Facing South

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Skeletoid Academics?

Dartmouth College was the beginning of many things in my life. One of the most influential was the Reserve Room on the ground floor of Dartmouth’s Baker Library. On three sides was a magnificent sequence of frescoes by José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) which began with the invasion of Mexico by the Conquistadores and ended up with the mess that Mexico was in during the 1930s. One of the most shocking images was the one above of the skeletoid academics giving birth to a baby skeleton.

These frescoes influenced me so much that I would study or even just hang out in the Reserve Room just to imbibe the atmosphere of Orozco’s powerful political murals. It was no accident that the first vacation I took on my own, nine years after my graduation, was a visit to Mayan ruins in Yucatán. Over the next seventeen years, I was to go to Mexico eight times, spending as much as a month on each visit.

José Clemente Orozco

During those visits, my eyes turned further south. I would have loved to go from Yucatán to Belize and on to the Mayan ruins at Tikal in the Petén region of Guatemala. At that time, however, the man in charge was Efraín Ríos Montt, a murderous dog who was responsible for the massacre, rape, and torture of thousands of indigenous people; and the U.S. State Department did not recommend that Americans vacation in Guatemala during his presidency.

Around then, Paul Theroux published The Old Patagonian Express (1979), about taking trains from Boston as far south in the Americas as one could go. I vowed that I would eventually make it to South America, and I did. Since 2006, I visited Argentina (three times!), Uruguay, Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. An despite Mexico’s continuing problem with narcotraficantes, I would not mind going to Yucatán and Chiapas again.

 

 

Time Off in Siberia

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Tsarist Prisoners in Siberia

I have a particular love for Russian prison literature. For the third time, I am reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The House of the Dead. By no means is it anywhere near the greatest of Dostoyevsky’s novels, but the subject has always fascinated me.

After the October Revolution, and especially during Josef Stalin’s reign, the literature of the GULAGs became a standard literary genre. I love Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s massive The GULAG Archipelago as well as One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The First Circle. Also well worth reading is Varlam Shalamov’s grim Kolyma Tales.

It is a common misconception that Dostoyevsky’s book is not a novel but just a thinly fictionalized account of his own four years in Omsk. At the time he wrote it, he was trying to reestablish his literary reputation after four years in prison and subsequent time with the Siberian Army Corps of the Seventh Line Battalion in Semipalatinsk. He was worried that if he wrote a book that was less than uplifting, he would once again be regarded as a political prisoner and suffer excessive censorship.

While it is anything but pollyanna-ish, The House of the Dead provided a rare look at the Tsar’s prison colonies on the other side of the Ural Mountains.

When It All Began

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This Is the Earliest Shooter Incident That I Can Remember

August 1, 1966 came during a strange period in my life. Within six weeks, I would be in a coma at Fairview General Hospital in Cleveland while a team of doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with me. My family physician, Michael J. Eymontt did not have access to CAT Scans or MRI, but he was an endocrinologist and figured that something might be going on with my pituitary gland.

He was right. I read about the Austin, Texas shooting incident in the Cleveland Press and Plain Dealer. Never before had I or my family seen such a gratuitous act of violence toward the innocent. Charles Whitman first killed his mother and his wife, and then took guns to the tower on the University of Texas campus and opened fire at random people who were just going about their business. In an hour and a half, he killed thirteen people and wounded thirty-one. Too bad he didn’t have access to the hi-tech military weaponry that was used in the Las Vegas mélée by Stephen Paddock.

When I was recovering from surgery in the hospital, the news came out that Charles Whitman had had a brain tumor. Okay, so did I, but I didn’t kill anybody. That’s a pretty lame excuse.

The Tower at the University of Texas from Which Charles Whitman Fired His Shots

So now we’ve come full circle with another Texas shooting—one in which half the victims were children, at a church no less!  Between the two incidents, I would have trouble counting how many mentally twisted gun collectors decided to take it out on innocent people. It’s becoming a very popular way for gun freaks to commit murder and suicide at the same time. Thanks to the NRA, there is no danger that Hell will ever be underpopulated with American sickos.

Weekend Getaway

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Palm Desert, CA

Next weekend, I will leave town for the weekend and spend some time with my brother in Palm Desert while Martine holds down the fort in L.A. The desert is nice this time of year, and I look forward to spending some time with Dan. I’d like to see the houses he is building and just spend some quality family time. While I am there, I will hold off on posting new blogs.

I need a short respite from my problems with Martine. Things may wind up all right in the long run (I hope). Over the last eight weeks, however, I have been stressed mostly by worrying about what would happen to Martine if she decided to be homeless by choice. In our culture, I see nothing good coming out of that. Even when this country pays lip service to the homeless, that’s about all they can expect. A large percentage of them are violent bums (what the Elizabethans called “sturdy beggars,” who commit all sorts of crimes—especially on the persons of helpless homeless women).

The Flip Side of the Coin

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We’re Still Not Back to Normal

One can never take a relationship for granted. Beginning in July, Martine told me she wanted to get out of Los Angeles. And, just by the way, I wasn’t picking up my stuff. Now that she’s back to L.A., it looks as if she was returned under duress. And now I’m a monster who doesn’t pick up after myself.

Now what does this picking up involve? If I move one of her vitamins over two inches to make room for something I have to make room for in the refrigerator and I don’t return it to its original position, I’m not picking up after myself. Yesterday it was a small triangular piece of paper that somehow got out of the garbage can. In other words, it’s infractions of the “Who moved my cheese?” variety of which I am guilty.

Martine after her week in Northern California is depressed and angry, and I am here—available to be blamed. I feel a bit irritated for being the subject of blame when my sins are all of the venial variety. Nobody’s perfect. I just have to maintain my cool and try to edge her into a mental healthcare program for her own good.

Yes, I still love her, but she is clearly not thinking straight. If Martine gets away again, which is highly likely, she has no money. Nobody’s going to give her free housing and then leave her alone. Well, except maybe me. But it’s a delicate matter which can go either way. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

Martine Is Back

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Martine in Salem, Massachusetts in 2005

Last night, around 10 PM, I went to the Greyhound Bus Station in L.A.’s Skid Row neighborhood and waited for Martine to arrive from Sacramento. I will not describe all the events of the past few days: It is up to Martine to describe everything that happened. We had been together for about twenty-five years, and Martine was tired of Los Angeles, tired of my West L.A. apartment, and a little tired of me besides. Unfortunately for her, she was unable with her resources to live by herself in Northern California; so she consented to return to me and the mess that is Los Angeles.

We will try again. I like Los Angeles, though for financial reasons, I am unable to live in deluxe accommodations with air conditioning and plumbing that is more reliable than what we have in our 1946-vintage building. One thing I am serious about is getting rid of a few thousand books, though that will take considerable time and energy. The weather has begun to change from torrid Santa Ana Winds to the cooler Fall pattern (though we can still be in for a few hot days).

My heart jumped for joy as I saw Martine step off the Sacramento bus and head toward me. Second chances are rare things, but I am determined.

 

The Dreams of Dolphins

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Dolphins Near Hawaii

Silvina Ocampo is not only the wife of the great Argentinian writer Adolfo Bioy Casares, but she is a world class writer and poet herself. The following poem is called, simply:

Dolphins

Dolphins don’t play in the waves
as people think.
Dolphins fall asleep going down to the ocean floor.
What are they looking for? I don’t know.
When they touch the end of the water
abruptly they awake
and rise again because the sea is very deep
and when they rise, what are they looking for?
I don’t know.
And they see the sky and it makes them sleepy again
and they go back down asleep,
and they touch the ocean floor again
and awaken and rise back up.
Our dreams are like that.

 

Ten Short Horrors

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Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

Think of this as my Halloween contribution. For the last several years, I have celebrated Halloween not by Trick-or-Treating, not by gorging myself with candy, but by reading collections of horror stories, mostly those published by Dover Publications. I find that the best works of horror fiction are usually not the longest (sorry, Stephen King), but either short stories or novellas.

Here is a list of ten of my favorites, in order of publication:

  • Edgar Allan Poe, “The Masque of the red Death” (1842)
  • J S Le Fanu, “Carmilla” (1871)
  • Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Body Snatcher” (1884)
  • Henry James, “The Turn of the Screw” (1898)
  • Bernard Capes, “An Eddy on the Floor” (1899)
  • W W Jacobs, “The Monkey’s Paw” (1902)
  • Arthur Machen, “The White People” (1904)
  • Algernon Blackwood, “The Willows” (1907)
  • M R James, “Casting the Runes” (1911)
  • H P Lovecraft, “The Colour Out of Space” (1927)

Happy Halloween, and Boo!

 

No More Goodstuff

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Allen Reinertsen of Bangkok, Thailand

I am greatly saddened by the recent death of one of my oldest Internet friends, Allen Reinertsen aka GOODSTUFF. Although I have never met him face to face, we have known each other for some ten years—back when we were both blogging on Yahoo 360. Then when we both migrated to WordPress and FaceBook, we re-established contact. I loved his long postings featuring cheesecake from the past, science fiction, and political ideas which, although the opposite of mine, did not arouse my ire.

After all, my dear father voted for George C. Wallace of the American Independent Party several times; and Martine’s political beliefs, also, are considerably to the right of mine. That’s all over and done with now.

Memorial from Reinertsen’s Memorial Service

Reinertsen is survived by his wife Srisuda, and possibly by one or more children, though I am not sure of this. He looks to be in his fifties, which is way too young to die. I would like to have known him, because, based on his posts, he was both gentle and funny. I can only hope that he is in the heaven of large-breasted women and ice cold beers.

It is always sad to see a friend’s passing. May the gods be kind to him and the people who loved him in this life, among whom I number myself.

And remember:

The Ultimate Good Advice from GOODSTUFF

 

 

Look! Over There!

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Our President Controls the News Cycle by a Policy of Multiplying Distractions

Mr. Trumpf is not as smart as he pretends, but he is a master when it comes to controlling the media. Each week of his presidency is rife with outrages, one following hard upon the heels of the one before it. The ultimate effect is to keep him one step ahead of the high sheriffs who are gathering information to sink him.

According to RawStory.Com, Jake Tapper  describes how Trumpf adroitly moves the spotlight from one infamy to the next:

Tapper explained that the White House has very obviously attempted to “ramp up” efforts to “turn the spotlight away from questions about itself and investigations into possible collusion with Russia or possible obstruction of justice and the firing of FBI Director James Comey.”

The Trump White House is now employing a Pee Wee Herman “I’m rubber and you’re glue” defense for accusations of Russia collusion.

Instead, they’ve tried to “highlight matters pertaining to the previous president” and Hillary Clinton. In his Friday morning tweet, Trump claimed that the costly investigations against him were over and proved no evidence of collusion. He now is demanding a similar Russia investigation into Clinton.

Under these circumstances, when is it really possible to wind down an investigation when new evidence is constantly being discovered? The man in the Oval Office knows well how bored the public is with investigations that seem to go on forever. Ken Starr proved that during Clinton’s second term.

This is a very typical maneuver made by real estate magnates. Feel free to commit infamies, but always deflect blame and open new instances of infamy that make it impossible to pin you down.

The obvious solution is to break the investigations down into smaller segments and deal with them separately. At that point, when there are multiple investigations, the news for the perpetrator is always bad.

NOTE: The photo above is not actually authentic. It has been Photoshopped to make our president look bad. Which is only appropriate, I think.