Light Of Day: D.C. Riot & de Maistre’s Heirs

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The climax of the Youtube video below, which documents the shooting of Ashli Babbitt by U.S. Capitol police during the insurrection at the Capitol on Wednesday, is beyond chilling. There’s the stunned look on the late Ms. Babbitt’s face as she lies on her back — her arms up like she’s a prisoner of forever. Then comes the cruelty of fellow rioters/voyeurs who shine their lights in her face, out to capture the moment when she’s done…But there’s more to the video than its End (which has been shown on network tv and at the Times website). The rest adds shadows to the distinguished thing on Ms. Babbitt’s blankening face.

Click to watch here

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Rad

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Even the ski bums have been radicalized.

The Bitter Logician and The Trimmer: Rereading Allen Grossman and Eugene Goodheart in My Middle Age

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Penniless and nearing thirty circa 1990, the one ace up my sleeve was that I “worked with Grossman.”  Grossman.   The Brandeis English department’s quite literal resident “genius” poet and pedagogue.  In August 1989, Allen R. Grossman had in fact received a John D. and Catherine T. Mac Arthur “Genius” Grant.   Needless to say, I owned no mutual funds back then, but Grossman’s stock was on the rise when he was my doctoral adviser.

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Brotherman Thinking: Obama’s “A Promised Land”

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Barack Obama’s A Promised Land tries to do God’s work as per Simone Weil:

It is absolutely false to imagine that there is some providential mechanism by which what is best in any given period is transmitted to the memory of posterity. By the very nature of things, it is false greatness which is transmitted. There is, indeed, a providential mechanism, but it only works in such a way as to mix a little genuine greatness with a lot of spurious greatness; leaving us to pick out which is which. Without it we should be lost.—”The Need for Roots”

Take the following essay on Obama’s memoir and the complementary posts on the legacy of Charles and Shirley Sherrod as a modest attempt to make First of the Month into another very human mechanism of historical transfer.

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The Politics of Forbearance: Shirley Sherrod in Our Time

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This story was originally published here at “The 19th.”

A decade after she was forced to resign as Georgia state director of rural development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Shirley Sherrod says she “holds no ill will” towards Agriculture secretary nominee Tom Vilsack, who played a key role in her resignation. She hopes that if Vilsack is confirmed, he will return to the role — which he held under the Obama administration — with a focus on Black farmers.

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On the Bus to A Promised Land (Riding with J. Charles Jones & the Sherrods)

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At the website of the New Coummunities Inc., J. Charles Jones (one of SNCC’s founding members) and Charles & Shirley Sherrod talk about the success of the Southern Freedom Movement and the failure to hold on to what would’ve been the largest piece of land owned cooperatively by black Americans. This short ride down memory highway is full of information and inspiration. (Thanks to C. Liegh McInnes for his help with steering this post.)

 

The story of New Communities isn’t over. See the post below to learn more about how the Sherrods et al. have kept on moving…

Addio Alle Armi

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Bruce Jackson wrote this reflection on an Italian cultural festival, lessons of Attica and a perfect night in Piacenza a few years ago, but it’s still on time. 

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Reese Pieces

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I watched Legally Blonde (2001) for the first time last night. I have become interested in Reese Witherspoon. The turning point of the story is a piece of sexual harassment, and I found it moving.

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Gentlemen[1] (Author Keeps Punching)

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The basement had bare concrete floor. bare plywood walls. Ceiling beams lay exposed. Pipes showed here and wires there. Storage cartons rimmed the perimeter, reliquaries for the bones of books Shemp’d authored. Dust a more likely outcome than university archive.

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