Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving was Joel DeMott’s first movie. It was screened at Tom DeMott’s Memorial on Dec. 1 (nearly 50 years after she made it). Tommy–Jo’s first roommate/fan–would be beaming now if he revisited her visions of him and the DeMott fam. Click on “Read More” to watch Thanksgiving. Use the following password:  Amherst

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Homegoing & Tom DeMott’s Hidden Obit

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I gave the following talk and reading from my brother Tom’s prose at his Memorial after we screened Thanksgiving—our sister Joel’s movie (unsynched but fully in the flow) of a DeMott family celebration ca. 1970. I jumped off from the rapturous sequence in the movie where Jo used a great Motown track “Truly Yours” to soundtrack images of little sister Megan dancing and Tom listening/looking like a rock dream—saved (barely) from male model fineness by his broken nose…

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Gilets Jaunes: The Turning Point

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PARIS—As I write this, Emmanuel Macron is about to make a major speech addressing the protests that have disrupted his nation. He’s expected to show a new side of himself, more consultative than when he took office in 2017 and the press dubbed him President Jupiter. Now he’s more like a black hole, invisible yet immensely powerful, since his deputies control the Assembly. What will he say? Will he raise the minimum wage, as the protesters have demanded? (Unlikely.) Will he speak of dialogue with his “co-citizens?” (Very likely.) Will he stick to the reforms that have widened the gap between the rich and rest of France, or will he give just enough to satisfy a center that has yet to make its intentions felt? Stay tuned. But don’t expect the American media to convey the full significance of what has happened here over the past month. Our image of the French reflects an ancient Anglo-Saxon bias: They’re chic, but dangerous when they take to the streets. In fact, for all its uncertain and unsettling aspects, the uprising of the Gilets Jaunes offers a model of participatory democracy that we can learn from.

brigitte bardon en marche

  Brigitte Bardot En Marche

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The Case for Macron (& Merkel)

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H/t to Bruce Jackson for steering your editor to this Vox photo of our nasty, goofy President smiling at Putin while Macron and Merkel look harder.

Jackson November