Michael > Recent Status Updates

he somehow tells the story in a way designed to be uninteresting to me…
started as a small book illustrating an economic thesis, he kept adding to it year after year. so each chapter is not presented as an interesting story, but as an illustration of his thesis (whatever it was; i don’t remember).

somehow tells the story in a way designed to be uninteresting to me…
started as a small book illustrating an economic thesis, he kept adding to it year after year… so each chapter is not presented as an interesting story, but as an illustration of his thesis (whatever it was; i don’t remember).

heavy with name-dropping and self-importance, it seemed to me. i didn’t get far enough in to experience the thrilling story of putting together a crack team to do the impossible…

i think islamophobia, like antisemitism, is basically a disease.

what i think of a sacred text is not important to the world. for example, i think the old testament glorifies intolerance & vandalism (smashing idols); swindling (jacob & esau); forced circumcision (judah mac); & new glorifies snappy comebacks. who cares; what do believers think?

i don’t love this text. interested to find two distinct “voices.”

Around 1610. Compilation of short tales of swindlers. Sealed silver, brocade cloth, bribing officials or their clerks … bribing test proctors… poison, boats, …

Some very weird. Marry guy to get him beat up by cloth seller, to extract silver from cloth seller. Give him bruises to cover murder, run off with silver…

Eunuch who eats children…

Kind of fun, but take them one at a time, otherwise monotonous.

I like it, but not quite as much as the first one. It still has the weird lovely drawings and slightly paranoid noirish vibe and Chicago details. I like the budding relationship. But we’re getting into the Holocaust-related background of the neighbor the girl is obsessed with, and that feels a little weird and off to me. Ambitious and maybe great choice by the author, but not really what I was looking for.

“…I did not discover any aversion on the part of the Moslem fellahin to the proprietorship by Israelites of their land, on religious grounds. The only difficulty lay in the division of labor and of profit, where the owners of the land were entirely ignorant of agriculture, and therefore dependent on the cooperation of the peasants, on terms to be decided between them.”

Letters to the New York Sun 1884-1886.

Fanny Fern is like both Hyacinth Bouquet & Wilhelmina Buchholz. By 1855, she was the highest-paid US columnist (Wikipedia). Strong opinions. Fascinating details. Graceless writing.

“Talk of Lake George. It is to Lake Champlain what a pretty, little,
simpering, pink-and-white doll of a girl is to a magnificent woman, the
royal sweep of whose robe about her faultless limbs as she moves, sets
all the pulses wild.”

“O eternal and most gracious God, who gavest to thy servants in the
wilderness thy manna, … qualified so, as that to
every man manna tasted like that which that man liked best, I humbly
beseech thee to make this correction, which I acknowledge to be part of
my daily bread, to taste so to me, not as I would but as thou wouldst
have it taste, and to conform my taste, and make it agreeable to thy will.”

Feels like a valuable primer. Suggests US that Iran (the shah) rightly viewed US as more friendly/principled/helpful than either Britain or USSR late in WWII, which were eager to take its oil wealth (both) and its territory (USSR). That kicking Soviets out of Azerbaijan in 1946 was politically tricky, & was the first real action in the Cold War…

The ignorance of this author punches you in the face in Chapter 1 and keeps punching. Maybe it’s an act?

This is the man who led the Jewish Battalion in Palestine, 1917-18. He thinks the Balfour Declaration was a clear statement of an unambiguous policy of his gov’t. & that European Jews who oppose a Jewish nation in the Holy Land are ignorant. He presents as sincere, honest, honorable, and dumb as a rock.

“These silver locks shall not Raymondo scuse”

This is the Edward Fairfax translation of 1600. Remarkable poetry, much of it really wonderful - active, powerful, imaginative, vivid, bold.