Catching You Up On The Last Two Days, Desultory Is The Word

 Yesterday was a bit of a mess.

After I came home from church, I kept having problems with engery. The air conditioner had my legs cramping. I napped. That did no good. There was still a problem of concentrrating. i got a little bit of work done with Montana, only stopping when I could not keep the fuzziness in my head. 

Some other things I got into and want to share:

The restless eye of James McNeill Whistler (Engelsberg ideas ). Whistler fascinates me as an American. That I cannot rightly draw a stick figure makes artists fascinating to me.

A Eulogy (Sheila Kennedy) the distance travelled from decency to MAGA.

Here’s the Frederick Douglass Speech to Revisit This July 4th (Literary Hub)

Even in an angry and at times despairing speech like “Sources of Danger to the Republic,” Douglass retained hope for the future, calling on Americans to secure the democratic promise of the nation. “Strike down the one-man power everywhere,” he says at the speech’s conclusion; “make your Government lean to the people, and away from the individual or the one-man power.” If Americans are willing to do that, through constitutional reform or other means, “you make sure the permanence, prosperity, and glory of this great republic.” This is Douglass’ wish and request to us from 1867. As in “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?,” he reminds Americans of the still unfulfilled egalitarian promise of the Declaration of Independence, and there is no better time for such a reminder than July Fourth. 

Some times behind paywalls, the sort of thing I try not to usullay post about.

All the President’s Men at fifty (Times Literary Supplement)

Journalists still do, every day, hold power to account. Think of Partygate, Plebgate and Barnard Castlegate. Think of Jeffrey Epstein. So-called mainstream outlets may have become smaller players in today’s vast information ecosystem, but, thanks to journalism’s endless ability to reinvent itself, they have new allies. Civic-minded, crowd-funded bloggers sit in local council meetings on the press bench vacated by struggling or defunct local newspapers; digital activists live-stream protests straight to YouTube; third-sector organizations such as Greenpeace and Liberty employ journalists to investigate their own specific areas of public life; for the first time, a subscriber newsletter, Democracy for Sale, has won the Paul Foot award for investigative journalism. Some of the best watchdog reporting today is collaborative, community-funded or conducted by data miners sitting in their bedrooms (see the work of Bellingcat), or by digital teams supported by philanthropic donors. If investigations that stir public opinion to outrage and demands for action are one measure of success, then the recent television drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office (2024) probably had more impact than any news article about the Horizon IT scandal.

Yet the Watergate myth, of which Woodward and Bernstein are an integral part, has persisted and even grown. This is both because we need it to be true and because, in certain ways, it was. Pakula’s film shows that, through a combination of legislators who remembered their oath to uphold the Constitution, an independent Department of Justice and FBI, and a courageous newspaper editor and his reporters, the system worked.

Why the Last Battle of the American Revolution Was Fought In India (The New Yorker)

As the name of Barney’s ship suggests, the struggles in Mysore stirred the American imagination. Hyder Ali’s decisive victory at the Battle of Pollilur, in September, 1780, in which he routed a column of British troops, was documented and discussed by the Founding Fathers. Edmund Jennings Randolph, a Virginia delegate at the Continental Congress, wrote to John Adams, then posted in Europe, in April, 1781, of how Hyder Ali’s “Army of 80000 Horse” had “totally defeated” its British quarry. John Quincy Adams, a teen-age student in the Netherlands at the time, wrote excitedly to his mother, Abigail, about “the check the English have had in the East Indies,” where they had “lost a great number of men.” In a letter written in the summer of 1782, James Madison praised Hyder Ali’s “superiority” over his most implacable foe, Sir Eyre Coote, the British general tasked with pushing back Mysore’s forces from the East India Company’s southern Indian stronghold in what is now the major coastal city of Chennai. Nine days after the British surrendered at Yorktown, in October, 1781, a group of notables in Trenton, New Jersey, made a series of triumphant toasts that were accompanied by artillery fire; one of those toasts hailed the “great and heroic Hyder Ali, raised up by Providence to avenge the numberless cruelties perpetrated by the English on his unoffending countrymen, and to check the insolence and reduce the power of Britain in the East Indies.” (Hyder Ali died, of an apparent tumor, at the end of 1782, and his son, Tipu Sultan, followed as his successor.) 

John Adams and his colleagues helped broker a preliminary peace deal with the British in the autumn of 1782, in Paris—a few months later, Britain would forge a separate set of deals with Spain and France. But combatants in the subcontinent were unaware of the initial truce that had been made in the West, and dozens more battles took place around the world. The last clash of the American Revolutionary War, some historians suggest, occurred along India’s Coromandel Coast, in June, 1783; as the British laid siege to a fort in Cuddalore, then occupied by a joint Franco-Mysorean force, a smaller French fleet scored a naval victory nearby. The siege was finally lifted after news of the earlier peace arrived.

What solidarity Americans had with Mysore proved fleeting after independence. France withdrew direct aid to Mysore following the 1783 Treaty of Paris, at a moment when Mysore’s forces could have pressed their advantage. In the years thereafter, Hyder Ali’s son, Tipu, would likely rue having allied with the wrong European power; the French, struggling financially and on the verge of their own revolution, could do little to support his kingdom against the emboldened British. In 1788, Thomas Jefferson, who was then the U.S. Ambassador to France, wrote of the arrival of a number of diplomats from Tipu’s court, and noted that he would attend their reception in Versailles, but was unsure what any of it would achieve. “If their mission has any other object than that of pomp and ceremony, it is not yet made known,” he wrote in a letter. As early as 1792, the U.S. sent an American consul to Calcutta, the East India Company’s main port in Asia—an implicit recognition of the growing power of the British in India, and a sign of how the U.S. saw its early trade interests in Asia best served.

This morning when I was first up, I finished up on Montana for my research project and did a little bit more. 

Some neo-garage rock from a now-defunct Canadian band:

 

Got on a Cramps kick. Still The Queen: The Cramps' Poison Ivy Turns 70 ( Rock and Roll Globe); terrible photo of Poison Ivy, good overview of her career, and it is difficult to think she is now mid-seventies.

 

Second round this morning: 

Up around 9:15 pm, wondering where is my new phone, and went down to the convenience store for smokes and Coke.

Back here, I started on my email. 

A detective series I never heard of Nobody’s Perfect (1969) by Douglas Clark ( In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel) - a series I do not recall and not sure if I missed anything.

Dream of getting some fishing in this year: The Susquehanna Strip: A Deadly Streamer Retrieve for Smallmouth (Fly Fisherman)

Listened to Jo Jo Gunne's So...Where's The Show - an album I picked up more than 40 years ago, lost, and now I am wondering what was the fuss? The band was an offshoot of Spirit, it's good, but nothing really stands out. Not a lyric to make me pause or playing to make me take notice. Why are the vocals not clearer? It is very much an early Seventies sound. It is competent background music.

 The All-Music Guide says:

After the erratic and self-consciously weird Jumpin' the Gunne, this album is a return to form. More than that, actually -- the replacement of founding guitarist Matt Andes with John Stahely resulted in a tighter, more focused, and generally more interesting band than ever before. Jo Jo Gunne was originally formed to be, in Jay Ferguson's phrase, "a hard-ass rock band," and on So...Where's the Show they finally were one. Ferguson responded to the harder edge by abandoning the synthesizer in favor of a jazzy piano sound, an inspired move under the circumstances. The combination enlivens even the dud songs; "I'm Your Shoe" starts as a pedestrian slow-grind, but has an incredible instrumental break in which the whole band rocks hard and fast, then drops out suddenly to let Ferguson take a wonderful and delicate piano solo. The element of surprise gets you the first time, the brilliant playing every time afterward. When the band actually takes on a song with a half-decent hook all the way through, the results are splendid. The title cut, "She Said Allright," and "Falling Angel" are all winners, and there isn't a single track that is actually a dud. If it was inevitable that Jo Jo Gunne was going to break up, at least they left one consistently good album behind.  

I am looking forward to Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. Last night, I tried listening to a video on what it gets wrong, and could not finish the video.

 

 

Seems to me an intelligent woman gave a smart answer to a dumb question.  

 Between the content and the comments, I was left thinking what a bunch of wankers. This is no way we are going to understand the mentality, the ethos, of Bronze Age Greeks. Enjoy the spectacle, if it works as a film. And if you think you can do better, then get to work at doing a better version. Lastly, probably every commentator thinks they would be fighting along with Odysseus rather than being a slave; reality would have tipped them towards beign slaves.  

I wonder what they would make of Euripedes' The Trojan Women? 

Meanwhile, soimething more useful and educational: Was Homer’s Ithaca an Island? (Antigone) 

Politics for this morning:

 Depraved by Daisy Dixon review – a history of dark and dangerous art (The Guardian)

In her timely and punchy new book, the philosopher Daisy Dixon explores some of the most controversial artworks ever produced. She’s interested in how an artist’s character can influence their creations, and the harmful effects those creations can have on the world.

She’s not the first. Plato panicked over art’s power to corrupt citizens, while Oscar Wilde celebrated its provocative potential. More recently, Claire Dederer puzzled through the problem of what we ought to do with great art by bad men in her 2023 book Monsters.

Come to Depraved expecting a conventional view of art history and you’ll be disappointed, though. Alongside traditional media from prehistory to the present, including paintings, novels and plays, are more contemporary “art forms” such as video games; there’s also a lengthy tangent on pornography. Some of the stuff is so repulsive it’s hard to read about. There’s talk of live goldfish being pulverised in blenders in the name of performance art, and a film featuring shocking scenes of paedophilia. A video game named Rape Day needs no explanation, but Dixon won’t let you look away 

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What should our response be? Dixon isn’t shy about supplying an answer. In the past, pieces considered too corrupting for the public gaze were placed in secret collections. She believes depraved art isn’t something to be squirrelled away, but confronted “loudly, angrily, beautifully”: emotions that capture the spirit of this passionate book, which, like those rewritten labels in museums, is going to delight some, and prompt eyerolls in others. “The remedy,” writes Dixon, “is better speech. Better art. Better curation.” She makes it sound so simple.

One thing I have learned from my on-going progression through the bowels of the federal government, from the ICE agent who arrested me to my sentencing to my polygraph sessions to my supervised release - is the perversity of the custodians of public safety who are far more sex-obssessed than I have been since I was a teenager. Some times I feel like others are projecting their obsessions onto me and other times I am the focus of their prurient interests. So, no, better curation may not be the solution. I would add better education, less supersititious fear.

I started JoJo Gunne's 99 Days (Live, 1971) - which I do like, they sound like they might have been a damn good live band, a raucous party band. Why they remind me of Mott the Hoople with harmonies is something I need to think about. 

 

The phone has not arrived and I just noticed it was promised by 9 pm!

That changes my plans for the rest of the day. Do I stay here or go to the grocery? I fixed black beans last night and they need chorizo and cilantro. Definitely cilantro.

There were more things read yesterday, but I am putting them into a post that is more literary.

I have also reached a bit of a crisis point as whether to post submissions or work wholly on the project, then go back to submitting on my fiction. I could do both, if I were nto having these problems where I jsut lose energy and coherent thought.

 Maybe I was just not in the mood for the stuido album

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Bad Person, Great Artist - A Resolution?

Yesterday went bad health-wise, so I was unable to finish this post.

 From time to time, I have posted about the Bad Person/Great Artist conudrum that worries us more today than it did when I was younger. Maybe it cuts closer to home than I will admit, except no one will ever call me a great artist. My view is that I have been trying to get caught up with the works, which has not given me much time to delve into the artist's biography. Woody Allen looms large in my mind, but does admiring his movies mean endorsing his character? Do we do the same for mechanics, or bus drivers, or any other calling other than artists?

Reading When Loving Lennon Became Difficult (Los Angeles Review of Books) pointed to the resolution

In his interview with Playboy in 1980, Lennon specifically criticized the romanticization of artists:

Listen, there’s nothing wrong with following examples. We can have figureheads and people we admire, but we don’t need leaders. […] [T]his doesn’t mean there isn’t validity in the message. The swimming may be fine, right? But forget about the teacher. If the Beatles had a message, it was that. With the Beatles, the music is the point. Not the Beatles as individuals.

I’m not sure how Lennon would have felt about so many people, 40 years after his death, still idolizing him. Maybe he would have appreciated the continuous love for his music. But I don’t think he would have wanted me, a 31-year-old Argentine-American woman in 2020, to look up to him as a role model, much less one who’s held up to current feminist standards.

This may also explain my apathy towards this whole issue. As with my politics, I am not keen on leaders. Ideas matter. We can make more with ideas. Whether Jefferson truly thought his slaves were created equal to himself is irrelevant to how that people have built upon his idea and made the Declaration incorporate Blacks. I would no more follow Lennon in his misogny than I would his use of heroin. However, I will admire him trying to overcome his bad actions. 

We need to lead ourselves to better teachers. We need find our own values and standards to live with. We will be imperfect, we will fail, but we will keep going onward, improving our lives and those around us.

At least, that is what I am trying to do. Therein, I pay attention to John Lennon.

What are you going to do? 

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5/12 to Now: Struggling Through Time

Time got out of hand, and health issues have tripped me up - it has been as difficult to sit as it has been to concentrate. This is another attempt at catching up, of which I have been doing far too much of this year. 

5/12: Relapsing, Losing Time, Muncie Happenings, Southern Indiana Democrat News 

Missed Matins (and then Vespers), piddled with email and blog posts, made a run to the grocery, was late for a lecture at Minnetrista, and ended the night trying to control pain. I think I started Legends on Netflix (which I will recommend).

I got the last 45 minutes or so of Tea & Talk: Dr. Lara Kuykendall— Constance Coleman Richardson and Other Unforgettable Indiana Artists. What I heard most of was about Ms. Richardson. The slides impressed me for not being kitsch landscapes that we see so often in Indiana. The lecturer mentioned her best paintings have a darkness in them. That I saw and it touched a nerve for me. It is what I am trying to do - get at the darkness here rather than perpetuate the sunny naive innocence propaganda of a virtuous rural life. We call that conservatism. Or is it the fodder for our conservatism that makes life here more precarious, more restrained than even in surrounding states, by saying look at how "those" people live, it is so much better here with our green corn fields that "they" ridicule? That we are not being conned into taking less because we are more virtuous than those living in the big cities? One painting had a ruined shed or farmhouse. It recalled the Romantics love of ruins. That is a sign that not all is well with the land. A comment was made about the dominance of skyscapes. That is how it is here in the flatlands. It reminded me of a sentence in Sinclair Lewis's Main Street about the oppresiveness of the wide skyline. As late as I was, it was a good time.

And then a night of trying to cope with the pain and discomfort. 

 Some notable readings:

Farmers Market Returns to Minnetrista With New Features for 2026 (The Muncie Journal) - a wonderful experience, one of the best things about Muncie at one of the best places to visit in Muncie.

Huh? Muncie fashion show puts self-expression in the spotlight (Star Press). This I might check out, even though I am absolutely not fashionable!

GROW WIWO will present its third annual fashion show, "Defined, By Design," on May 29 in downtown Muncie.

The event will be from 5 to 9 p.m. at Canan Commons, according to a community announcement.

This year’s theme highlights individuality and the role of fashion as a form of self-expression. The fashion show will feature five categories, each showcasing the latest spring trends and innovative designs. Attendees will see a range of styles, from ready-to-wear outfits to bold statement pieces, reflecting the diverse fashion scene in Muncie.

Up north here, we often forget there is life further south: Indiana Primary: What southern Indiana Democrats are facing Republican incumbents this November

 5/13: Writer's Group, Emails, Not Much Else

The writer's group still likes what I am reading of "Scenes from a Small Indiana Factory Town." The reading was a bit tough; the pain throbbing was a distraction.

I got supplies at payless. Forgot to go to the bank to check on a transaction.

One thing I will put into another post is my listening to Salman Rushdie and Orhan Pamuk videos on writing.

5/14: Published, Email under Control, Miserable Afternoon and Evening

 I have already published the news about getting "Going For The Kid" published. Corresponded with KH and talked to him. Off to Payless for meds. The evening and night spent going between bed and bath. Nothing good to say about anything.

5/15: So Far, Not So Much

Up around 5 AM and have not accomplished much in the past 3 hours or so of work. Two, three, other posts cleaned up and set to be published after this. 

Group session later, and still have not gotten my notes on here.

 Consdering a road trip only I cannot get myself together to get ready for it.

CT scan later this afternoon, maybe find out what has been causing my problems.

Mostly, I am just tired and wanted to sleep. 

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Muncie Arts

 Why aren't other cities (looking at you, Anderson) doing these things?

 Connecting the Dots: How Muncie is Building Its Creative Corridor (WLBC)

The idea didn’t appear overnight. It took the input of hundreds of individuals, hours and hours of research and planning, and applications for funding. All of the feedback, suggestions, and big visions came straight from the community.

In 2024, The Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County brought together artists, organizations, developers, and residents to ask a simple question: What would it take to make our arts community stronger, more accessible, and more connected?

More than 300 voices helped shape the answer.

That work became the Creative Space Action Plan—a roadmap grounded in community input and focused on expanding access, elevating what we have, supporting artists, and building a more unified creative ecosystem.

Since then, progress has been steady.

Partnerships have formed. Infrastructure improvements have begun. A shared vision has taken hold: a Creative Corridor that links downtown Muncie with Ball State University and Minnetrista, creating a more seamless and welcoming experience for residents and visitors. Phases 1 and 2 focused on foundational supports, including the creation of a partner network and leadership group, reimagination of MuncieArts as an arts service organization, and investment in downtown infrastructure to serve as a backdrop for a vibrant arts hub in Muncie.

Affordability: From silver costs, to suppliers, to advertisements for a Muncie jewelry maker (Indiana Public Radio)

 In preparation for Mother’s Day, Heidi Hale, Founder of HeidiJHale Designs, would typically face online challenges, including not getting enough orders in early enough. 

“We are living in an Amazon Prime world, but what we have to remind them is we’re either taking a loved one’s handwriting, thumbprint, [or] picture, and we’re creating something from scratch,” Hale said. “Nothing is mass produced.” 

I have been in this place, and was impressed. One year when KH came down from Toronto, I took him to the place, and he was also impressed.

Downtown Muncie Announces Brink of Summer ArtsWalk + Flower Hour on June 4 (WLBC)

Downtown Muncie’s most-anticipated spring evening returns on Thursday, June 4, 2026 — the Brink of Summer ArtsWalk + Flower Hour.

Presented by the Community Foundation of Muncie & Delaware County, the Brink of Summer ArtsWalk + Flower Hour runs from 5–8 p.m.

A special edition of the monthly First Thursday series, Brink of Summer ArtsWalk is a community-wide celebration of the arts, local makers, and the vibrant culture of Downtown Muncie. This year’s event features an expanded lineup of programming for attendees of all ages.

Flower Hour, presented by Wise Country Market with flowers provided by Normandy Flower Shop, invites participants to explore Downtown Muncie and collect blooms from 10 different locations to build their own one-of-a-kind bouquet.

You can purchase Flower Hour tickets in advance online or day-of at the event. Physical, printed tickets allow you to start your Flower Hour journey, and they can be picked up, if you purchased them online, or purchased in-person at the DWNTWN tent at the corner of Walnut and Charles Street.

Another highlight of this year’s event is the Steamroller Printmaking Experience, produced by Tribune Showprint with a roller provided by MacAllister Rentals. Local and regional printmakers will create oversized prints using a steamroller as a press, and community members are invited to participate using pre-made blocks. 

And at the other end: Ball State's The Chug bar owner plans to stay amid Village changes. (Well, they used to have bands. I once saw Professor Oak and the Hurricanes there.)

And because I have no other place to put this and have sat on it long enough, and being somewhat theater related makes it arts related: Award-winning actor Hugh Jackman speaks at Ball State University spring 2026 commencement ceremony.  I think this puts Ball State on the radar.  A blip in the night? 

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5/5 -5/7/2026: Anderson to Muncie to First Thursday

 Tuesday, I drove over to Anderson. 

I met with first K, went to Allan's pawn & Jewelry, saw a few things I had not seen in other trips, and had a chat with my mother. There was about the same number of homeless as Muncie, but more than Anderson would like. Speaking with one of the proprietors of Allan's there was a little discontent with home the city was dealing with its problems. I suspect it is inertia; they are still thinking of Anderson as it was 50 years ago. The Wing On Inn is gone, but Wawa is on its way. I am not sure if it is an improvement.

J and I went out to eat. We wound up at Thai Divine. This is the first Thai restaurant in Anderson. Anderson does not deserve this good of a restaurant. Stylish surroundings, grand food, and good service. Since I cannot copy and paste, here is what we had to eat as screenshots.

My order: 

J's order:
 

We were stuffed. J carried about half of her order home.

Probably the most fun I have had with two women on a rainy day in ages. I know it was the most I had laughed for a long time. Probably not since the last time I talked to either K or J. 

Then I came back to Muncie to St. Barnabas for the festival of St. George. 

I got home around 8:30. Problems came along later, so I did not get as much sleep as I wanted and missed Matins again.

Wednesday, I did some writing before the writer's group meeting and then back here after the meeting. I got some blog posts done but they took so long. Ice packs-R-us.

Thursday has been one of those days when I was so tired I did not really wake up until after 5 pm. A walk down to the convenience store did not help. A blog post or two done, but not any serious writing. Then I went downtown for May's First Thursday (full listing).

I wound up buying enough stuff for dinner: a loaf of sourdough bread, Lebanese olive oil, a meat pie, a slice of lemon cake, and a cookie. 

I made it to two studios at the Murray: Dunckel Haus Photography and, I think, Cassie Dunmyer. I chewed off the ears of the Dunckel's - a very charming young couple - but I was taken with their black and white photos. Some of which are online here. Ms. Dunmyer impressed me with her being 34, and having a good and inventive mind. I would have dropped a lot of money in either place at another time in my life.

I also stopped in at the ECAP Gallery. Better things than I was doing at their age; I was much better at detroying things than making. 

I caught the bus home, arriving here around 7. MW and J both called me tonight. Then I started on this post. I am tired, so I do not think I will be doing more writing. Therefore, I will close with a link to Do you say 'wash' or 'warsh?' Here's where the pronunciation comes from (NPR) and political commentary from YouTube.

 

 

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Muncie & Indianapolis Art News

 Just a bit of FYI for any local readers.

Muncie Public Art Directory 

Muncie Arts and Culture Council's Post 

Muncie Arts and Culture Council  

Muncie Makers Market 

Watercolor classes at Maring-Hunt Library 

Join  MPL and the BSU Art education students for a step by step lesson in watercolor painting.  A fun watercolor workshop in the Maring-Hunt Gardens. At the end you will have a one of a kind watercolor painting to take home! 

Muncie Public Art Directory 

The Harrison Center 

Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis (CAMi)  

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Muncie Arts Have A Future

 And we can take part in it!

Help Shape the Future of the Muncie Arts and Culture Council 

In-Person Focus Groups 

All in-person sessions will be held in downtown Muncie and last approximately 60 minutes. 

Tuesday, February 10

12:00–1:00 p.m.

5:30–6:30 p.m. 

7:30–8:30 p.m. 

Wednesday, February 11

12:00–1:00 p.m. 

5:30–6:30 p.m. 

7:30–8:30 p.m.

Online Focus Groups 

Wednesday, February 18 

6:00–7:00 p.m.

8:00–9:00 p.m. 

Community members can express interest in participating by completing the focus group interest form at https://form.jotform.com/260225399669066. More details about session locations and registration will be shared with participants upon sign-up. 

 

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Let's Talk About Indianapolis, Muncie, History and the Brighter Lights

 While Trump spends our historical capital like a crackhead on a binge, let's not forget about some better things about this country.

The food in Indianapolis, for instance.

Several Hoosiers named James Beard Award semifinalists  

The James Beard Awards are perhaps the most prestigious awards in the food world. On Wednesday, the James Beard Foundation released the semifinalists for this year’s awards, which included seven different Hoosiers.

Hoosiers in the running for the so-called “Oscar of the food world” include an Indianapolis restaurateur, a pastry chef, and a husband-wife chef duo.

In 2025, only two Indianapolis restaurants were named as semifinalists. These restaurant owners say that’s a testament to Indy’s evolving food scene 

The semifinalists represent different cuisines and come from Indianapolis, Carmel and Clark County in southern Indiana. They say as the area grows, so does its food scene 

Or our arts scene.

Meet the Maker: 2025 DeHaan Artists of Distinction (Axios Indianapolis)

The inspo: Every year, the DeHaan Artist of Distinction awards Hoosier contemporary artists grants of up to $10,000 to pursue aspirational projects.

• The 2025 winners chosen by a panel of visual art professionals were announced last week.
• Their final projects will be shown later this year during a special exhibition at Gallery 924.

Zoom in: Meet the 2025 DeHaan Artist of Distinction winners.

Or the beauty of model railroads, Muncie Edition.

Muncie's 34th Annual Model Train Show Feb. 28 

Delaware County Fairgrounds will host Muncie and Western Train Club's 34th Annual Model Train Show from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Feb. 28. 

The event is "Indiana's largest and longest-running single-day train show," according to a Jan. 9 event flyer.

Some weirdness from Muncie. Funny how I see art work in town saying "Keep Muncie weird".

Delaware County inmate charged over bid to kiss corrections officer 

An investigator who viewed a surveillance video reported Johnson "wrapped his arms around (the officer's) upper body from behind, then grabs her face in an aggressive manner attempting to kiss her."

Close out with a little history lesson from Indianapolis.

Blue Line crews uncover tracks from city’s electric railway  (Mirror Indy)

The first electric streetcar line in Indianapolis was built in 1890 along Illinois Street from Union Station to Fairview Park, a former 246-acre park that is now the site of Butler University. Traveling from one end of the line to the other took about an hour.

Over the years, the railway tracks expanded throughout the city and by 1920, the city’s streetcar system carried about 126 million passengers a year.

***

The first car was built in Germany in 1886 and by the early 1900s, companies throughout the world were competing to build their own cars.

In Indianapolis, companies like Nordyke & Marmon, Duesenberg Automobile and Motors and Lafayette Motors worked to produce luxury cars on the west side.

City railways brought workers to manufacturing plants, like the American Foundry at 565 S. Warman Ave. and the General Motors Stamping Plant at 340 S. White River Parkway W Drive.

As the use of cars grew, fewer people used railways. By 1933, ridership had decreased to 52.9 million passengers a year.

***

In 2014, the Indiana General Assembly passed a mass transit bill that prevents state funds from being used on certain light rail projects. In 2018, some legislators attempted to repeal it in order to make the city more competitive for Amazon’s second national headquarters, but that bill failed.

IU Health closed the People Mover in 2019, citing high costs, and replaced its functions with shuttle buses. Its elevated rails are still visible downtown.

That article led me to this notice of an exhibit at The Indiana Historical Society: The Electric Railway: Indiana’s Interurbans  

Yes, we once had a real public transportation system in Indiana.

 What we have to look forward to in the coming days:

 

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Art & Creativity - The Dangers Thereof

 I am drawing on two sources for this post. The first I had to wrestle with, and the second was too strange to expect to be learning anything. Then, too, I could also just be goofy.

 Recreating the Creative Act: Why is anyone watching Peter Hujar's Day? (Patrick Nathan, Entertainment, Weakly) 

It’s this unasked but extant question that excuses, in some sense, having paid to see a dramatized version of an interview I could have otherwise read on my own time — an interview I’d have underlined and annotated and filed away in my greedy little archive of lives2. Almost every artist or writer has an archive like this, even if it’s only in their minds. We go to letters and journals and interviews and biographies not to spend time with the artist, per se, nor the artist’s work (else we’d just go back to the work), but to simulate a kind of being-in-the-presence of the work’s creation. As if to validate that such things are still possible, we want a glimpse at the creative act itself, and this act almost always has an ugly or unrefined or embarrassing aspect. If art is superhuman or divine, these rough or raw documentations show us the human dimension behind or beneath the divine; they show us that being human is a precursor to creating the divine. This invites us, I suppose, to forgive ourselves our humanity in our attempts to surpass it.

 “Draw Me Back Again, a porn elegy” by James Allen Hall (Another Chicago Magazine) came to me through an email newsletter; I almost deleted it. The subject is complicated enough by my past. But the use of elegy got to me. The subject is one I really know nothing about, have no interest in, and showed me a way of life I had no idea existed. But then I saw this line:

Art keeps our bodies in danger. Porn keeps our bodies safe. 

That may be the best line in the whole work. Certainly, it was the only one that made me stop and think (instead of going, Are you serious?) 

That line may explain to me the attraction porn has for people younger than me. My peers thought it was kind of silly. 

I think it has been a long, long time (50 years?) since porn aspired to artistry. At least, since it has been political by aspiring to upset the status quo.

I did not think it kept people safe, but as I thought about it is a formula without emotional content. This is not what made Ulysses condemned as obscene. (My recollection of Molly Bloom is she was neither formulaic nor without emotion.) Yes, there is it safety in being anodyne. The same complaint can be too lodged against our modern literature. Art has to be dangerous. Calling Potter Stewart, I think we have a way to divide the pornographic from the merely upsetting to the bluestockings.

(Even stranger may be this bit from Walker Rutter-Bowman's review, Muriel Spark and the Doppelgänger That Wasn’t (The New Republic)

 From childhood Spark had a doppelgänger named Nita McEwen, a girl from the same Edinburgh neighborhood who, by coincidence, happened to be in colonial Africa at the same time—and who later, by another strange coincidence, happened to be staying with her husband at the same Victoria Falls boardinghouse as Spark and her husband. Like Ossie, Nita’s husband was mentally unwell, and in Victoria Falls he murdered her and killed himself—a traumatic event Spark wrote about in Curriculum Vitae.

The bombshell of Wilson’s research is that Spark seems to have invented her. There is no record of the crime or of a Scottish woman named Nita McEwen. Wilson notes that the name is an anagram of Twin Menace, suggesting something Spark both feared and coveted. Wilson writes, “Doppelgangers are dangerous, she knew from the Border ballads, because one of them has to die,” and Wilson argues that the invention and destruction of Spark’s dark double was an important step in her own artistic self-actualization. Perhaps Spark quietly wanted Stannard to discover the secret at the heart of her origin story. Wilson’s discovery is worth the price of admission.

What little I have read of Sparks, there is nothing anodyne in her writing. There is much danger. There is humanity in her that aspired for a higher level. We should not balk at doing the same.)

sch 11/4 

 

 

Revolutions Eat Their Own; John Pistelli on Camus' The Rebel

Let me admit that I have not re-read Albert Camus' The Rebel in the more than 40 years since I finished the book. Too bad for me, it might have saved me from descending into nihilism. Then, again, since the nihilism followed me succumbing to what was diagnosed as severe depression, it might have only shortened the fall. 

All the same, its ideas have been on my mind since I started recovering from my depression. I hope keeping it closer to the front of my brain, I will not return to where I was 15, 16, years ago.

Working on something else, I ran across Albert Camus, The Rebel from John Pistelli. This is the second time in a month to have run into something he has written; the first was worth my time, so I read this piece tonight.

Much of what Mr. Pistelli writes is applicable today for the wider world.

Hegel is the most totalizing of modern thinkers, his system a complete answer to the question of what we are to do with ourselves if there is no transcendent God nor any transcendent values such a God could support. If his system is irredeemably corrupt because Hitler and Stalin are already coiled in its deep structure, where is Camus to go if he does not go back to God? He seeks two places of intellectual refuge.

First, he claims, we must have recourse to nature, as the Greeks did. If we abandon the idea that there is a universal human nature, then the human being is only clay to be molded by Hegel’s new gods in the bureaucracy of the administrative state. This is a common position on the political right today, but the left—to include liberals—have necessarily abandoned it in the wake of postmodernism; even a brief contemplation of contemporary progressive thought about gender, to take the most salient example, should suffice to show why.

Camus’s second recourse is to art: “Rebellion can be observed [in art] in its pure state and in its original complexities.” In rejecting given reality for a created one, the artist is the prototypical rebel. But the artist cannot be a nihilist, dismissing the real in its entirety, the way anarchist terrorists or Hegelian historicists can. Silently following Aristotle, for whom art was mimesis, Camus argues that the artist is always representing reality so as to give it a shape it does not possess in its unmediated state: “To create beauty, [the artist] must simultaneously reject reality and exalt certain of its aspects,” which leads the artist to imagine a “living transcendence” (as opposed to the merely ideal transcendence of monotheism and the deadening immanence of Marxism and related ideologies).

Camus singles out the novel, because it is the literary form that coincides with the modern era of rebellion; prior literature tended toward what Camus calls “consent” to the status quo, whereas the novel, with its restive protagonists, answers the “metaphysical need” of rebelling by giving ethical form to experience, which form in turn tempers the rebellion so that it does not spin off into totalitarianism. Camus further argues that contemporary literature must go beyond the psychological novel, with its treatment of private passions, to attempt to control “collective passions and the historical struggle.”

Camus notes that “all revolutionary reformers” must show “hostility” to art, because it demonstrates forces of nature and beauty beyond their puritanical control. The danger to art in the 20th century is found on two sides, two versions of nihilism: either an over-stressing of mimesis, as in Marxism’s exaltation of realism, or an over-emphasis on form, as in the abstractions of the avant-garde, neither capable of creating a living art that holds reality and form in vital tension.

I do not recall Camus addressing Hegel. That may be due to my bias against Hegel. I can regret not reading Kant, but never have I regretted not reading Hegel.

I have seen ugliness, going so far to wallow in it. That was my nihilism - nothing mattered, all was foul. I started writing again to make sense of my life and my place in the world; I keep writing to fight the ugliness.

Whether what I write is worth reading I leave to others. It is the act itself that matters. Creating is a blow for the beauty of humanity against the ugliness of humanity. Creativity is the anchor keeping the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune from sweeping us into the abyss.

Once more from Pistelli:

 It is when he champions art and the novel that Camus speaks for durable and still relevant values. I myself am only qualified to rebel through the exercise of the artistic intelligence; that Camus reconciles me to this fate is doubtless why he has, in some quarters, a reputation for bourgeois cowardice and mediocrity, but all the same it is a good thing to find a philosophical warrant to go on with one’s life. Moreover, today’s much-remarked upsurge of neo-fascist and neo-Stalinist thinking is enough to convince me that Camus’s controversial advocacy for balance and caution, even in the face of real oppression, might not be amiss. Unfashionable as it may be, The Rebel is a book to read.

I agree wholeheartedly.

sch 11/14 

Friday - Fantasies - Photos

 I meant to get back to chronicling the past two days earlier. Then my neck started hurting and I decided I needed a rest. I did not expect that rest to last until around 7:30. Then I needed to get through the email, and watched the end of Hard Boiled on Tubi, and then dinner.

No church today, but no work accomplished, either. I did get up Lahody's Meats for some supplies and to the convenience store for Coke Zero.

It was a good, sunny day.

So, let us talk about Friday's group session. There was the usual chat session, the weekly check-in, and the group leader went back to reading from his computer screen. I think he called it a workbook.

From my notes.

Components of fantasies

Deviant

 - Anything that is deviant

(I had to ask what is deviant. The last decade, or so, of my being single, there were women who liked to be tied up and some who liked to be spanked; there was one who wanted to be choked, but that was too much for me. All that seemed to be deviant to me. Then, too, I think Freud said all sex was perverse - or something like that. It was also pretty harmless. Then it got to be me asking how I got dragged into all these proceedings. The answer: I was easy.)

- Deviant is anything illegal

(Without going wild and citing the Indiana Code in all its profuseness, illegality requires a lack of consent. Well, that has never appeared in my history. Certainly not an interest of mine - too much work and the result never seemed likely to be an interesting experience. Maybe that is my problem - more interested in the experience rather than the acquisition. I would rather drive a Bugatti than own it.)

- Must change that into appropriate fantasies.

 - inappropriate partners

(I don't think this was expanded upon. Possibly, it was assumed to understood by those with contact crimes to have been the minors they solicited. To me, it is pretty much means staying away from anyone with obvious psychiatric issues, women from Madison County, women without any conversation skills, and those who cannot name all four members of The Beatles. There was one point when the discussion was about fooling around outside of marriage, or a relationship. Well, that would exclude and implicate much of humanity. If followed, it would end many plots of literature; starting with The Iliad.)

- Risky thoughts

(No note on any expansion on this, and none from my memory. However, I think it was here I started thinking the program has put the cart before the horse - which I will write more about below. It also arouses a few thoughts I have had about the process I have gone through and the people I have met during it. There seems to be an inherent fear of ideas. That ideas always lead to actions. Which has left me feeling that others are projecting their ideas and their own desires upon me: the arresting officers from ICE, the United States Attorney, my public defender, prison guards, my PO, and this counseling program. I have had the feeling they think any glimpse of flesh, even a nude statute, would result in me turning into a werewolf and, in the case of the statute, humping aid statute. I am left feeling myself surrounded by men who are far more perverse than I ever was. Then there is the sensation of imposing Victorian morals on us without any faith in those morals. There was a conversation about ethics, wherein the group leader declared ethics as a boring subject. Yet, is it not ethics that this program is trying to instill?)

- how to get away and offend again

(Not something I have seen in anyone in the group. They all look thoroughly chastened by their experiences. I knew of a fellow in prison who talked of moving to Cambodia. That fellow I thought of a psychotic. I checked up on him a few months ago. He is in Illinois. More talk than action, I hope.)

- wondering if person in deviant fantasy would like it

(Also, not something I have seen in anyone from the group. This also ties in what I write more about below, in a general overview.)

- getting closer to that person (inappropriate people)

(This also ties in what I write more about below, in a general overview.)

- talking to inappropriate person about your fantasy

(And here I had to open my mouth again. What got me was the idea of talking to a person who would not be amenable - so to speak - to such ideas. I suggested that was a good way to get one's self shot or slapped, or both. This is something beyond my imagination. It came to me while writing this that my reaction is that I am thinking of adults. One's imagination is limited by one's experience. Or education. It also reminded me of a story told me by mother's sister, Mary Ellen Finholt, who slapped some guy silly when he got fresh with her while working at the GM lab during World War Two. Something similar happened to my mother with one of the boarders; same kind of result. They were both about 5'4”. Not a good idea to anger a Scots/Irish woman.)

- staring at person

(And again, I had to say that staring is always a good way to start a fight.)

- setting up an offense

(Yeah, if that needed preaching, then the promoters of this program have already failed in their mission.)

 That was the end, and these are my overarching critiques.

The starting point ought to be the difference between reality and fantasy.

One might have ideas, but recognizing what is reality stifles actions rooted in fantasy.

Reality never matches fantasy.

If you have not learned those two lessons, I doubt any success in dealing with fantasies, appropriate or not.

And there I will end for today. I will catch up with Saturday's report tomorrow. I have photos for that, too.

 

Sunday readings:

The grim truth about the “good old days” (Big Think)

History bears little resemblance to the sanitized image of preindustrial times in the popular imagination — that is, a beautiful scene of idyllic country villages with pristine air and residents merrily dancing around maypoles. The healthy, peaceful, and prosperous people in this fantasy of pastoral bliss do not realize their contented, leisurely lives will soon be disrupted by the story’s villain: the dark smokestacks of the Industrial Revolution’s “satanic mills.” 

Such rose-colored views of the past bear little resemblance to reality. A closer look shatters the illusion. The world most of our ancestors faced was in fact more gruesome than modern minds can fathom. From routine spousal and child abuse to famine-induced cannibalism and streets that doubled as open sewers, practically every aspect of existence was horrific.  

John Banville (a man also who writes good sentences) reviewed John Updike: A Life in Letters review – the man incapable of writing a bad sentence for The Guardian.

John Updike had the mind of a middling middle-class postwar American male, and the prose style of a literary genius. Such a lord of language was he that even the notoriously grudging Vladimir Nabokov afforded him a meed of praise. A reviewer, musing on the disproportion between the style and content of Updike’s fiction, likened him to a lobster with one hugely overgrown claw. It was a comparison Updike was to remember – for all his bland urbanity, on display from start to finish in this mighty volume of his letters, he could be prickly, and did not take slights lightly.

As a novelist he aimed, as he once put it, to “give the mundane its beautiful due”. Apart from a few rare and in some cases ill-advised ventures into the exotic – the court at Elsinore, Africa, the future – his abiding subject was the quotidian life of “ordinary” Americans in the decades between the end of the second world war and the coming of a new technological age in the closing years of the 20th century.

***

Are his books read now? Towards the end he made a glum self-assessment: “I have fallen to the status of an elderly duffer whose tales of suburban American sex are hopelessly yawnworthy period pieces.” Perhaps so; but he wrote such prose as to make the envious seraphim sigh.

I am still wondering about Things That Disappear by Jenny Erpenbeck review – a kaleidoscopic study of transience (The Guardian). I can feel the loss, but even more is the idea of telling the story in fragments.

‘The Maginot Line’ by Kevin Passmore review (History Today) may show a change in WWII history:

Overall, the Maginot Line’s contribution to the defence of France was mixed, Passmore argues. It blocked the easiest routes to Paris, Alsace, and Nice and was not the disproportionate burden on spending that it is often thought of as being. It was less susceptible to technological obsolescence than other forms of weaponry, though its construction coincided with a revived emphasis on mobility in battle. But most importantly, the book refutes the portrayal of the Maginot Line as a symbol of a defeatist French mentality that, having been originally propagated by supporters of Charles de Gaulle, has been echoed in numerous studies since 1945.

Before Thanksgiving, There Were the Feasts of 'The Order of the Good Cheer' (Gastro Obscura) - ideas for Christmas dinner?

The club’s main focus was a recurring banquet that featured approximately 15 dishes—delicacies like roasted beaver tail (“It’s filled with meat,” says Lalonde, “but you have to scrape away the outer scale”), and moose muffle stew, a bizarre-sounding dish that includes the animal’s upper lip and nostrils, but is said to be both rich and nutritious. Typically, the men finished off their meal with cups of hippocras, a type of warm spiced wine, while the evening’s entertainment included everything from speeches and dancing to music and plays.

Manet and Morisot: rivals or lovers? (The Article) - the vagaries of interpreting art; the painting shown are beautiful. Is that not enough?

I made it through Marlowe with Liam Neeson on Tubi. It was as good as the reviews made it out to be. Neil Jordan directed.

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Muncie Arts, Food, Politics

I thought it was time to put together just a Muncie post; these are items culled from the past few days.

MuncieArts - the center of Muncie's artist life. I have been working too much to track their work. That its interests are in the performing arts and public art has let me rationalize my inattention. However, one reason for coming to Muncie was PlySpace. PlySpace — MuncieArts was doing theater, but its website says it is no longer taking applications. I think I need to follow up on that. Also, I better get working on my novel so that I can get to any plays that might support my applying for a place at PlySpace. There also seems to be a dormant film festival: That One Film Festival — MuncieArts. Which leaves me thinking that MuncieArts is more for artists like painters, etc.; News and Events — MuncieArts.

All that led me to poke my nose around Ball State:

2025-2026 Theater Season | Ball State University

Ball State English Department 

Department of English Calendar of Events

Undergraduate English Faculty | Ball State University

Foodie Fix: Baryo brings Filipino tastes to Muncie (The Echo). I have eaten there, and its food deserves the attention given it.

 98 New Apartments Along the Cardinal Greenway Take Next Step Forward (Muncie Journal). For people like me, where is the housing for the younger people with lower incomes?

Ball State student acquitted on two charges of disorderly conduct (Ball State Daily News)

Archer was one of five people arrested during the Feb. 28 Board of Trustees meeting, when members of the University Police Department (UPD) removed a group of protesters after they spoke about issues ranging from Ball State’s alleged ties to donors connected to the war in Gaza to concerns about redlining, housing inequity and transparency from trustees about the background of Vice Chair Brian Gallagher. 

Cannon refers to Judge Cannon; the defense moved for an acquittal for lack of evidence; and the judge granted the motion.

“Evidence of mere annoyance is not sufficient,” Cannon said, stating that there was no discomfort experienced by any members of the board due to Archer’s actions from that day. 

Judge Cannon then said he appreciated Archer’s dedication to the cause, but there are “a hell of a lot better ways to do that,” noting that Archer could have volunteered at soup kitchens or made efforts to help the homeless instead. 

Ultimately, Cannon said Archer did “a stupid thing,” but his speech was protected. 

sch 11/23 

Wednesday In Muncie With A Camera!

 What I Did This Morning and Into The Afternoon

Another morning where I did not want to get up, but I did. After breakfasting, I headed down to the convenience store for a pack of Luckies. The camera stayed home, and I think that was the first mistake of the day.

Back here, I worked through the emails and started on my submissions. Those wiped out the day until around 2 pm.

I called the dentist. They did not have my Humana card. I sent it to them, then I heard nothing further from them. They will be closed until Monday,

My submissions:

“Agnes” to Another Chicago Magazine,  Rumpus, The Hemlock Journal, and swamp pink

American Short Fiction, received “Heart’s Judgment Judged”

 To Pulp Asylum, Cold Caller, "The Revenger’s Tale"

Fiction on the Web  - “The Unintended Consequences of Art”

“Going For The Kid” went to Haven Spec Magazine - which I missed as being a duplicate! Moron.

 Peek behind the scenes at how Fiction on the Web chooses which stories to publish - I do not know if this helped still my worries about what happens to my stories after submission is still not clear in my mind.

 I also had running in the background Edward II - Ian McKellen - Timothy West - Diane Fletcher 1969 - Marlowe - Restored 2025 - 4K 

This I found preferable to my memory of the Jarman movie - mostly because of Ian McKellen.

 I also found another local blog: Hiding in Plain Sight (taking in Anderson and Muncie).

Out and About With My New Camera

After lunch and supper, I decided I was going to Minnetrista for an art show. This time I had my camera with me. I took the opportunity to experiment, so please bear with me. Some did not work ; I need to look at the instructions in more depth.

The view from the back of my apartment building:

The view to the north along Reserve:

Reserve looking south:

Muncie's Parking Patrol doing their best:

What I think is an interesting looking house and another failed experiment:

Coming up to Wheeling Avenue:

Crossing Wheeling Avenue to the Minnetrista area:

First stop was White River:

Yeah, there is a tint that was not actually there.

These are the buildings that were associated with the Ball family and remain standing; it is my understanding that these were the smaller buildings, that the larger ones went up in a fire.

There are barn owls in this area:

Then I came up to the Minnetrista Center itself (I believe on the way there, with the river below, I think I saw a kingfisher; only once before have I seen a kingfisher):

They are getting ready for the Luminarian:

And then I came upon the place itself:

These are the pieces I liked best:

From there I needed to take care of some business - my supply of Coke Zero for the rest of the day. This meant along to the convenience store on Wheeling. I cut across the Delaware County Fairgrounds. Here, I decided to more experiments - most of which I will not trouble you with tonight.

I made one stop before the convenience store:

One of Muncie's wonders.

The hands were too full on the way back for more photos. 

Back here around four pm, being gone for about 2 hours, I did the dishes and had dinner. One other blog post was written, about Thomas Pynchon, that is scheduled for the last half of next month. Then I started putting together this post.

Some videos for the day - Klimt, Socialism, Changing Language, King Arthur, Irish pranks, Louis Armstrong live, the doom of Ireland:

I talked to CC. She is supposed to come over. So far, not another peep out of her.

I did plan on a liturgy tomorrow morning, but that might not happen. I still need to get my novels and my mail. I would rather not be distracted by the world while at church.

This post is far too long. I will apologize for that and close out for the night. I might take to bed with Edna O'Brien.

sch