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Monthly Archives: August 2013

Cutting Wood.

28-Aug-13

stodgily The woodcutting has started in earnest, and it’s such pleasant work I have to stop my body from doing it so much I’ll get injured.  As sad as I am to say goodbye to summer, there’s just something about fall.  It’s beautiful.

Clive James, Cultural Amnesia.

28-Aug-13

Rancho Mirage Several years ago one of my college professors asked me if I was reading Clive James. (The implication was that I should be.) I told him I had never heard of him. He was shocked: James was a regular contributor to those learned periodicals that a certain class of people consider obligatory reading for intelligent […]

Singin’ in the Rain.

21-Aug-13

Last Saturday there was a party to celebrate the Denning Town Garden, the creation of a group of citizens who wanted to create the town’s first public space. After the party – which was a wonderful celebration of our little upstate community – an artist who lives next door to the town garden showed – […]

Freud and the Future of an Illusion.

19-Aug-13

A friend recently lent me a copy of Clive James’ book Cultural Amnesia – now that is a good friend – which I devoured over the course of a little over a week. The book is excellent, and what is particularly lovely about it is that it filled me with the desire to read everything […]

Love.

14-Aug-13

“No specter assails us in more varied disguises than loneliness, and one of its most impenetrable masks is called love.” – Arthur Schnitzler, quoted by Clive James. I’ve been reading James’ Cultural Amnesia, a fine book; essentially excerpts from James’ commonplace-book with essays built around them, on a general theme.  Probably for personal reasons, my […]

Wildcat Woodstacking.

14-Aug-13

Down in the upper 30s at night.  Beautiful, early autumnal weather.  Time to stack up the wood for the winter.

Into California.

13-Aug-13

It was a short drive from Vegas to the California border. We had done it – we had driven New York to California, from Pizza Box on Bleecker Street to the Giant Sequoias in five days. We ate our lunch in a diner in Barstow, right on Route 66. Barstow could have been any of […]

Veneri Pulcherrimae.

01-Aug-13

The Venus of Las Vegas, holding aloft her golden apple.  The fairest of them all indeed.

Fearlessness and Affection in Las Vegas.

01-Aug-13

Our night in St. George was our first in a bed – each night going across the country our hospitium had been a floor – and we took advantage of our opportunity, sleeping soundly and late. It was to be our last night in a bed until the other side of the Sierras. This good […]