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.

“A Saved Man”

Posted on August 17, 2019 by JMN

I admire Renoir for the valor with which he carried on his work into old age, arthritic hands and all. I don’t care much for his nudes. Nor am I as fond of Boucher as he was, but I get … Continue reading →

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Four Rules

Posted on August 17, 2019 by JMN

Krugman is a Nobel laureate with a knack for being right and wry. I value him for his thinking and for his rhetoric. Last year, after an earlier stock market swoon brought on by headlines about the U.S.-China trade conflict, … Continue reading →

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“Amped Up to Grotesqueness”

Posted on August 17, 2019 by JMN

Gina Beavers’s work hits a sweet spot for me. It’s impossible not to bumble where the talent has gone already, but I intend to explore serial, inflated, anatomical detail myself. Her idiosyncratic aesthetic… [offers] canny statements on contemporary bodies, beauty … Continue reading →

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Help Drill

Posted on August 17, 2019 by JMN

Help fix inaccurate voter rolls Help address shortages of voting machines Help address shortages of provisional ballots Help formalize the rules around counting absentee ballots Help increase participation in the 2020 census. Help increase youth turnout Source: Melanye Price, “Stacey … Continue reading →

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Kudos to Automattic

Posted on August 17, 2019 by JMN

This commentary by Kara Swisher made me glad to be on WordPress. … Tumblr has landed with WordPress, a former rival and the kind of company that it probably should have been with all along. [Founder, Matt Mullenweg] is one … Continue reading →

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Song of the Ottoman: Original Poem

Posted on August 16, 2019 by JMN

Our past is our mystery. It is the tangle we have made of our hopes when we have come up to them. The future alone is clear. (Robert Henri) INTRO What it is not is an ottoman. What it is … Continue reading →

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Where Cate Sits

Posted on August 14, 2019 by JMN

“My father was born in Texas. My mother is Australian. I’m married to a British citizen. So I sit in some weird fork in the road.” (Cate Blanchett, Stephen Colbert Show, 8-12-19)

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Song of Theirselves

Posted on August 11, 2019 by JMN

I’ve been at Amsterdam dinners where everyone is speaking brilliant English, but the minute I leave the table they switch back to Dutch. If all we know is English, we won’t know what the rest of the world is saying … Continue reading →

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Here Lies a Scotsman

Posted on August 10, 2019 by JMN

There once was a Second Amendment paladin in the Houston area who lay in wait one night to discharge his Ruger into the belly of a nefarious shadow on his castle’s driveway; having done which he laid his weapon down, … Continue reading →

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Tuba Career

Posted on August 10, 2019 by JMN

As for what comes after the life-altering experience of “GLOW” — what will define her next persona — [Betty] Gilpin doesn’t know, but she has a hunch. “It feels like I’m in this room that I didn’t know existed, and … Continue reading →

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