“Last place aversion” accounts for white resentment of safety net programs. Huck’s father is an example of the process at work.
Monthly Archives: July 2018
Pap Would Have Voted for Trump
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Huckleberry Finn, last place aversion, Mark Twain, Pap, racism, social safety net, status anxiety Comments closed
Putin’s Seduction of Donald Trump
Think of Putin as Satan, Trump as Eve, and Adam as the GOP in a reenactment of Paradise Lost.
Tolstoy’s Love Affair with Mosquitoes
Abhorrent though mosquitoes are to me, Tolstoy finds a way to live with them and even arrive at existential insights.
Thieving Raccoons
After undergoing an attack from thieving raccoons, I turned to a wonderful raccoon poem.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged childhood fears, fear of the dark, immigrant child separations, Kathryn Nuernberger, raccoons Comments closed
A Poem To Console the Losers
As if losing to France weren’t bad enough, Croatia had to receive its second-place medals in the rain, bringing to mind Laforgue’s poem “Sad, Sad.”
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Sad, French soccer team, Jules Laforgue, Soccer, World Cup Comments closed
Salomé, a Female Revenge Fantasy?
Spiritual Sunday The salacious story of Salomé (a.k.a. Herod and Herodias’s daughter) is today’s Gospel reading so here’s a strange and unsettling poem written by Anne Killigrew in the late 17th century. I can’t decide whether it is a feminist revenge fantasy or a drama of sexual frustration. If John the Baptist has been admonishing […]
France vs. the Little Engine That Could
Which World Cup story do we root for? The little engine that could or redemption after humiliation?
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Casey's Revenge, Croatia, France, Grantland Rice, Little Engine that Could, Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles, Watty Piper, World Cup Comments closed
Fishing in the Mind
Thursday Can art be so vivid that it supersedes actual experience? Billy Collins makes such a claim in “Fishing on the Susquehanna in July,” where he conjures up images that may resonate with those who fish, even though Collins isn’t among them. His own experience, he freely admits, comes from museum paintings. Art precedes life, […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged artistic imagination, Billy Collins, fishing, Hamlet, Midsummer Night's Dream, Williams Shakespeare Comments closed
Blake on Trump’s Breast-Feeding Attack
With yet another Trumpian attack on poor children, I turn once again to William Blake.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Infant Sorrow", "Poems Done on a Late Night Car", breastfeeding, Carl Sandburg, Donald Trump, infant formula, William Blake Comments closed
