Even now this landscape is assembling. The hills darken. The oxen sleep in their blue yoke, the fields having been picked clean, the sheaves bound evenly and piled at the roadside among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:
This is the barrenness of harvest or pestilence. And the wife leaning out the window with her hand extended, as in payment, and the seeds distinct, gold, calling Come here Come here, little one
And the soul creeps out of the tree.
****************
So Glück writes brief lyrics in the key of longing. She’d prefer a world infused with religious spirit (one where cinquefoil is not merely a plant but – remember? – a common decorative motif in churches), but will take, with a sigh, the secular modern one she was handed. All Hallows is typical of this attitude, evoking an all-hollowed-out landscape – but hollowed almost in a gesture of propitiation: I’ve assembled a pure world of new possibility for you, oh hallowed ones: Come!
Or: Once you see precisely how nakedly dispirited this world is, you’re going to be compelled to respiritualize it!
And one of the saints does: a soul creeps out of a tree — ready, with the turn of the season, to respond to the imminent reseeding of the world.
The farmer in other words stages the landscape in order (holding treats in her hand) to coax the dubious soul-kitten out of the tree.
It’s all very Veni Creator Spiritus, in other words. If you’d prefer a more… ample version of this come-hither, go here.
Respect? No. Slavish obedience. That’s very different. You can respect someone and at the same time be aware of the limitations of their intelligence — and act accordingly, for the sake of your and your family’s health. Cultic loyalty to rabbis unable to understand the germ theory of disease is nuts, man. Time for the New York Times and other local papers to be less diplomatic in dealing with people who are rioting, assaulting, and burning.
We’ve followed the supremely dumb sports programs at Notre Dame on this blog forever (first post is about the cathedral; scroll down); but who knew the campus altogether – from its infected president on down – was so fucking stupid?
Several people in fact wore masks at the Rose Garden event (check out a photo). Notre Dame’s leadership seems keen to model a herd – lemming? – mentality for its students.
… sounds as though it has claimed its … thirty-fifth? … victim. And this one is said to be in the hospital in grave condition: Crede Bailey, head of the WH security office (!).
The hebephrenic-in-chief’s latest announcement reminds UD of one of her favorite essays, Gore Vidal’s 1978 “How to Find God and Make Money.” Gore already knew all about the long-popular fundamentalist Christian claim that getting a dread disease is the very best thing that can happen to you.
Thank God I Have Cancer! by Clifford Oden has best seller written all over it. Arlington House tells us that “When Rev. Oden learned he had cancer eight years ago he turned to God in prayer. He asked God to show him how to cope. Now he is living proof that cancer can be controlled by natural means – without surgery, without radiation or chemotherapy.”
Over 200,000 Americans have died. The economy has tanked, shedding tens of millions of jobs. The White House itself is the center of a massive Covid-19 outbreak that has infected the president, the first lady, several senators, and many other administration and Republican Party officials. Far from a beacon of resilience, the president has become a symbol of just how deeply the country has been affected by the pandemic. In public appearances since contracting the virus, he appears hoarse, shaky, and frightened; reports of his hospitalization include at least two concerning drops in oxygen level and a cocktail of drugs that indicate pneumonia...
Trailing in the polls with only 30 days left before the 2020 election, the president has embraced a reelection strategy that is, even for him, profoundly stupid...
Trump is now trailing with every age group of voters and is underwater with senior citizens — a voting block that helped him immensely in 2016. He is trailing by increasingly large margins in every swing state and [Biden] appears to be pulling away in Florida and Pennsylvania. A landslide defeat grows more likely by the hour…
The person many consider the nation’s top immunologist resigns in disgust from the government’s politicized anti-covid activity.
Public health and safety have been jeopardized by the administration’s hostility to the truth and by its politicization of the pandemic response, undoubtedly leading to tens of thousands of preventable deaths… More than half of the states in this country are reporting rising covid-19 cases. Nine months into the pandemic, the United States continues to grapple with failed White House leadership. Instead, we get the recent spectacle of the president exploiting his own illness for political purposes and advising the nation, “Don’t be afraid of Covid.”
Other researchers will leave in the same disgust, hoping that their gesture will somehow move the country away from rule by self-serving idiots.
The EU Court of course rules against Hungary’s having hounded out the Central European University.
Hungary long ago decided it wanted to be the Alabama of Europe. Countries are free to be cultural pits, if that’s what they want to be. Nobody writes about Hungary anymore, except for when the EU Court makes its meaninglessness official.
… sets NY on fire (while shouting “TRUMP! TRUMP!“), an Israeli journalist offers a fascinating account of the escalating violence among ultraorthodox Jews in both countries.
[T]here are elements in the Haredi community intentionally generating hatred of Haredim among the rest of the Israeli population.
The “barriers should be higher,” these people believe; you can never be too separatist a cult, and making people outside the cult loathe you guarantees they won’t get anywhere near you. So — refuse basic health measures in a pandemic. To be sure, a lot of cult members will die; but this is the will of God. What’s more important is that viciously, insistently, imperiling the life of anyone anywhere near you keeps appalled outsiders far, far away.
But is this really a good way to guarantee the flourishing of your cult?
Well, consider your hero, Mr Trump. He and his vile advisor, Giuliani, obsessively say and do things that make people sick. Does this work to repel and intimidate their enemies, so that they stay hands off?
No. Reason? There’s an escalation written into the strategy. Almost all human beings respond strongly to cruelty; cruelty attracts sadists, to be sure, but there aren’t that many sadists. Mainly there are normal people horrified by cruelty. When you intentionally generate hatred by your cruelty, you eventually mobilize some outsiders against you.
If you’re an ultraorthodox Jew, your cultic paranoia may overreact to these mobilized people and double down on that which sets you apart, which builds the walls higher: You look and act increasingly bizarre (your mohels refuse to stop sucking infants’ penises, for instance); your contempt for state authority becomes more and more violent; your disbelief in the germ theory of disease becomes more and more adamant.
Trump and the ultraorthodox take the path of escalating grotesquerie – and the grotesque certainly stops people in their tracks.
But then we recover from being stunned, and we realize that there are basic human values we need to defend against Trump and his battalion.
Unlike Trump and his battalion, we hate war. But we are willing to fight.
Williams, a former member of the Georgia House of Representatives who earned a $165,000 salary as the agency’s director, then paid for the cheaper saw using his credit card while wearing his forestry commission uniform, a cashier told police.
Williams, who was arrested when he returned to the store to speak to a manager, admitted to swapping the price tags, saying “he had done such things in the past and does it for the thrill.”
Donald [to Don Jr]: Oh I do so hope Rudy has the coronavirus. It makes all of us so much stronger and wiser. [Shouts.] Biden isn’t even coughing yet! He’s a total zero with his [spits]… MASKS. I have personal experience fighting the coronavirus. That firsthand experience, Joe Biden doesn’t have that.
Don Jr: Dad, I want a word with you. [Nervously, with his father still watching the screen.] You know how much better you’ve been lately… I mean, more … in touch! More grounded! The family really feels you’ve come back to us after… drifting from us a bit… [DT does not respond. Still watching screen.] But Dad, your behavior the last few days… It’s like you’re back in the … bad old days…
Donald: [Hand goes automatically to his hair. Scowls.] The nurses messed up my do. Son, am I still young and beautiful? Have my looks faded? Howard Stern – how long ago it seems! – told me I was the handsomest man he’d ever met. How much simpler life was then!
Don Jr: [Gazes with deep sorrow at his father.] I feel so damned sunk. Because this time you had me fooled. I really believed you were mentally sound. I really believed you had it licked. I can’t forgive you yet. I’d begun to hope… I’ve never known you to drown yourself in it as deep as this…
Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam. New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days. The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading. Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life. AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics. truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption. Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings. Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho... The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo. Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile. Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure. Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan... Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant... Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here... Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip... Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it. Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ... Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic... Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ... The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard. Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know. Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter. More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot. Notes of a Neophyte
