Monthly Archives: October 2022

COWS

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From the news this morning, I heard Herschel Walker call every woman of Georgia a cow. Walker was on the stage with Cotton from Arkansas and Scott from Florida. They were representing the Republican National Party and did not interrupt or stop Herschel’s cow story. So I assume they ratified calling every woman in Georgia a cow. Thereupon, I presume that all Republicans think the women of Georgia are cows.

That’s not very nice.

Herschel told a story, obviously a metaphor, about himself and the women of Georgia. A bull looks over a fence at three cows in a field, but also notices three cows up the hill. Like any cow can jump over the moon, the bull jumps and clears the fence. He goes up the hill, gets closer, and realizes the three cows are three bulls


This story is dreamlike, not sourced from the Bible but from life. If Herschel is having dreams where cows are bulls, how sexually conflicted is Herschel? At a quarter mile I can tell a woman from a man. At the same distance I assume bulls can tell cows from bulls.

There is another explanation. The bulls on the hill are hiding their cows from Herschel, but he goes up anyway.

THE TROLL GARDEN

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Willa Cather

They advise that a writer should write what she knows. Willa Cather followed that advice. She began her career of words in journalism. Part of her assignments was reviewing art, music and literature. In her first published work (of short stories), The Troll Garden presents Cather’s relaying performances, artists, fans and art to the reader. She write each story with a proper amount of skepticism toward characters (artists and fans) and what they are doing. Troll has pejorative inference, and thereby, Cather has described the process and results of art. It is a trolly world of being.

For example,
FEMALE FANS: “What he had was that, in his mere personality, he quickened and in a measure gratified that something without which – to women – life is no better than sawdust, and to the desire for which most of their mistakes and tragedies and the astonishingly poor bargains are due.” The Garden Lodge.

MALE FANS: Man re-meets singer after singer is retired and dying.
“It was the silence of admiration,” protested Everett, “very crude and boyish, but very sincere and not a little painful. Perhaps you suspected something of the sort? I remember you saw fit to be very grown-up and worldly.”
“I believe I suspected a pose; then that college boys usually affect with singers – ‘an earthen vessel in love with a star,’ you know. But it rather surprised me in you, for you must have seen a good deal of your brother’s pupils. Or had you an omnivorous capacity, and elasticity that always met the occasion.” A Death in the Desert.

TRAGEDY: “He used to write only the tragedies of passion; but this is tragedy of the soul, the shadow coexistent with the soul. This is the tragedy of effort and failure, the thing Keats calls hell. This is my tragedy; as I lie here spent by the racehorse…”

“I wanted to be with you….I have never cared about other women since I met you in New York when I was a lad. You are part of my destiny, and I could not leave you if I would.

She put her hands on his shoulders and shook her head. “No, no; don’t tell me that. I have seen enough of tragedy, God knows. Don’t show me any more just as the curtain is going down. No, no, it was only a boy’s fancy, and your divine pity and my utter pitiableness have recalled it for a moment. One does not love the dying, dear friend. If some fancy of that sort had been left over from boyhood, this would rid you of it, and that were well. Now go, and you will come again tomorrow….” A Death In The Desert.

MARRYING AN ARTIST
“…She has remained in much the same condition she sank to before his death. He trampled over pretty much whatever there was in her, I fancy. Women don’t recover from wounds of that sort – at least not women of Ellen’s grain. They go on bleeding inwardly.”…

“The marriage,” Lady Mary continued with a shrug, “was made on the basis of a mutual understanding. Ellen, in the nature of the case, believed that she was doing something quite out of the ordinary in accepting him, and expected concessions which, apparently, it never occurred to him to make. After his marriage he relapsed into his old habits of incessant work, broken by violent and often brutal relaxations. He insulted her friends and foisted his own upon her – a homeless vagrant, whose conversation was impossible. I don’t say, mind you, that he had not grievances on his side. He had probably overrated the girl’s possibilities, and he let her see he was disappointed in her. Only a large and generous nature could have borne that, and Ellen’s not that. She could not at all understand that odious strain of plebeian pride which plumes itself upon having not risen above its sources.” The Marriage of Phaedra.

{Observe a similar sentiment at the end of the movie, My Brilliant Career where Sybilla declines to marry Harry. She wants to become a writer, an artist, and she tells him, I will destroy you. He does not understand.]

WANT-TO-BE PERSON CRAVING ARTIST’S LIFESTYLE

“Several of Paul’s teachers had a theory that his imagination had been perverted by garish fiction, but the truth was that he scarcely read at all. The books at home were not such as would either tempt or corrupt a youthful mind, and as for reading the novels that some of his friends urged upon him, — well, he got what he wanted much more quickly from music; any sort of music from an orchestra to a barrel organ. He needed only the spark, the indescribable thrill that made his imagination master of his senses, and he could make plots and pictures enough of his own. It was equally true that he was not stage struck – not, at any rate, in the usual acceptation of that expression. He had no desire to become an actor, any more than he had to become a musician. He felt no necessity to do any of those things; what he wanted was to see, to be in the atmosphere, float on the wave of it, to be carried out, blue league after blue league, away from everything.” Paul’s Case.

Undoubtedly, Willa Cather had witnessed and cringed about much she saw in the artistic world. She is plain, honest and open, letting the world witness what is frequently worshiped – not only the art, but also the artist. She is not judgmental except in Paul’s Case, the boy who seeks to attach himself to the material benefits of art. Obviously, what applied to women also was true for men. Have there not been a long trail of “poor bargains” arising from love, worship or fantasy?The Garden Lodge. Does any artist want to be revered, adorned and fawned over at death, or does the artist, using human common sense, understand for any person to cling to a drying artist is tragedy. A Death In The Desert.

[That point in A Death is reminiscent of William Shatner’s advice supposedly given during a Star Trek convention: “Get a life.”]

Willa Cather does not disapprove of artistic behaviors. Some artists act well, and others poorly. She cannot reform human behaviors, but she can bring light to common behaviors to give a perspective and to make situations common and understandable.

Observe in The Marriage of Phaedra Willa Cather describes where the painting has gone (Australia) as “entombed in a vague continent in the Pacific, somewhere on the other side of the world.”

FLAWS. REALLY?

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If someone is ill, is injured or has a health problem, there is a flaw – to accept? Or should that person go to a doctor?

If someone talks and is full of ignorance because news is being repeated or sentiments from a witless bloke with an interesting accept is being relayed, there is a flaw. Should persons be educated with books or pursue further investigation to remove the flaws of ignorance?

If someone has an art and does not work or improve skills and talents, is it a flaw because the artist is quitting and is relying on laurels?

The question of art is the greatest flaw because at whichever age, not thinking, not trying, not improving, not adding skills, not doing, goes to the essence of that human being. In the mind that person has quit, and been typecast. For a writer if is a flaw to repeat everything again and again – no new settings, no true change of characters, similar elements in the stories (perhaps rearranged) and no new bad guys. It’s FORMULA producing flaws where points of everything can be outlined, almost to the exact line on which pages each should appear.

WE ARE LINCOLN MEN

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David Herbert Donald

Every man who was a friend or had exposure to Abraham Lincoln wanted history to know that each of them was Lincoln’s best friend. They were all wrong. WE ARE LINCOLN MEN tells why.

This book is about friendship among human beings. It uses Abraham Lincoln as the person everyone wanted friendship with, not always during his lifetime. Over those fifty-six years, in society and work, Lincoln was a pleasant, resourceful fellow to have around with an inexhaustible supply of stories and antedotes, and hiding his imagination and intelligence. Lincoln liked persons like himself: Story tellers and persons who were fountains of tales – clean, dirty and engaging.

But what is friendship? The book does not answer the question directly. Communication is key, and talking is the primary means to convey what one person or another is thinking, is doing, might do, and how reactions come out; discretion of friends is necessary. Some stuff might never be repeated, and some might be repeated only long after the telling. And acceptance and going forward is always a goal – life goes on in the company of friends.

Each of these elements is present in WE ARE LINCOLN MEN, but none of Lincoln’s friendships had a chance to come to fruition: Interrupted by time and travel – Illinois, Washington; position – country lawyer, President; issues and thinking differently about the Constitution and solutions, concerns about slaves, the union and state’s rights.

Of course, Lincoln was a master of politics and law but handled as best he could issues before him, until his assassination. There is a tendency to make Lincoln prescient, a master and in control. No, he sometimes was making it up as he came to him – using his intelligence, collecting all information and opinions and ingenuity to make the best decisions. David Herbert Donald wrote an excellent biography of Abraham Lincoln and next, this book. Many of those decisions are in these books.

If there is a shortcoming in either book was defining Lincoln’s imagination and originality. In many ways he thought originally, and how that manifested itself to the American public was in speeches and amongst men, with humor, and sometimes gallows humor. This part of the story is difficult to tell because the assassination cut short Lincoln’s life at War’s end.

Humor – what delighted Lincoln, what amused him, what intrigued him – tells much about the man. There are collections of stories and antedotes but no systematic analyses connected to the President’s life and actions. Many human beings finding entertainment in the mind – concepts, organizing ideas and facts, storing it in the memory and using it when appropriate – is exercising the imagination. This process makes human beings different from all other animals. Getting

within a brain and learning how a biographical subject works, thinks, responds – sometimes on impulse, greatly aids the work of the writer. Whether a subject can recall something from memory quickly (being bright) or it rolls in after a few hours, makes the subject likable, engaging and social.

One trait coming from Lincoln is explaining his thinking to others. He told stories, and they were sometimes metaphors. Metaphors are not always understood, e.g. the British ambassador, but using that means to communicate suggests that Lincoln sought the polite way to urge persons to do what he wanted: Metaphors are by nature indirect.

On the friendship premise alone, I recommend We Are Lincoln Men.

LOVE DEMANDS (OR BE A HUMAN BEING)

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Long before The Beatles sang, “All you need is love…,” love was craved in New York society in the Eighteenth century. John Adams, founding father, second president of the United States, said about New Yorkers, in 1776 “I have not seen one real gentleman, one well-bred man, since I came to town. As their entertainments, there is no conversation that is agreeable. There is no modesty, no attention to one another. They talk very loud, very fast and all together. If they ask you question, before you can utter three words of your answer, they will break out upon you again and talk away.” In short New Yorkers were excited about flattery, were delighted by praising, nourished by tidbits of pleasantries and receptive to sweet talk.

How does Don Trump fit into that fanciful world, now transported to Florida? Don Trump fits to a tee (pun intended). Apparently while searching for golf balls on the course, Don Trump has men reviewing social media posts and repeating every favorable thing said about Don. Those utterances of praise, flatterers, and words of sweet talk make getting through a round of golf tolerable for Don, who is not a golfer. Many photos show Don standing in the rough, probably next to a ball he dropped because he could not find the ball he hit.

And the American people know that Don can’t play golf. Otherwise, he would have promoted his course prowess: “I play a better round of golf than Barack Obama!” Obama was a hoops guy who never won a cup in golf. But Obama didn’t grow up with the game like Don. So Don’s shortcomings have-not been broadcast.

Imagine needing words of praise, tidbits of flattery, morsels of nourishment and the ultimate sweetnesses during the worst moments of the day – send balls into the dink, a slice hitting a tree and bouncing the wrong way, missing a three foot putt. I am happy those flattery slaves are there to keep Don steady so he can drive the golf car safely without accidents and park it where it can be found the next day.

Supposedly, we all appreciate love, but not the sort hippies once tried to foist on society, to save the world, and not the type that swells breasts for Don Trump. Love cannot be treated that casually. Thought and emotions, controlled and uncontrolled, go into it and human being reflect. Love can not be trivialized, but that is easily to do in today’s world.

CALIFORNIA GASOLINE PRICES

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There are too few refineries to turn oil into gasoline and diesel in California. That shortage cannot be fixed overnight. No new refineries will be built. At best it takes ten years to get all the approvals to construct an ugly edifice and get a refinery running. And California is trying to make gasoline obsolete by its residents buying electric cars. Once Californias can putt-putt around in golf cart like vehicles, everyone will be happy because NO GASOLINE, NO OIL.
So no one’s going to pay billions of dollars to build a refinery.

Gasoline prices have risen (almost 25 percent) at the end of the summer driving season. Why? The explanation is every refinery has maintenance problems and is changing to the winter blend. Of course, refineries have had to change to winter blends for 30 years, but they have never had a collective maintenance melt down in late August/September, and prices rise.

Oh why, oh why, oh why did rising prices happen this year, 2022. The best answer is that California was dumb enough to announce in May/June 2022 that it was giving every California driver a rebate check, to pay for increased gasoline costs. Californians were assured of having cash in their pockets during the fall of 2022. Now the beneficiaries of California’s largess are the oil companies/refineries who have created the shortage of gasoline (based upon the so-called maintenance issue). The oil companies owning refineries have already gotten the rebate money from consumers who are waiting for rebate checks.

The refiners are laughing. That money donation is water under the bridge, OR can attorneys in California do something about it?