Since I have no billion-dollar media empire to protect, and since hardly anyone listens to me anyway, I have no hesitation in endorsing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz for president and vice-president in the 2024 election. That many millions of my fellow citizens see things differently speaks volumes about the current state of American political culture (bad) and about the open wounds of American history (unhealed, and probably unhealable), but doesn't alter my opinion. A lie is a lie, no matter how often repeated and spread about, and, bluntly put, everything that comes out of the mouth of the Republican candidates is a lie. I find little point in arguing with those who still refuse, or are unable, to understand the danger. There is no grey area; to quote Peter Case, this is "the fork in the road where we all have to choose."
We have a long, sad history in the United States of failing to do the right thing; somehow we have muddled through, more or less. A similar failure now may be more difficult to overcome. We can only hope that historians of the future — if the honest study of history survives — will not find in our actions rich cause for condemnation.
About a month ago, my eye was drawn to a book that has sat mostly unread on my shelf for some time, ‘The Book of Disquiet’ by Fernando Pessoa. I picked it up and randomly read a passage of such beautiful poignancy, such exquisite human precision, that the wonderment of creative expression flooded me. I told no one about it, but kept it to myself, and the impulse to write, the need to grapple with this moment has returned to me and grown from that little seed.
For whatever reason I've been listening to Gillian Welch a lot the last few weeks, and as it turns out she has a new record that has just been released. Woodland is officially credited to Welch and her longtime partner David Rawlings, probably because he takes lead vocals on a few tracks, but in any case their work has always been a collaboration.
I took a spin today to run some errands on a beautiful fall New England afternoon and put the new CD in the drive, this being probably the last car we'll ever own that has that capability. It's a pretty impressive record. Gillian's vocals are as good as ever and David's maybe better, the songs are interesting, and the instrumental textures are just gorgeous. Below is a sample track:
Woodland is available from Gillian and David's own Acony Records, as well as, of course, the usual sources.
The writer Lore Segal has died; the New York Times has an obituary. Two of Segal's novels have been on and off my to-read list for years, though I confess that I've never quite gotten around to them; I'm putting Other People's Houses and Her First American back at the top of the queue. What I have read, and re-read often, are her brilliant translations from the Brothers Grimm collected in The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm with the delicious illustrations by Maurice Sendak. Segal was without peer in being able to capture both the lyrical beauty of the tales and their sinister horror, as in the refrain from the title tale, which I believe I first heard on the radio in the 1970s.
My mother she butchered me,
My father he ate me,
My sister, little Ann Marie,
She gathered up the bones of me
And tied them in a silken cloth
To lay under the juniper.
Tweet twee, what a pretty bird am I!
Caminante, son tus huellas el camino y nada más; Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar. Al andar se hace el camino, y al volver la vista atrás se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar. Caminante, no hay camino sino estelas en la mar.
