You would think Hell eviscerates individuality. Sinners lose their mobility. They do not eat. They do not rest. Their human complications are boiled down to one wrong. They are forced to repeat an action or exist in the same state for eternity: the indecisive souls’ chase has no finish line, and fire and ice never let up for those in lake and lava. Hell’s project is to stratify and simplify, in short, to dehumanize humans. But, the underworld is full of souls with immutable characters and distinct ways of responding. Dante doesn’t chat with muttering masses. Instead, he charms, listens, recoils from the passionate and demure alike. Ulysses upholds curiosity, Master Adam is combative, Francesca refuses to renege on her love, and Farinata’s and Cavalcante’s differing physicalities embody confidence and diffidence, respectively. Their individuation/human expression is a form of resistance to Hell’s order.
Faith in Smith
One afternoon the mid-sixties my soon-to-be wife and I were in Seattle visiting Hazel, her old Graduate Art School advisor when, in the late afternoon, there was a knock at the front door. “Get that would you please, Michael?” Hazel asked. “Diane’s there. She has a fish for us”. Diane, the student at the door, was clearly of Mediterranean decent and so beautiful that I caught my breath. “Hi”, she said, “this is for Hazel. Tell her that I can’t stay because I have a few more fish to deliver.” On that she turned and went down the stairs to the street. I closed the door and stared at the salmon wrapped in wet newspaper that Diane’s boyfriend had just caught a few hours earlier in Elliot Bay.
Sometime later when I finally met Jim Smith he was working as a shipwright and had this small boat he fished off of in the waters of Elliot Bay, and its surrounds, which formed the liquid edge of downtown Seattle.
The first thing I remember about Jim was his apology. He would begin many conversations with people he didn’t know by apologizing for having such a common name. The irony was that he was one of the most uncommon guys I’d ever met.
Prince at the P.O.
So, I’m standing twenty-people deep in line at the post office—shout out to Eudora Welty’s “Why I Live at the P.O.”—with heavy-ass boxes that I’ve been meaning to mail since December.
Late Prince (Black Lives Matter & A Month of Death)
Prince’s Welcome 2 America, which was recorded in 2010 but only released in 2021, five years after his death, has a rep for being a politically aware CD that anticipated the BLM summer of 2020. Prince limned his country as “land of the free, home of the slave.” Triplets on one lyric disclosed a low line of descent – “son of a son of a son of a…slave-master.” Ten years after, it’s still bracing to hear Prince cutting through the fantasy of a post-racial America.
Putin’s Not So Willing Executioners
Two anonymous “Russians with Attitude,” proud of “manoeuvring the globe-spanning American monoculture,” have been tweeting pro-Putin agit-prop about what they insist on calling the “special operation” in Ukraine. Their glorying in the power of Russian arms has been undercut by Ukrainians’ stalwart resistance. Not that RWA cop to the fact Russians have suffered thousands of casualties. Their triumphalism seems a paltry thing when they post odd snippets of video meant to wow their followers with wonders of Russian weaponry.
Self-Portrait March 2022
Warring nations mingle in my blood –
Russia, Germany, Ukraine, all the great-
great somebodies who boarded ships
pulled toward America’s promise-paved streets.
Their passports all stamped Jew.
Brothers in Arms
If y’all have time, watch “The Truth,” which is episode five of season one of The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. I will only add this. Black people don’t fight for America because we love it. We fight for America because we built it and because it ain’t shit without us.
Into the Pit
A few days ago, I posted Arnold Schwarzenegger’s video message to the Russian people, an example of thoughtful Republican rhetoric and action. Good to be reminded there are Arnold’s and Liz’s and Adam’s in the world. They are far too few. As we see below.
Today we return to the more typical universe of Republican thought. Something we might call Dispatches from Trumpworld.
The Way We See (and Hear) Now
“Westside Story 2021.” A yes for me. We watched it through, surprised and moved by crazy young love brought vividly to life in this cast’s Tony and Maria. I kept thinking, no, they have a chance, they’ll get out of the Shakespeare play they were born in, like the street where you were raised and the language that formed you. Valentina will give them bus fare and Anita will not betray them after she is almost gang raped. Justin Peck’s balletic remastering of the Robbins dances. The screenplay by Tony Kushner. The Spanish spoken throughout without subtitles. Spielberg’s camera adds wings to the play, turning it into a movie that’s a play set in the way we see things now. Every story is about the time it’s told in, not the period depicted, and this one is about something’s coming. Gustavo Dudamel conducts the rapturous, jazzy Bernstein score that doesn’t get old. And never will.
Desert Hearts
..Disappear into beauty, the desert whispered to me at the beginning of World War III.
Putin’s Dark Prophet: Aleksandr Dugin’s Theory of a Fascist International
Should Vladimir Putin’s barbarous war of Russian expansion move beyond the borders of Ukraine into Moldova, Finland, or even Sweden, then expect to hear the name “Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin” far more frequently. A former philosophy professor at Moscow State University, Dugin has combined his obsessions with occultism and the neo-pagan philosophies of European fascists like Julius Evola and Alain de Benoist to derive his fervently nationalistic ideology of “Eurasianism,” promulgated in books with torpid titles such as Foundations of Geopolitics and The Fourth Political Theory.
Moses from Harlem
Reps. Espaillat, Wilson, and Raskin are leading a push to posthumously honor Bob Moses with a Congressional Gold Medal. Rep Espaillat hosted a virtual tribute to Moses during Black History Month. Moses’ daughter Maisha spoke briefly about her father, starting with his boyhood in Harlem…
Bob Moses’ Legacy (Call for Donations)
Dear Family & Friends,
I need your help. As you know, Bob Moses, Civil Rights legend and Math Literacy Scholar, passed July 25, 2021. Since then, I and a team at FIU, have established a Bob Moses Research Center at FIU. From 2004, when Bob first joined FIU as an eminent scholar, he envisioned a space at FIU to inspire those who want to transform K-12 public schools, through research, to produce quality education not just for the few, but also for students who historically have been denied equitable learning structures & opportunities. Bob believed that all students deserve the opportunity to learn the mathematics skills necessary for a full livelihood and citizenship in a 21st century society.
And he believed that FIU, as one of the largest Research 1 Public Universities–which had long supported his research, philosophy and practice concerning math literacy for K-12 public school students–was an ideal institution for this work.
To memorialize and project into the future Bob’s vision & practice, FIU has generously donated a wing of its Biscayne Bay Campus (BBC), as the home of the Bob Moses Research Center —a valued contribution and strong commitment to further Bob’s work. The Center will serve as a space for people, from all over the country, to gather together to explore how to make this demand for excellence in education a reality for all the nation’s children.
Now that we have the bricks and mortar and the offices are open, our next step is to underwrite human resources. This is where I need your support. Please join us as a partner in building Bob’s dream and furthering his legacy.
Unsentimental Internationalism
I
One faction of neoconservatives were wittily defined as people for whom it is always 1938. Whoever so defined them may not have considered the possibility that there are also people for whom it is never 1938, and that for some of that latter group even 1938 is no longer 1938 (a very partial version of that last view can be seen in a recently released film in which Chamberlain is credited with having bought the time for Britain to rearm).