“Evil, that is, has every advantage but one – it is inferior in imagination.”

The poet W.H. Auden wrote in a New York Times review of the final book in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, “Evil, that is, has every advantage but one – it is inferior in imagination. Good can imagine the possibility of becoming evil – hence the refusal of Gandalf and Aragorn to use the Ring – but Evil, defiantly chosen, can no longer imagine anything but itself. Sauron cannot imagine any motives except lust for domination and fear so that, when he has learned that his enemies have the Ring, the thought that they might try to destroy it never enters his head, and his eye is kept toward Gondor and away from Mordor and the Mount of Doom.”

You can see the attempt to consolidate power in the president, as supported by the conservative six on the Supreme Court, and by the surrender of Congress’s powers by the Republican majority, as an attempt to create a one-ring level of power in radical opposition to the checks and balances and ideals of democracy and accountability that have been central to this nation’s official ideology, however imperfectly realized.

“This is one of the American opposition’s strategic advantages: they routinely fail to comprehend motives that are not selfish, so the idealism, the altruism, the commitment to ideals and principles, that motivates the resistance is seen as a cover-up for the real motives, which helps them cast progressives as criminal or delusional. Empathy is itself an act of imagination, that begins with attention and care: what is it like to be this other being, what are they feeling, what do they need. It arises from and reinforces a sense of non-separation, a sense that we’re all in this together, that everyone is your neighbor and no one is a stranger.”

Trump and his hideous orc followers will eventually be defeated by the American people who still cling to democratic ideals and empathy for our neighbors.

Down with Big Brother !

 

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Snow Joke

Depending on one’s point of view, we have either been cursed or blessed with an abundance of snow this season. Which ever side prevails here in the former U.S. of A., our vocabulary for snow is basic. But the Swedes have an extensive lexicon to describe the frozen white precipitation.

Here is a list of 50 Swedish words related to snow.

1) Blötsnö – wet, slushy snow
2) Drivsnö – snow that is blown into troublesome snow drifts
3) Aprilsnö – snow in April, according to suspicion signifies plenty of food for the coming season
4) Hårdsnö – compacted hard snow
5) Konstsnö – artificial snow
6) Kramsnö – squeezy snow, perfect for making snowballs
7) Julesnö – snow at Christmas
8) Klabbsnö – wet, warm snow for building snowmen
9) Kolsyresnö – frozen carbondioxide
10) Kornsnö – small white snow breadcrumbs
11) Lappvante – thick, falling snow
12) Lössnö – snow that can loosen and be dangerous
13) Majsnö – surprising and unwelcome snow in May
14) Modd – snow that has partly melted due to salt
15) Natursnö – real snow (as opposed to artificial)
16) Nysnö – fresh snow, crisp and white
17) Pudersnö – powder snow
18) Rekordsnö – an unusual amount of snow, breaking previous snow records
19) Slask – slushy snow mixed with rain and dirt on the ground
20) Snö – snow
21) Snöblandat regn – snow mixed with rain
22) Muohta – the Sami word for snow (it is said the Sami actually have 200 words for snow!)
23) Snörök – faint particles of snow that look like smoke
24) Yrsnö – snow being whipped around by the wind in all directions
25) Åsksnö – snow that pours down during a thunder storm

26) Snökanon – a sudden blast of snow that suddenly hits a place, and feels like snow has been dumped on you

27) Jungfrusnö – virgin snow

28) Snösmocka – a huge amount of snow

29) Snötäcke – snow on the ground

30) Sjösnö – snow over the sea that can roll in over land

31) Snöfall – snow in the air

32) Flingsnö – snow with larger crystals

33) Skarsnö – a crispy surface on a blanket of snow

34) Packsnö – thickly packed snow

35) Pärlsnö – snow like small pearls that hurts when it hits your face

36) Snöglopp – wet snow mixed with rain

37) Spårsnö – snow that allows footprints to be formed

38) Fjöcksnö – a light, fluffy snow

39) Flister – snow the consistency of salt that stings the face when it falls

40) Flaksnö – a sheet of snow

41) Upplega – snow on the upper side of a tree branch

42) Firn – liquid-like snow that can initiate an avalanche

43) Fimmel – sandy snow that falls at low temperatures

44) Själja – a thin layer of ice on top of the snow that resembles glass

45) Knarrsnö – crispy snow that creaks when you walk on it

46) Snöfyk – wet snow

47) Torrsnö – dry snow

48) Månsilver – a poetic word to describe the dusting of snow

49) Snöis – snow on cold water that forms an icy solid surface

50) Stöp – a mixture of snow and ice resembling porridge that forms on top of cold water

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Vonnegut’s lament

In case you haven’t noticed,” Kurt Vonnegut wrote, ​we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were. With good reason.” He lamented the undemocratic nature of the 2000 presidential election, warmongering politicians and a mainstream media unwilling to address the cold reality of America in the 21st century. His words from two decades ago have eerie relevance today.

In 2004, Kurt Vonnegut wrote:

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And still on the subject of books: Our daily sources of news, papers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books can we find out what is really going on. I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published near the start of this humiliating, shameful blood-soaked year.

In case you haven’t noticed, and as a result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war lovers, with appallingly powerful weaponry and unopposed.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.

With good reason.

In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound and kill ​em and torture ​em and imprison ​em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven’t noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send ​em anywhere. Make ​em do anything.

Piece of cake.

So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and the Chicago-based magazine you are reading, In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed that there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn’t even seen World War I. War is now a form of TV entertainment. And what made WWI so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don’t you wish you could have something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now am tempted to give up on people too. And, as some of you may know, this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? ​Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas!

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.

What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without a sense of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it all their own?

 

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To be governed

From “What Is Government?” by Clifford Peter Harper, a visual adaptation of text by Pierre Joseph Proudhon. Published in Anarchy Comics #3, July 1981, Last Gasp Comics 

“To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.”
― Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century.

 

 

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Cabinet of Curiosities (sort of)

Check out the disappointed tourist: an elegy to lost places, a record of those grand and mundane places lost to time or other occurrences, whose presence we continue to mourn.

“It would be better to describe reading not as a public duty but as a private pleasure, sometimes even a vice. This would be a more effective way to attract young people, and it also happens to be true. When literature was considered transgressive, moralists couldn’t get people to stop buying and reading dangerous books. Now that books are considered virtuous and edifying, moralists can’t persuade anyone to pick one up.” from Reading Is a Vice [The Atlantic; ungated

European rail travel, AI’s impact on travel planning, what’s trending in travel gear, and much more at Nomadico which has news, tips, and tools for travelers and digital nomads alike.

We may never get an invite, but we can See inside London’s beautiful and unique private members’ clubs

I have a vague recollection of my maternal Grandmother telling me a story about some distant relatives who hailed from Minsk, but I’ve never thought much about visiting the sad former Soviet city. Paying a visit to Europe’s last dictatorship is a fascinating long read about taking a bus to Minsk and back.

Books That Belong On Paper has recommendations of visually striking books, with sample pages. Eclectic does not cover it.

Rental car companies love to shake you down with their toll programs—- either pay an absurd daily fee (like $25/day!) for their toll service or risk getting slammed with massive processing fees if you hit a toll booth. But here’s a money-saving move: register your rental car’s license plate on The Toll Roads website before driving. Take a photo of the plate and VIN (enter it here to get the car’s year, make, and model) at pickup and add it to your personal toll account right there in the parking lot—takes 2 minutes. Set the start/end dates for your rental period and you’re good to go.

 

 

 

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Refugee Blues

Refugee Blues

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there’s no place for us, my dear, yet there’s no place for us.Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you’ll find it there:
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew:
Old passports can’t do that, my dear, old passports can’t do that.

The consul banged the table and said,
“If you’ve got no passport you’re officially dead”:
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said;
“If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread”:
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying, “They must die”:
O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren’t German Jews, my dear, but they weren’t German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren’t the human race, my dear, they weren’t the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors:
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.

W.H. Auden
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Because bookshops make everything better, don’t they?

I promise you that this article —I opened a bookshop. It was the best, worst thing that I’ve ever done—will make your day. What a wholesome short read: Chloe Fox shares the emotional journey of opening Fox & King, an independent bookshop in Tisbury, UK. She chronicles the initial spark of inspiration following her breast cancer diagnosis to the overwhelming support of her community during the build-out and opening day. (Might be paywalled – free archived view)

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Occupation Cartography

Over the last year or two I’ve seen many social media posts about “occupying powers” and accusations about nations or peoples being “colonizers”. I’ve been thinking that maps may help clarify some of the confusion.

 

 

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Ex Libris

You don’t have to be a bibliophile to enjoy this marvelous animated short film created by Garik Seko. Although he was born in Georgia, he spent most of his working life in Prague. Seko specialized in the animation of physical objects. In the case of Ex Libris a library of anthropomorphized books. The amusing film  may be seen here.

 

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Bookstore (the play)

The Bookstore by Michael Walek opened January 10 off-Broadway at 59E59 Theaters. Produced by New Jersey Repertory Company, the play is directed by William Carden and stars Quentin Chisholm, Ari Derambakhsh, Arielle Goldman, and Janet Zarish.

The play is described as a love letter to small bookstores and the bibliophiles who make them a home, The play is about indie bookstore owner Carey, who “has a special gift for recommending the perfect book…. While trying to survive in New York City, she has created a found family of coworkers who unite over their passion for literature–and a glass of wine. This band of misfits turn the pages of their lives and learn to navigate the plot twists that are thrown their way.”

Hopefully it won’t close before I get a chance to see it.

 

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