Essays, Articles, Observations & Images – Through the Lens of the Salish Sea
Vegetal Consciousness and Agency in an Anthropocentric World This is a transformative exposition of the nature of plants and their relation to humans and the earth. Rarely do we see a concentration on the cognitive and biological nature of plants. https://punctumbooks.com/titles/covert-plants/
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/
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
As David Brooks points out, this should be a defining time for the left, if not an era for the left. Yet what we get is a staggering win for the right. This whirlwind of motion and change is left in a dark caldron to be sealed for as long as people let others run …
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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photo - towards point omega - rlw This book is a meditation held together by the flow of time; time says that one thing must come after another, we do not will this, it is. We can will to erect things, language, to look as though we have arrested the flow but it is a …
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Just when you thought it was over. From : VANITY FAIR MAGAZINE - MAY 2014 In most hand-wringing debates about the future of newspapers, high-quality journalism is seen as doomed by the Internet. The author—V.F.’s newest columnist—begs to disagree. By Michael Kinsley BY CARL MYDANS/TIME & LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES.THE WAY IT WAS Multiple editions, breaking …
A very serious loss to our culture. Two articles on Hoffman - Open Letters Monthly and The New Yorker. In one of those wonderful old theater stories Laurence Olivier is said to have asked another Hoffman, Dustin, as the younger man voluntarily underwent physical abuse in order to convincingly play a tortured prisoner, “my …
http://take21.seattlechannel.org/2013/12/20/the-final-interview-mayor-mike-mcginn/ Please view the above link to the video. The interview was conducted by the Seattle Channel which is a service of the City of Seattle. McGinn accomplished much in his time in office. The city is better off because of him. He represents the best of progressive leadership in America. McGinn says this so …
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The Quiet American - Gaby Wood - The Observer, Saturday 9 September 2006 It's a magazine that runs 10,000-word articles on African states and the pension system, has almost no pictures and is published in black and white. So how does the New Yorker sell more than a million copies a week? Gaby Wood meets David Remnick, its …
I have reposted two items: 1) a fragment from an interview of Robinson where she describes the process of how American colleges evolved in the Midwest. 2) the complete essay Imagination & Community from her book of Essays When I Was a Child I Read Books. The imaginative makeup of a writer is established by …
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A book review of: The Antigone Poems by Marie Slaight Drawings by Terrence Tasker 2013, Altaire Production and Publishing Potts Point, Australia December 4, 2013 Poets do not know this terrain. Yet they may meditate on its being, one that is multiplied by galaxies yet named. And here she claims a sun, it is hers. …
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys …
An excellent essay on America considering the last 100 years. It is an overview that focuses on highlights and results. It establishes quickly the author's deep experience in the complexity of the society and its inherent conflicts and natures. While the conclusions feel right, the devil is always in the details. Our details are often …
"Beyond good and evil, beyond reason and social-ethical accountability, rages the drive to create, to engender form." Grammars of Creations George Steiner Jackson Pollock - Untitled (Figure Composition), 1938-41. Colored pencils and graphite on paper
Solnit is a San Francisco native and has written about the town from many perspectives including art, photography and geography. This article appears in "Tom Dispatch" and is part of a dark take on the current explosion of revelations on government spying and recently the FBI's admission that it is using drones domestically. From both …
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PHOTO - IRVING PENN THE CREATIVE ACT by Marcel Duchamp Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on the one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity. To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth …
LETTER FROM LONDON July 2013 America the Marvelous At any liberal-establishment dinner table in London, say, or Paris, the U.S. will figure as a big, fat, dumb child. Enough, says the author, in an adaptation from his new book: America is Europe’s finest invention—and ultimate aspiration. By A. A. GillIllustration by Barry Blitt KING OF THE WORLD The …
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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 …
Only citizens through their responsive government can monitor and guide the behaviour of corporations and their interaction with people and the natural, fragile earth. We need more people who are intelligent, informed, and unbiased and who articulate the truths that media won't.-rlw
Capitalism, for all its merits and failings as a 500-year practice, may be better than the alternatives, but may not be able to meet the stringent conditions imposed by nature's laws. These, ultimately, are the only measures that count.From "The Common Sense Canadian" Ray Grigg on anthropologist Ronald Wright. http://thecanadian.org/item/2056-anthropologys-capitalism http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_myth_of_human_progress_20130113/
Photograph by Mark Peckmezian for Bloomberg Businessweek How Jerry Brown Scared California Straight By Joel Stein on April 25, 2013 http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-25/jerry-brown-californias-grownup-governor Jerry Brown is a happy man who rarely smiles. That’s because underneath all that energy and California optimism, there’s an old, practical Buddhist. This is all that can be done. We can tax the rich a …
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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
Barry Lopez has lived in the foothills of the Oregon Cascade mountains for 40 years. As a younger man he was a landscape photographer. He is unsurpassed as a western naturalist, scientist and philosopher. He is of course a journalist. His grasp of humanity is deep and highly spiritual. He sees the human situation as …
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_____________________________________________ From The Univesity of Washington Archives ____________________________________________________ From - The Stranger - Seattle Weekly Publication TUESDAY, MAY 15, 2012 BOOKS Heather McHugh Is Giving the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading at UW on Thursday posted by CHRISTOPHER FRIZZELLE on TUE, MAY 15, 2012 at 4:18 PM DAVID BELISLE Heather McHugh, the certified genius—by The Stranger and then, a few months later, …
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, …
Hawks By Katharine Coles At the feeder finches scatter, then, Inches over the house, dragging their shadows, Two hawks sweep down into the canyon, Falling, ignoring paralyzed rabbit and vole, Wings pitched like sails to the wind, holding, Down to the crux where day’s pooled heat begins Its updraft, lifted by evening cool— The hawks, …
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.
"The power of myth, its reality, resides precisely in its power to seize and influence psychic life. The Greeks knew this so well, and so they had no depth psychology and psychopathology such as we have. They had myths. And we have no myths as such—instead, depth psychology and psychopathology. Therefore…psychology shows myths in modern …
"The Haida believed both animals and people had souls, which were essentially the same. The bodies of different animals were merely their "canoes" and all were capable of assuming other forms at will; "or better, they possessed a human form, and assumed their other forms when consorting with men." The killer whales were believed to …
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From the Preface - A Treatise On Poetry, 2001, HarperCollins, NY, translated by Robert Haas: First, plain speech in the mother tongue. Hearing it you should be able to see, as if in a flash of summer lightning, Apple trees, a river, a bend of a road. And it should contain more than images. Singsong …
West Pacific Review 