Matching Style for Style in Politics
What I have been wondering—as I have for years—is why Dems cannot seem to counter crude schoolyard putdowns and the verbose, word-cloud attack called the Gish Gallop.
Dispatches
Invent a New Kind of Femininity
“Thinking about what aging means for the trans child,” Miranda July jotted in a writing notebook. “…. And how the physical changes of middle age/old age out anyone who is living as more feminine than they were born.”
The Biggest Push Yet to Make the U.S. a Theocracy
U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) opened by asking the audience the most rhetorical question possible: “Do you believe that God has a plan for America?”
Anubis Lives, Thanks to Joanna Karpowicz
For an image of death, Joanna Karpowicz’s Anubis is a figure of calm, even stability; of seeing and listening; of endurance. He has power. As someone said of Chekhov’s narrative voice, it is as if he watches human life with great sympathy from somewhere very far away.
A Princess Was the First Professional Writer?
Enheduanna, a Sumerian princess, is believed by many to be the earliest named writer in world history. What man would have compared his creative process to childbirth? What man could have written what might be the first #MeToo account of sexual exploitation?
I Do Not Believe in the Tarot, But—
In ten seconds at Etsy, you can find decks that are Gothic, Art Nouveau, or Impressionist; Aleister Crowley’s sexy, mystical Thoth deck; Botanica Oculta cards that look like vintage seed packets; the gorgeous black and gold Azazoth deck inspired by H.P. Lovecraft; the Abusua Pa The Tazama African Tarot; the Punjabi-influenced Marigold Tarot; a Luna Somnia deck that layers in astrology; and a deck that uses haunted cats.
Damn the Torpedoes, We Have Bigger Problems
Symonds’s book “The US Navy: A Concise History“ surprises, as it is also a history of technology and its political effects, showing, for example, how shifts from sail to coal to oil to nuclear power each affected our national capabilities and global ambitions in ways no one foresaw.
The Glue That Holds Us Together
Elmer’s glue had to be smeared all over one’s finger, the inside of the wrist, or possibly the whole hand, then allowed to dry—blowing on it was permitted—and slowly, deliciously, peeled off.
Roses in an Alley
Was my cheerful trespass neighborly, an act of communal solidarity, or a brazen crime? Our jurisprudence gauges severity by dollar value, but what is the worth of a half-dead rose in an alley?
Jim Henson: Idea Man a Moving Tribute to a Unique Artist
We have gotten used to retrospectives showing terrible behaviors and scandals, but there is little of that here, other than a marriage troubled by absence, and the implication that Henson was so driven that he may have worked himself to death at 53, a loss for us all.