Pro & con
By Jim Rix
I recently viewed an episode of Adam Ruins Everything (truTV)* in which comedian Adam Conover exposes internet services like Facebook and Google for eavesdropping on your e-mail and activity and then providing your profile to prospective advertisers.
A novella with some real characters
By Roger Owens
Lester Clayton Tottenmann couldn’t believe he was still alive, that Porcelain would not be raped and killed, that anything might ever be all right again. How had this happened? He was a dead man. If it had been him on the other end of that oar, the son of a bitch on the ground would have been a goner for sure and for certain. What had he, a piece of racist shit not much better than the slab of meat sprawled on the white sand by his feet, ever done to deserve to keep on living? What right did he have to keep his girl, the only girl he ever loved? His head began to clear, and he wondered if he would be in any better shape with these white men than he had been with the others. He thought maybe he had a chance with these folks. They didn’t seem to be in the game the way backwoods people up home were, the way salt-water folks seemed to be here. But then again, they hadn’t seen Porcelain yet.
Learning from English epigram
By Eric Meub
[Originally published on October 29, 2013, not one word different, but more urgent than ever.]
Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
–Alexander Pope
Here is a sentiment that many of today’s high school students might heartily commend, at least according to Kyle Garza’s overview of the state of teaching English (see “Tuesday Voice: Our amusing age,” October 1). Our educators are the canaries in our cultural coalmine: we ignore them at our peril. Some of today’s students will go on to lead entertainment and media corporations, or programs for the endowment of the arts, or institutes of higher education. Some will be news anchors or reviewers. A few will become Speaker of the House, or President. Any malaise affecting our youth has potentially drastic ramifications for the culture at large.
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| On the coast |
Four days in Portugal
By James Knudsen
I’ll confess, it is a mystery to me how the serial writers of the 1930’s did it. Keeping details straight over an extended period of time is taxing, and it’s only been a month – less than a month!
By Moristotle
[Originally published on October 27, 2009, not one word different, but another image has been added and a different image of Spinoza substituted.]
Having learned a great deal from neuroscientist Antonio R. Damasio’s 1999 book about consciousness, The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotion and the Making of Consciousness, I decided to read another of his books.
By Moristotle
[Originally published on October 25, 2010, not one word different, but a better photo of Mr. Russell has been substituted.]
My wife didn’t laugh when I read her the following excerpt from Bertrand Russell’s 1909 essay, “Pragmatism,” but I did, and I hope you might too:
A novella with some real characters
By Roger Owens
Lester knew they couldn’t stay in any of the white hotels or cabins, but the bad part was, they couldn’t stay at any of the black places either. He couldn’t believe what was happening to him. He was a white man, he could tell any nigger what to do, but if he stayed in a black establishment he knew damn well they would both wake up dead. And there wasn’t nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t call the sheriff, he’d be put in jail his ownself for causing a ruckus, and if there wasn’t a charge on the books for living in sin with a black woman, they would just make one up. Prob’ly get hisself hung before it was over. They had come across south Florida on Alligator Alley, and they had sure seen some. Fat black monsters that lay across the miserable excuse for a road and sometimes wouldn’t move for all the arm-waving and horn-blowing a man could do. God, he hated Florida.
By Moristotle
[Originally published on October 22, 2008, not a word different, but with an image added and a bracketed phrase revealed at the end.]
Richard Dawkins, in the penultimate chapter of his 1996 book, Climbing Mount Improbable, addresses the general question about how and to what extent life may have arisen in the universe.
[Text-only version]
By Geoffrey Dean
[Editor’s Note: The photo version will be published as soon as we have overcome a thorny technical glitch.]
On the St. Croix River bordering Minnesota and Wisconsin, Stillwater is a charming town with an old-time feel within easy driving range of the Twin Cities. As we discovered through the many historical markers along MN 95 between Stillwater and Scandia, this area is important as the cradle of Minnesota’s statehood and the home of its earliest European settlers (ca. 1838-1859).
Edited by Moristotle
[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]
Harvey Weinstein’s being thrown out of the Motion Picture Academy is like they’re overdoing it because nothing was done about Donald Trump. At least Weinstein was good at his job. “Right and Left React to Harvey Weinstein Reports” [Anna Dubenko, NY Times, October 13]. Excerpt:
A novella with some real characters
By Roger Owens
Porcelain Jones was still terrified. Something had to go wrong. Everything in her nineteen years always had gone wrong, and there was no reason to think now would be any different. Her father had died, her stepdaddy lost his job like every other black man when all the white boys came home from the war, and took to drinking and beating her mother and everyone else near him. And worse. He’d tried to come to her bed more than once, but he’d always been so drunk she’d been able to fight him off. She worked a little at Mrs. Jeffries’ dance hall to make enough money to get out of the house, but she had known that sometime she would have to sell herself to live. There was no work anywhere. The service jobs that had sustained her family for generations were going to white women who were out of work for the same reason black men’s jobs were going to white men. The white men were back.
By Moristotle
[Originally published on October 15, 2009, not a word different.]
Last night I watched my recording of Lifetime!’s 2009 TV movie, Georgia O’Keeffe, directed by Bob Balaban. The interplay between Joan Allen as O’Keeffe (1887-1986) and Jeremy Irons as Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) is as scintillating cinema as the story of O’Keeffe and Stieglitz’s affecting 30-year relationship is fascinating drama. And as far as I have been able to tell, the actors were successfully cast for their physical resemblance to the principals.
By Eric Meub
[Originally published on April 9, 2016]
We had then (still) tomorrow, Saarinen,
a Trans-World tapered, curled, stiletto heeled,
and Kahn. We thought we’d live without a Penn
Station (what a leveled playing field).
Edited by Moristotle
[Items of correspondence are not attributed; they remain anonymous. They have been chosen for their inherent interest as journalism, story, or provocative opinion, which may or may not be shared by the editor or other members of the staff of Moristotle & Co.]
Trump’s lack of self-awareness is, as ever, awe-inspiring. I hope he will soon be examined by a team of psychiatrists and their consensus report made public: “Trump rips the NFL for disrespecting the flag. Then he jokes about a military flag ceremony” [Patrick Martin, Washington Post, October 12]. Excerpt:
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