Author Archives: JMN

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About JMN

I live in Texas and devote much of my time to easel painting on an amateur basis. I stream a lot of music, mostly jazz, throughout the day. I like to read and memorize poetry.

You Can Pick Your Battles, Not Your Wars

Posted on January 21, 2020 by JMN

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/21/crushed-by-brexit-how-labour-lost-the-election My title is what I extrapolate from the tersely cogent remark attributed to an anonymous Labour Party strategist: “In the end, you can’t just fight a battle and ignore your opponent. You can’t just say: ‘We’re fighting at sea’, … Continue reading →

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Getting Itself Done

Posted on January 20, 2020 by JMN

http://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/opinion/uk-election-labour.html … The mines of County Durham, the pottery workshops of Staffordshire and the textile factories of Lancashire… Onetime Labour strongholds stretching from West Bromwich on the outskirts of Birmingham to Blyth Valley near the Scottish border… Bolsover in the … Continue reading →

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Spilt Pith

Posted on January 20, 2020 by JMN

http://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/30/opinion/walt-whitman-nytimes-2020.html Such was [Walt] Whitman’s description of [President] Lincoln in a March 1863 letter to two New York friends. The president, wrote Whitman, had a face “like a hoosier Michael Angelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful, with its strange … Continue reading →

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Art Wins, Artists Lose

Posted on January 18, 2020 by JMN

Among the biggest losers in the current system are artists themselves. With art now considered an asset class to equities and commodities, collectors are forever on the lookout for rising stars whose work can be bought at bargain prices and … Continue reading →

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“Pretty Ugly”

Posted on January 16, 2020 by JMN

This tweet contrasts so starkly with the seriousness of the actual situation with Iran,” said Ben Rhodes, a former top national security aide to Mr. Obama. “We are in the midst of a roiling crisis with Iran that is largely … Continue reading →

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Intellectual Disarmament

Posted on January 15, 2020 by JMN

Ross Douthat writes that when he was an undergraduate at Harvard University “our so-called ‘core’ curriculum promised to teach us ‘approaches to knowledge’ rather than the thing itself.”  It was, and remains, an insane view for humanists to take, a … Continue reading →

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Vija Celmins

Posted on January 13, 2020 by JMN

Vija Celmins (pronounced VEE-ja SELL-mins) was born in 1938 in Riga, capital of Latvia. Fleeing the Soviet invasion of 1944, her family immigrated to the United States in 1948. She earned an undergraduate art degree in Indiana and an M.F.A … Continue reading →

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Therianthropes

Posted on January 12, 2020 by JMN

In December 2017, an Indonesian archaeologist discovered a cave painting on the island of Sulawesi that dates back at least 43,900 years — “the oldest pictorial record of storytelling and the earliest figurative artwork in the world.” In the story … Continue reading →

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“The Self-Defeating Rage of the Old”

Posted on January 11, 2020 by JMN

The young people of England, like those in the rest of Britain, … understand we need liberation from the practices of Westminster and Whitehall, not Brussels, and from the self-defeating rage of the old. David Edgerton, a British historian, writes: … Continue reading →

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Feminized Heroes

Posted on January 10, 2020 by JMN

Images of historic persons have been depicted recently in novel ways by artists in Mexico and in Canada. Both cases have a gender-fluid slant; the contrast in public reaction in each country is notable. Emiliano Zapata, betrayed and killed in … Continue reading →

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