Barb’s Reviews > What We Can Know > Status Update

'Ordinary' people were predisposed toward hearsay, prejudice, ill-placed anger and an absence of objectivity. They were easily steered.

What of the self-serving short-sightedness or plain folly or mendacity or viciousness of political leaders -- and the quiescence or craven idiocy or terror of their populations? What of the people's careless love of autocrats? How could we overlook or forgive the desolation these times bequeathed, the poisons they left in our oceans, the forests thy stole, the soils
And rivers they ruined...

Rose thought I was subject to distorted notion
of the period (1990-2030) in which we specialized. I exaggerated the vitality and beauty of the past and ignored its squalor and cruelty and morbid greed. The stupidity and waste would suffocate me or make me insane. So would the nastiness of social media, then run for profit.

I entered your life. You never entered mine.

The Great Derangement explores the "imaginative failure" of society to address the climate emergency. The term highlights the bizarre contradiction between knowing the risks and failing to act, making the present day seem absurd from the perspective of the future.

In her most d-teens she had turned her back on the entirety of her parents' beliefs, but by late middle age had come to acceptance t that she was shaped by her past and could do nothing about it.

'On Floral Street' is about a long list for shrinking, gradually divesting itself of friends, family, possessions -- and ultimately, meaning.....
So it went, a merry poem about death.

Wit is largely the preserve of the agile-minded young.