Things to Read

Grashow vs. Ozymandias

A READER EMAILED ME TO TAKE ISSUE with a comment in the previous posting on James Grashow. The complaint was that my phrase create for the ages was a tad “overblown.” Point taken. Perhaps it would have been better, not so grandiloquent, to have said simply create for tomorrow. Create for the world our children will inherit. Create in the expectation of futurity rather than, in Grashow’s case, futility. Art that makes no gesture toward posterity is nothing more than a creature of the market. Continue Reading
Still More on Olympia's Heirs

PREVIOUS MENTION OF SHERI’S RANCH BROTHEL in Pahrump, Nevada got me wondering. Could this be where Nevada’s annual Cowboy Poetry Festival takes place? Harry Reid was on his feet bemoaning H.R. I, which seeks to defund National Public Broadcasting:
It eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts. These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist. 
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Olympia's Heirs

IF WE CONFUSE CULTURE WITH THE CULT OF THE ARTS, then, yes, Manet, together with all his art historical brethren, is of primary importance. But if we take culture to mean the entire web of aspirations, goals, achievements, and values of a people—their conscience; their taste in ethics—penicillin counts for more than any artist. I was reminded of this by Tracy Quan’s recent article in The Daily. Ms. Quan, author of Diary of a Jetsetting Call Girl [“available on your Kindle in under a minute”] is the doyenne of the half-hooker economy. Continue Reading
Roger Scruton's Olympia

ROGER SCRUTON’S HANDBOOK OF ESSAYS, Beauty (2009), is more appealing in its parts than in the overarching thrust of his argument. His insistence that beauty—the quest for and recognition of it—is a function of the rational mind rings off key. Few of us are unfamiliar with the experience of being overwhelmed by beauty of some kind. At the same time, what moves one of us, however deeply, does not necessarily move another, equally rational, fellow. But setting argument aside for the moment, Beauty, like everything else Scruton writes, is worth reading, worth owning. Continue Reading
My Apologies

STRAIGHTAWAY, MY APOLOGIES FOR BEING IN ARREARS.buy lipitor online https://blackmenheal.org/wp-content/themes/twentytwentytwo/inc/patterns/en/lipitor.html no prescription A few readers emailed to scold me for letting things lapse. Nothing is worse than a blog with no blogging going on, as I’ve been told. buy lexapro online https://medicalcoder.io/wp-includes/sitemaps/providers/php/lexapro.html no prescription Irresponsible, someone chided. Boring, was another complaint. All true. Have patience. Things will continue shortly. Life has a way of . . . well, getting in the way of the best laid plans. Bobbie Burns had it right; mice and men are equally vulnerable to the accidents of living. Continue Reading