Essays, Articles, Observations & Images – Through the Lens of the Salish Sea
This is a broad overview of Louis Menand with a focus on Menand's newest book, The Free World. However, Spillman reports a great deal on Menand's biography and our collective cultural milieu along the way. Louis Menand Scott Spillman https://thepointmag.com/criticism/whatever-works-louis-menand/
A dazzling new critical biography of T.S. Eliot’s modernist epic. A book review of The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem, by Matthew Hollis (Faber & Faber) https://www.city-journal.org/the-waste-land-ts-eliot#.Y8a4oOzS6jB.link
This is an interview with Jill Lepore concerning her book on the history of the United States. Fast moving and extremely informative. Season 1 Episode 107 | 26m 40s| Professor of American History at Harvard University and staff writer at The New Yorker Aired: 11/30/21 Expires: 06/30/24 Rating: TV-G https://www.pbs.org/video/jill-lepore-a0pt6o/https://www.pbs.org/video/jill-lepore-a0pt6o/
Introduction to the "Wilderness Letter"Here is an introduction to Wallace Stegner's "Wilderness Letter" (1960) written by Stegner for The Living Wilderness magazine in December 1980. The Geography of Hope Wallace Stegner When I wrote my "wilderness letter" to David Pesonen 20 years ago, I had probably been prompted to do so by David Brower. He was usually …
Continue reading "Wallace Stegner – The Challenge to Preserve"
Books November 6, 2017 Issue How Stalin Became Stalinist Puzzling out how the idealistic Soviet revolutionary came to preside over the bloodiest regime of his time. By Keith Gessen https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/06/how-stalin-became-stalinist
Francois Mitterrand - Man of Action, Man of Words - Review of Philip Short’s, A Taste For Intrigue. R. L. Wallace November 8, 2015 Sitting up late one evening at Latche, I hear, all around me, talk of life and death, the origins of the world and the existence of God, the beyond and nothingness. …
I have provided three pieces on Svetlana Alexievich's recent Nobel Prize in Literature award: 1) from The New Yorker 2) from The New York Review of Books 3) from the Nobel Organization Readers will note Ms Alexievich's simalarity to Alexandar Solzinitzen in chronicling their respective times. OCTOBER 8, 2015 Svetlana Alexievich’s Nobel Win BY MASHA …
I do not recall if Abbey studied zen. It appears to me that inherent in his craft is the idea that what he does not say is as important as what he does. Each sentence zigs and zags around, over and under so many norms of American society, and he does so with nary a …
For however strong you may be in respect of your army, it is essential that in entering a new Province you should have the good will of its inhabitants. The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli, 1532
Photograph by Gasper Tringale. (photo - Chris Walker, Chicago Tribune) Mr. Wills is the foremost literary journalist and thinker of our time. This article is a tribute to this iconoclast, one who has followed his own path to understanding America with intelligence, tenacity and grace. The American Mind The historian Garry Wills has written …
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This is a well argued approach to building information-based economic structure in countries lacking a means of showing ownership of assets and rights. This was fundamental to Peru's advancement. Its an unlikely conclusion to draw without the dramatic example of Peru. It makes sense and if it works, its the right thing to do as opposed …
Continue reading "Creating a Level Playing Field for Arab Spring Economic Success"
"Probably the most damaging indictment that can be made of the capitalistic system is the way in which its emphasis on unfettered individualism results in exploitation of natural resources in a manner to destroy the physical foundation of national longevity." 1936 Henry Wallace FDR's Secretary of Agriculture http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2013/10/14/131014crat_atlarge_ross
Yes. 1. Seymour Hersh on Fixing Journalism With a Hatchet Posted on Sep 27, 2013 Eckehard Schulz/dapdSeymour Hersh. Seymour Hersh, the reporter who exposed the My Lai massacre in 1969 and the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in 2004, wants to shutter the major news bureaus, fire 90 percent of editors and generally make journalists outsiders …
Continue reading "Seymour Hersh on Fixing Journalism With a Hatchet – 2 Articles"
This is a talk about special powers that people have without knowing it nor using them. This discussion is a transcript of a talk given by Shunryu Suzuki and the transcript lacks fluidity but reflects the actual presentation style of Suzuki. The sutra story shows that through paying attention to what is in front of …
Continue reading "Special Human Powers – The Lotus Sutra – Fragments"
Excellent writing about a master of fiction and American life. Saul Bellow: Letters In the newly published collected correspondence of Saul Bellow... BY LEO ROBSON PUBLISHED 11 NOVEMBER 2010 Letters Saul Bellow, edited by Benjamin Taylor Penguin, 571pp, £30 "Of course I am not a Freudian," Saul Bellow wrote to Philip Roth in 1974. "For one fierce …
My life as a concert pianist can be frustrating, lonely, demoralising and exhausting. But is it worth it? Yes, without a shadow of a doubt. 'Isn't it worth fighting back in some small way?' Pianist James Rhodes. Photograph: Dave Brown 2012 After the inevitable "How many hours a day do you practice?" and "Show me …
Continue reading "James Rhodes: ‘Find what you love and let it kill you’"
The Stranger by Albert Camus - Impressions 1942 Prose that is crisp and spare and precise. Fragments of humanity that are turned this way and that to develop a character in time and place. Meursault is detached and self-sufficient. His social needs are minimal. He is authentic and sure of his senses and is comfortable …
These photographs are of the Taylor Shellfish Oyster operation in Bow, WA and surrounding area just a few miles south of Bellingham on Chuckanut Drive.- rlw
An interesting character sketch and story. One that brings both people to life in a clear, crisp way. Valerie Eliot B. 1926 | By SAM ANDERSON Valerie and T. S. Eliot in 1957. (Angus McBean, from Houghton Library, Harvard University) SURELY SOMETHING HAS GONE WRONG WITH TIME. How else to explain that T. S. Eliot’s second wife, …
Frye stumbles on the idea of archetypal structure in literature. It resonates with Jungian thought, Gaston Bachelard, James Hillman and others in that poetics comes before philosophy or psychology. It seems to me that there is biological, deep structure, integration of the image and poetics, a structure that cannot be deconstructed but is elemental to human …
It is rare that a towering intellect will let an artist have the last words on the judgement of his own work and worth. But Rexroth has done just that here in this 1955 piece. This essay is a wide-ranging contemplation of Graves when he was in his prime. Rexroth was in his prime as …
Plate 68: Mount Rainier and Whidbey Island. Engraving by John M. Stanley, 1854. (Click to enlarge). From: University of Washington Library Archives #NA4173. Note: We'll go with the spelling of Whidbey.
It is a very peculiar climate, summed up by that man of undoubted genius, Monsieur Derrida, when he says that every text is a “pretext.” This is one of the most formidably erroneous, destructive, brilliantly trivial wordplays ever launched. Meaning what? That whatever the stature of the poem, it waits for the deconstructive commentator; it …
photo credit: Clay Enos Graham Greene has a very European take on life that is artfully described in this book. The setting is Vietnam, Saigon, in the mid-fifties and while there is an ongoing stream of events that take place in his time there as a journalist, it is his relationship with his Vietnamese woman, …
Volcano Woman - Wayne Young - Northwest Coast (Nisga’a / Haida) acrylic on paper 30" x 23" 2005 ----------------------------------------- He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village The Dimensions of a Haida Myth Gary Synder The Curse From the Foreward: "A curse on monocultural industrial civilization and its almost deified economic and political systems that compete, exploit, an …
Along the hiking trail at Greenbank Farms woods in central Whidbey Island.
The First Time On The Pacific just eighteen. my nerves were adjusted. not only the speed but the direction. the pattern of rush lifted from stars and space, the place between planets and each other. is it black? what does it hold? the place we can't see, cannot understand. but we feel it. it shoots …
Louise is a very powerful woman, speaker and individual. In twenty minutes she is able to frame a profile of the Native American expereince.
Czeslaw Milosz - The Wilno Poet Under California Skies November 2012 It is not an anomaly to be transformed by the breadth and scope of the Northern California landscape. To stand on a mountain and look over the rocky shore and the expanse of the blue Pacific is a powerful sensation. While one's awe eventually …
Continue reading "Czeslaw Milosz – Biography – The Wilno Poet Under California Skies"
Its sort of boring here, good boring. Earthquakes north at Queen Charlotte Islands and the hurricane back east. Its raining and fifty here. So much to do. Its Sunday and we have a full house, isn't it wonderful?
Seattle and Its Mayor - Were We Ever a Civilized Part of the World? Seattle, like the rest of the nation, has decided that cordiality - respect of opinion and differences - is yesterday's practice. Several months ago a local journalist said this: "I honestly believe that Mayor Mike McGinn is the worst office …
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Lead Illustration: Tom Killion BY ROBINSON JEFFERS The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses— How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on …
Continue reading "Carmel Point – Robinson Jeffers Tor House"
PHOTO BY AP PHOTO/PAUL SAKUMA
we are the same as those who came before. yet our distance from our kind is great. do we not see that we the living, all of the living, are a clan? each with natures unique but living and this simple fact: our being. existence is a bond so great in this vast universe of …
Continue reading "Poem – Living Beings – Near a Western Red Cedar"
This is a series of photographs taken in the winter of 2012. The San Juan Islands rest between Seattle and Vancouver, BC in the Salish Sea. The Salish Sea is part of a body of water that extends the inland sea of the Pacific from Olympia, Washington to Haines, Alaska.
Dreams follow their own logic. And the use of logic is a poor choice of words. Is there a beginning, middle and end? Or does our waking mind force the linear script onto the contents? Dreams often do not recognize time and therefore a linear story line is not the point. What is the point? …
Expression follows two paths of existence — exterior and interior. Of course in reality they are one, they are the same. We are taught that they are different. Interior existence cannot be "seen" with our senses, nor can others see them. Abstraction and the unconscious make up much of this terrain. Photography captures the exterior …
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