Torsade Literary Space La Catastrophe de la Martinique (one)
Jean Hess La Catastrophe de la Martinique (notes of a reporter) 1902 To the lost souls of forty thousand of Saint-Pierre I dedicate this work of a reporter. Preface Forty thousand victims… This statistic is not exact […]
Internet Down Again
Internet outage again! Starting last Wednesday when hurricane Ida passed through. They’re working on it.
Upcycle
Something different. On another of my blogs, where I post a lot of gardening items, I discussed this problem of upcycling plastic to keep it out of landfills. Here’s a link to the Coca-Cola company’s plan for recycling, with their earliest goals set for 2030. It’s great that producers of plastic containers […]
Assorted Opinions: Unusual Turnout
Assorted Opinions Unusual Turnout Much noise has been made this week in pursuit of voter fraud claims…so far found unwarranted. But there’s another side to this coin that the noise drowns out: election fraud. Tales of voter fraud—individuals forging ID in some way, then voting more than once—have the […]
Marjorie Bowen: The Sword Decides! (intro part three)
Marjorie Bowen The Sword Decides! Introduction: part three A Different Kind of Translation, continued: A Question of Taste Chapter One, Joris Middelstum’s Strong Points Joris Middelstum was a bachelor. Do not be angry with him, ladies, on that account. Supposing that […]
Marjorie Bowen: The Sword Decides! (intro part two)
Marjorie Bowen The Sword Decides! Introduction: part two A Different Kind of Translation, continued: Most of what you want to achieve contradicts itself to a degree, the writing of a story or novel being like every other enterprise…all things in their rightful places, […]
Baron Haussmann’s Story of the Murderous Innkeepers
From Mémoires de baron Haussmann, 1890 excerpted from a section called Excursions These events take place in the 1830s, Haussmann on his way to his new job at Nérac, the post he held in our last story of his assisting George Sand. […]
Assorted Opinions: Stupid Loyalty
Assorted Opinions Stupid Loyalty Scenes from America’s protests, which began with the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and continue as general dissent under the banner of Black Lives Matter, play onscreen like a surreal clown show, tragic and brutal, while the enforcement conduct often seems comedically […]
The M Word That Isn’t Moscow (opinion)
Assorted Opinions The M Word That Isn’t Moscow From one of the books I’m reading, Heaven Cracks, Earth Shakes, by James Palmer (Basic Books, 2012), on the last days of Chairman Mao and the horrific Tangshan earthquake, comes this translation of a Maoist anthem: The […]
Republicans’ Last Chance (opinion)
Republicans’ Last Chance Or, advice from an observer As to politics, I believe in doing what works and not doing what doesn’t work. Human society has never been able to figure out why this principle is so difficult, rather than so easy, […]