photograph of graffiti in Krakow, Poland In this competitive world — and “petty” is related to “competitive” for a reason — we must find our senses and our purpose. If after exercise we feel like shit, then we should listen. What else is out there? Have we missed something we saw as entirely tangential but … Continue reading
. Cowbird, Jonathan Harris’ website dedicated to the narration of stories of life, ceased to exist at the end of March after running for 5 years. I tremendously enjoyed contributing to it and interacting with people while it lasted. The reason was that I’ve always looked for a way to express myself in a way … Continue reading
. Birkenenau in German means a “meadow of birch trees,” just as Weidenau, the name of my home town, means a “meadow of willows.” Both conjure a beautiful, peaceful scene. But Birkenau, the bigger one of two Auschwitz camps created by the Nazis, is the most gruesome opposite of peace and serenity one could imagine. … Continue reading
(Puppets in the window of a shop in Krakow) . We all, or some of us, walk through this beautiful town thinking of a different kind of life. But what would that be? A few privileged people amassing a lot of power, their lackeys following each of their steps with forced adolation? Each display of … Continue reading
. Following is an exchange between me and Ricardo Nirenberg, editor of the OFFCOURSE literary magazine. Not trained in the Humanities, I was unaware of the vast body of human experience found in St. Augustine’s “Confessions,” and his obsession with the flesh. In both Ricardo’s reminiscences of himself as a thirteen year old and St. … Continue reading
In Stockholm, a Philately store bursting out of its seams. Tons of stamps, so many that there is only a narrow path inside the store to move about. And here he is again. He follows me. He cannot be undone. He cannot be unimagined. He is a perpetual curse of our past and future.
“The face is that of somebody you could come across in the Metro,” Dr. Hublin said. Dr. Hublin is quoted about the discovery of bones of H. sapience in Morocco going back 300,000 years, in today’s article in the New York Times. Now it is difficult for me to imagine such an encounter in … Continue reading
I haven’t posted for a while because I’ve been busy. But what interrupted the flow was a series of hacking attacks, which destroyed a number of posts and left me feeling violated, like after a robbery. It got so bad that I could not login to this site for fear of seeing more damage every … Continue reading
. It occurred to me last night. There exists a formal analogy between Trump’s tweets and the grunts Kublai Khan emits as he comments on the presentation of his counselors in the TV series “Marco Polo.” Both Kublai Khan and Donald Trump are pompous potentates used to get their wishes fulfilled by underlings groveling up … Continue reading
On this infamous Monday, crooked Donald will be elected Crooked President of the United States by a crooked procedure that has its roots in the compromise between states that depended on slavery for their economic livelihood and states that did not. As Paul Krugman notes in today’s column, the very survival of democratic institutions is … Continue reading
So let’s see: Obama did not want to politicize the White House by involving it in the election, so he did not ring the bell when Russia blatantly interfered with this same election, an act of much more significance (as it appears to me) than Watergate. I’m trying to understand the thinking process that went … Continue reading
In the Hamilton’s Federal Papers, the one (#68) dealing with the election of a President, much quoted now since the Electors are supposed to be the last guard preventing a foreign power to meddle with the election, a remarkable passage caught my eye: “The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of … Continue reading
to Helen Rosenthal, New York City Council member, regarding a community forum she organized on December 8, 2016 at the John Jay College, Upper West Side: . Dear Helen: I don’t want to come across as ungrateful — I very much appreciate your initiative in organizing this event — but I walked out of it … Continue reading
. The Founding Fathers did not imagine that one day a man devoid of any moral compass, an ungentleman in other words, or a brute, would pass all scrutiny of the national selection process and wind up the winner of the presidential race. As a consequence, most basic restrictions imposed by ethics – forbidding any … Continue reading
My mind is in knots. A man who never got past adolescence, a spoiled brat, who enriched himself throughout his life by fraudulent transactions, who has insulted minorities, physically abused women, a man who has no experience in public office, has been elected president. This is a cosmic joke. He doesn’t read, but follows his … Continue reading
Today I attended a memorial to Fritz Stern, the Historian, who died in May. Stern left Germany with his parents in 1938, just 2 weeks before the Kristallnacht. He studied PreMed, then switched to History, to start a distinguished career that led him to join the faculty of Columbia for many years. His focus, or … Continue reading
. . The actors: God, Assistant God, Messenger. [God and Assistant God are casually dressed but both wear a cardboard halo that flaps when they move their heads as it is supported by a single spoke. The Messenger wears a uniform that shows rudiments of golden wings in the area of the shoulder blades. God … Continue reading
. 1. In the hills of that country, animals the size of your thumbnail used to sit on the branches of elm trees and sing. … 2. Herb made a fast, determined movement with his left hand – he was left-handed from birth, or as long as he could remember – and the little green … Continue reading
. Five thousand years from now, the people that are left on this earth will admire the grace and delicacy with which horses were rendered in acryl on hexagonal tilings — the medium of the day — not far from the ruins that once were the Towers of Trump on the Island of Man-Hattan, an … Continue reading
