Friday While I don’t yet know whom I will be supporting for the 2020 Democratic nominee for president—I very much like the women who have declared so far—I have a soft spot for Ohio’s Sherrod Brown. Brown, whose working class sympathies helped him comfortably win reelection in a red state, just made his case stronger […]
Monthly Archives: February 2019
Brown’s Populism Comes from Tolstoy
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged 2020 election, Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection, Sherrod Brown, Working class Comments closed
Puritans vs. Cavalier Theatre
Thursday I’m currently immersed in John Stubbs’s Reprobates, an account of the cavalier poets during England’s 17th century civil war. I met John when I was in Ljubljana—he’s married to a Slovenian high court judge and teaches at the international high school—and the work is even more enthralling than his biography of Jonathan Swift, which […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged censorship, London theatre, Oliver Cromwell, Restoration comedy, William Davenant, William Prynne Comments closed
When Is a Wall Not a Wall?
Wednesday A few weeks ago I wrote about how Donald Trump’s wall slides between the literal and the symbolic depending on which day it is. On some days the president goes into great detail about its physical features and claims that it will stop armored cars filled with drugs and duct-taped women that otherwise will […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Donald Trump, Immigration, Mistress Masham's Repose, T. H. White, Trump's wall Comments closed
Winter’s Assyrian Invasion
Monday When the polar vortex descended on the United States last week, the opening lines from Lord Byron’s “The Destruction of Sennacherib” came to mind. While I’d memorized the stanza in high school to learn anapestic meter (short-short-long), it captures the emotional force of extreme weather events. (Another Byron poem that does so is “Darkness”) […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "Destruction of Senacherib", climate change, extreme weather events, Lord Byron, polar vortex Comments closed
A Dream of Black and White Together
Spiritual Sunday My mother and I went to hear St. Olaf’s sublime choir at Sewanee’s All Saints Chapel Thursday night. (This in spite of the fact that we both attended St. Olaf’s archrival, Carleton College.) Amongst the program’s “peace on earth” offerings was an arrangement of Langston Hughes’s “I Dream a World.” I share it […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged "I Dream a World", Black History Month, Civil Rights, Langston Hughes, racism Comments closed
Another Way Frankenstein Is Relevant
Friday I somehow missed this New Yorker article on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein when it appeared last year in observance of the novel’s 200th anniversary. Although anti-Trump pundits have frequently cited Frankenstein in recent years to capture how the GOP created a monster it couldn’t control (see here and here), Joan Lepore argues that the novel […]
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged Donald Trump, Edmund Burke, Frankenstein, GOP, Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Revolution, William Godwyn Comments closed
