Urban Fishing at Christmas
Jefferson Lake is 14 feet at its deepest but holds Largemouth Bass, Channel Cats, Crappie, Carp, Topminnows, Golden Shiners, and Bluegill. Being a non-fisherman and non-city dweller, I was surprised by the variety.
Jefferson Lake is 14 feet at its deepest but holds Largemouth Bass, Channel Cats, Crappie, Carp, Topminnows, Golden Shiners, and Bluegill. Being a non-fisherman and non-city dweller, I was surprised by the variety.
Few of us as Americans believe honestly that we are equal in democracy. We only believe that it is better to believe so, rather than do so through policy and programs that will result in strife and arguments. Equality, or as de Tocqueville expressed it, the quality of being “almost the same,” exists mostly in our collective imagination. But if it does not reside, there it might not live anywhere at all.
The skies are gray, but a drive from St. Louis this week through the windswept fields and windmill farms of Illinois was pleasant, as was the cinnamon-scented fellow at the front desk of a River North hotel in Chicago, who welcomed us to town.
Sometimes we come across news reports so sad, photographs so jarring, or art and speech so moving, that we know we should, could, or might cry or scream in response. But we cannot. Instead, we cry or scream because we know we cannot, or will not, cry or scream. On some level, this means that Patti Smith has penetrated my soul despite assertions to the contrary. Perhaps that is what makes her “punk.”
Wanting answers, we create reductions: I am. She was. The administration will.
He seemed almost happy. Maybe because the river, the night, and the freedom felt good to him. He played one of his favorite songs, “My Girl” by the Motown group The Temptations, music from his youth before he went to prison.
Kostya Kennedy’s Pete Rose is a tour de force display of journalism, top-flight writing, and excellent research. It is rich in biographical details, yet it is not meant to be a biography in the typical sense, a comprehensive cradle-to-grave account of a life. The book is more of an exploration of Pete Rose as a celebrity athlete, his rise, his fall, and how he has managed both, or how managing his failures hinges entirely on how well he can throw around the weight of his accomplishments.
The “hatchet man” for President Nixon, and a chief architect of both Nixon’s “dirty tricks” and the team of “Plumbers” who schemed to smear, libel, drug, and, in at least one case, even assassinate the president’s vast list of “enemies,” lived not just to endure the stain of a criminal conviction and seven months in federal prison, but seemingly transcend it. Watergate historians, however, are not so kind.
Heritage is collective, aesthetic, and performative. It is something you inherit. Whereas history, on the other hand, is authored, linear, personal. It is something you produce. Museums often allow Africans the former but not the latter. Our art is heritage; European art is history. Our works are culture; theirs are achievements.
Costco is the best place I know where I can enjoy other families and especially their children, now that I do not have a child in my own home who routinely brings other children into my life. At all costs, one must avoid appearing to pay any unwanted attention to any child.