Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

The spouse is the leader of the discussion of Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. Someone announced she would not attend because they could not make it through the novel even though it won the National Book Award, was on yearly top ten lists, and high on the 100 best books of this century. With its themes of Black and interracial families and the legacy of slavery in southern prisons and much more, this is the book that Pete Hegseth would ban, if he hasn’t already, from the service academies. The woman who pulled out of the book group was a Trumpista. The spouse and I could not help but think that it was the subject matter, not the quality, of the book that was the withdrawal’s motivating factor. With the attacks on DEI, some people may feel that it is unpatriotic even to read Jesmyn Ward. And so it is that America dumbs down.

With summer coming on, I wonder: “If nature is so truly wonderful, then why didn’t she make the mosquito a vegetarian?”

Many political ads last year bemoaned the fentanyl crisis that the ads maintained resulted from a porous southern border. This never made sense. Border patrol officials knew that nearly 90% of the fentanyl that entered from Mexico came in at legal crossings. Furthermore, most apprehended couriers were American citizens, which, of course, makes sense. If you were running the drug smuggling operation, wouldn’t you think that a Mexican or Honduran would be more likely stopped and searched at the border than an American citizen? It was clear that “securing” the border would do little to change our fentanyl crisis. And, of course, the laws of supply and demand mean someone will find a way to bring the opioid into the country as long as there is a market for it. Meanwhile, it turns out that last year while our southern border was so easy to cross according to so many pundits, opioid deaths dropped precipitously. It will be interesting to see with all the government cuts to all sorts of services what will happen to the death rate even with a “secure” border.

I would like to live in a world where data trump beliefs, and ideology does not trump facts. Some days I am an optimist.

A wise person said: An optimist is someone with little experience.

The big, beautiful bill will leave us under a mountain of new debt, which Trump and his supporters now don’t seem to care about. I am reminded of what Kurt Andersen wrote in Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, A Recent History (2020). He reported that neoconservative Irving Kristol said that if tax cuts for the rich “leave us with a fiscal problem,” that is fine because that would force conservative “opponents to tidy up afterwards.”

With the warmer weather, I am again about to confront one of my biggest golf troubles: I stand too close to the ball after I hit it.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“Exactly what befell the President of the United States has never been fully understood.” Jethro K. Lieberman, Everything is Jake.

“New York’s Grand Opera-house was in the midst of a triumphant four-week run of performances by Edwin Booth, the greatest Hamlet of his generation, that Saturday in 1879 when twenty-six-year-old William R. Davis Jr. and his companion approached the huge doors of the heavily marbled theater.” Peter S. Canellos, The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America’s Judicial Hero.

“A fourteen-year-old girl sits cross-legged on the floor of a circular vault” Anthony Doer, Cloud Cuckoo Land.

 “When you reach your fifties, it gets easier to notice the big ways in which the world has or hasn’t changed since you were young, both the look and feel of things and people’s understanding of how society works.” Kurt Andersen, Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, A Recent History.

“Nineteen years before she decided to die, Nora Seed sat in the warmth of the small library at Hazeldene School in the town of Bedford.” Matt Haig, The Midnight Library.

“Insecurity combined with arrogance is good DNA for a comedian.” David Steinberg, Inside Comedy: The Soul, Wit, and Bite of Comedy and Comedians of the Last Five Decades.

“Many times since the Earth was young, the place had lain under the sea.” Edward Rutherford, London.

“Just as the first rays of dawn swept the eastern wall of the small castle, a detachment of soldiers landed on the beach below.” John Prevas, Hannibal’s Oath: The Life and Wars of Rome’s Greatest Enemy.

“Captain Kidd laid out the Boston Morning Journal on the lectern and began to read from the article on the Fifteenth Amendment.” Paulette Jiles, News of the World.

“In October 1846 the poet William Cullen Bryant visited the Delaware Water Gap, the spot where the Delaware River cuts through the Kittatinny (or Blue) Mountains.” Lawrence Squeri, Better in the Poconos: The Story of Pennsylvania’s Vacationland.

“Major Picquart to see the Minister of War. . . .” Robert Harris, An Officer and a Spy.

“My father had a little joke that made light of our legacy as a family that had once owned slaves.” Edward Ball, Slaves in the Family.