Steve Hely's Blog, page 107
June 26, 2017
Ken Burns Vietnam
This fall, Ken Burns new documentary about the Vietnam War will be on PBS.
Any one of these clips from it will make you still for a minute.
The intensity of what happened with the US in Vietnam is insane. The magnitude of the scar is unspeakable. Literally: we can’t talk about it.
When Ken Burns made The Civil War, about something 150 years ago, it made people cry. What is it going to be like to watch The Vietnam War, a thing every person in my parent’s generation had to reckon with in some serious way?
I saw that one of the talkers is Karl Marlantes. His book What It Is Like To Go To War is astounding.
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I’m not sure enough people heard about it. At one time I had the same publisher as Karl Marlantes, which I was very proud of, they sent me his books for free.
Marlantes tells this story about running into Joseph Campbell, by chance:
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Absolution.
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Imagine having whiskey with Joseph Campbell.[image error]
The best discipline:
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The other day on Reddit “Today I Learned” I saw this.
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I went to check the source, the Lodi News Sentinel, 1971:
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Preserved at this blog:
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There the author gives a question and answer about his own time in Vietnam and after that I would describe as harrowing and illuminating and powerful.
Ken Burns made some darn good movies.
June 25, 2017
Jeremy Corbyn
Pretty compelled by British politics, where a 68 year old socialist inspires mobs of young people with poetry while a former banker and political operator whose political arrogance blew up in her face clings to her job as Prime Minister.
Reader Laura M. calls our attention to another verse from that Shelley poem:
“…Next came Fraud, and he had on,
Like Lord Eldon, an ermined gown ;
His big tears, for he wept well,
Turned to mill-stones as they fell.
And the little children, who
Round his feet played to and fro,
Thinking every tear a gem,
Had their brains knocked out by them.”
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Lord Eldon. source.
The opening of the poem, The Masque of Anarchy:
“Stand ye calm and resolute,
Like a forest close and mute,
With folded arms and looks which are
Weapons of unvanquished war.
And if then the tyrants dare,
Let them ride among you there;
Slash, and stab, and maim and hew;
What they like, that let them do.
With folded arms and steady eyes,
And little fear, and less surprise,
Look upon them as they slay,
Till their rage has died away:
Then they will return with shame,
To the place from which they came,
And the blood thus shed will speak
In hot blushes on their cheek:
Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!
Written in response to the Peterloo massacre:
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This blog post is not an endorsement of the band Run The Jewels.
June 24, 2017
Creepy
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found this ad for a summer camp at my local coffee shop (?) [image error]
Melfax
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The street art scene in my neighborhood is fantastic.
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June 23, 2017
Beyond Meat Bolognese
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Used some Beyond Meat to make a bolognese. I used more or less this recipe from attorney and new mom Michelle.
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Shoutout to Filip H. for teaching me the secret to sauces is using this particular brand of crushed San Marzanos.
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As you can see I still used 4 oz. of pancetta – baby steps, right?
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Used one package of “beefy” flavor and one package of “fiesty” flavor Beyond Meat.
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Gotta say it was pretty darn good.
Starting to become a believer in Beyond Meat.
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June 22, 2017
Houellebecq
found here
from the Paris Review interview with Michel Houllebecq
INTERVIEWER
You have a bit of a scientific background. After high school, you studied agronomy. What is agronomy?
HOUELLEBECQ
It’s everything having to do with the production of food. The one little project I did was a vegetation map of Corsica whose purpose was to find places where you could put sheep. I had read in the school brochure that studying agronomy can lead to all sorts of careers, but it turns out that was ridiculous. Most people still end up in some form of agriculture, with a few amusing exceptions. Two of my classmates became priests, for example.
INTERVIEWER
Did you enjoy your studies?
HOUELLEBECQ
Very much. In fact, I almost became a researcher. It’s one of the most autobiographical things in The Elementary Particles. My job would have been to find mathematical models that could be applied to the fish populations in Lake Nantua in the Rhône-Alpes region. But strangely, I turned it down, which was stupid, actually, because finding work afterward was impossible.
INTERVIEWER
In the end you went to work as a computer programmer. Did you have previous experience?
HOUELLEBECQ
I knew nothing about it. But this was back when there was a huge need for programming and no schools to speak of. So it was easy to get into. But I loathed it immediately.
INTERVIEWER
So what made you write your first novel, Whatever, about a computer programmer and his sexually frustrated friend?
HOUELLEBECQ
I hadn’t seen any novel make the statement that entering the workforce was like entering the grave. That from then on, nothing happens and you have to pretend to be interested in your work. And, furthermore, that some people have a sex life and others don’t just because some are more attractive than others. I wanted to acknowledge that if people don’t have a sex life, it’s not for some moral reason, it’s just because they’re ugly. Once you’ve said it, it sounds obvious, but I wanted to say it.
Talking about his novel The Possibility of An Island:
INTERVIEWER
Why did you make your main character a comedian?
HOUELLEBECQ
The character came from two things. First of all, I went to a resort in Turkey and there was one of those talent shows produced by the guests. There was this girl—she must have been fifteen—who was doing Céline Dion and clearly for her, this was very, very important. I said to myself, Man, this girl is really going for it. And it’s funny because the next day, she was sitting alone at the breakfast table and I thought, Already the solitude of the star! I sensed that something like that can decide an entire life. So the comedian has a similar experience. He discovers all of sudden that he can make whole crowds laugh and it changes his life. The second thing was that I knew a woman who was editor in chief of a magazine and she was always inviting me to these hip events with Karl Lagerfeld, for example. I wanted to have someone who was part of that world.
On Anglo-Saxons (apparently including the Irish) and Americans:
INTERVIEWER
And what do you think of this Anglo-Saxon world?
HOUELLEBECQ
You can tell that this is the world that invented capitalism. There are private companies competing to deliver the mail, to collect the garbage. The financial section of the newspaper is much thicker than it is in French papers.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that men and women are more separate. When you go into a restaurant, for example, you often see women eating out together. The French from that point of view are very Latin. A single-sex dinner would be considered boring. In a hotel in Ireland, I saw a group of men talking golf at the breakfast table. They left and were replaced by a group of women who were discussing something else. It’s as if they’re separate species who meet occasionally for reproduction. There was a line I really liked in a novel by Coetzee. One of the characters suspects that the only thing that really interests his lesbian daughter in life is prickly-pear jam. Lesbianism is a pretext. She and her partner don’t have sex anymore, they dedicate themselves to decoration and cooking.
Maybe there’s some potential truth there about women who, in the end, have always been more interested in jam and curtains.
INTERVIEWER
And men? What do you think interests them?
HOUELLEBECQ
Little asses. I like Coetzee. He says things brutally, too.
INTERVIEWER
You’ve said that you possibly had an American side to you. What is your evidence for this?
HOUELLEBECQ
I have very little proof. There’s the fact that if I lived in an American context, I think I would have chosen a Lexus, which is the best quality for the price. And more obscurely, I have a dog that I know is very popular in the United States, a Welsh Corgi. One thing I don’t share is this American obsession with large breasts. That, I must admit, leaves me cold. But a two-car garage? I want one. A fridge with one of those ice-maker things? I want one too. What appeals to them appeals to me.
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The Paris Review website has given me an awful lot.
June 20, 2017
Wanted to listen to the original record of Sgt. Pepper’s
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I knew my man Jeff was the guy to talk to. Pictured: Jeff’s stereo.
June 18, 2017
Island Fighting
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Picked up the Island Fighting volume of the Time Life World War II series and found this incredible picture:[image error]
Couldn’t find a name of a photographer.
June 17, 2017
Mysterious Notes
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I’ve come into possession of someone’s mysterious notes on a printed out copy of Alan Weisman’s book The World Without Us. Reason to suspect the note-taker is a Helytimes reader.
If they belong to you, claim them, otherwise I intend to auction them to the highest bidder. God only knows what these insights could be worth.
June 16, 2017
Genius
[image error]Is that so Genius?
Far as I can tell this appeared on my Spotify without my inquiring “hey what’s this song about?”
