quibbles with the writer (Dreiser's An American Tragedy is not completely unreadable but being prison when I finally read the novel gave me the time to work through this slab of a novel; and I think Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer may be easier to read now by younger readers used to mixed media; but on the whole a very good introduction to the writers and works of 1925)

New York Dolls: New York Dolls Album Review (Pitchfork) for those who love The New York Dolls and those who have not heard of them.

In 2015, following a handful of Dolls reunion shows, Mojo reporter Alan Light asked Johansen if he felt “a kind of justice” in selling out large venues decades after the band’s “commercial disappointment.” Johansen might have focused on the Dolls’ undeniable clout, or counted the punk and hair metal bands they’d inspired. He might have heaped the blame on a dim audience, or heroin, or Malcolm McLaren. But he just rejected the construct of success altogether. “‭This is the frigging psychosis of the times,” he said. “We were certainly not shooting for commercial success; we were in the ground floor of this‬‭ revolution that was going on, and it was the opposite of commercial.” He continued: “People can’t wrap their head around that, [it’s] an idea that’s alien to most people. People are so into‬‭ getting and spending that I don’t even know if, when they’re on their deathbed, they realize that they’ve been shoveling shit for the man for the last 70 years. But there’s a lot more to life than that.‬” Johansen, who died earlier this year at 75, spurned the shovel, and New York Dolls flamed out before commercial success was even on the horizon. How very punk rock.

 Wool Aliens of the British Empire (History Today) - let us say globalization has its woolly side.

Meet Surrealist Gertrude Abercrombie, the ‘Jazz Witch’ Who Captivated the Art World

She was known as the “Queen of Chicago” by some, and the “jazz witch” by others. Born the daughter of itinerant opera singers, she took root in Chicago. Living in a four-story Victorian brownstone of fading elegance in the city’s eclectic Hyde Park neighborhood, Abercrombie (1909–1977) established herself as a salonnière in the tradition of Gertrude Stein (the other Gertrude was a huge influence on her, too), hosting the city’s energetic jazz scene with musicians from Charlie Parker to Dizzy Gillespie staying, and sometimes playing at her home. A tall woman, who’d been made to feel plain by her mother, Abercrombie often dressed elaborately, with leopard print coats, capes, and even pointy witch hats accessorizing her wardrobe.

The art work is fascinating. 

Muncie Protest Update: 3 p.m. (Woof Boom Radio News) - exactly what it says, and proof that not all of Indiana remains under Trump's spell.

Well, I was up at 4 AM and it is now 5:37. I should get some breakfast besides Coca-Cola, having done one post and rambled through yesterday's email.

Ah, it is Monday.... I wonder what will get done and undone this week.

sch