www.nytimes.com/2019/12/26/opinion/media-politics.html
Do you want to predict how a certain region is going to vote in the 2020 presidential race? Discover who settled the region in the 17th and 18th centuries. If the settlers were from the East Anglia section of Britain, then that region is probably going Democratic. If the settlers were from the north of Britain, that region is very likely to vote for Donald Trump.
(David Brooks, “The Media Is Broken,” 12-26-19)
(c) 2020 JMN
Jack ran up the hill.
Jack ran up the bill.
Why can we also say “Jack ran the bill up” but not “Jack ran the hill up”?
What does “up” add in the following:
She’ll try to climb up your leg, man!
I’m gonna clean up the mess.
Sorry I messed you up.
There used to be a place up in Toledo.
They laid off a bunch of really high up people.
(c) 2020 JMN
www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/arts/music/terry-riley.html
“For me music is a daily practice that I try to deepen in the sense that I get to understand more about what music really is, and sometimes what I think it really is is the simplest elements — elements that are just basic to music, that when they can come forward, are the things that need to be there…..”
(Mike Rubin, “Terry Riley’s Avant-Garde Sounds Are Still Casting Spells,” NYTimes, 12-19-19)
This remark by Terry Riley stymies me in the fruitful way that musicology does.
(c) 2020 JMN
At nine PM on New Year’s Day 2020, it’s quiet in my neighborhood.
Two earsplitting reports in quick succession rip the peace: POP-POP. A second or two of silence, then one more: POP.
I recall an old cartoon in which a man says, “False alarm, everyone! It’s just gun shots. For a moment I thought it was a car backfiring.”
I switch off my lights and window-peep into the unyielding darkness.
The incident is unresolved. The reality, however, is that what sounds like gunfire now probably is. That’s where we are where I live.
(c) 2020 JMN
www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/opinion/jeff-bezos-phone-hack.html
… Christopher Pierson… founded BlackCloak, a cybersecurity company for high-net-worth and high-profile individuals — executives, celebrities and billionaires. According to Mr. Pierson, few people take their digital lives as seriously as they should.
“The majority of clients we onboard come on in some kind of hacked state,” he told me. “Their computers are compromised or their login credentials are available on dark web. Their home camera systems are accessible to people on internet or their entire home and appliances are vulnerable and viewable by persons remotely.”
(Charlie Warzel, “Jeff Bezos’s Phone Hack Should Terrify Everyone,” NYTimes, 1-24-20)
(c) 2020 JMN
The bucal effluvia belched
from limousine and lectern
drums the ear like the per-
cussive splot of a hocked
louie slapping a saliva slick
in a saloon spittoon.
(c) 2020 JMN
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’, if your opponent is mounting a land invasion.”
(Heather Stewart, “‘Crushed by Brexit’: how Labour lost the election,” theguardian.com, 1-21-20)
(c) 2020 JMN
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 North Midlands and Bishop Auckland in the North East… At the end of the 2010s, they simply fell off a cliff.
All seats lost by Labour in the northern and Midlands districts voted for Brexit in 2016, according to Alex Niven.
(Alex Niven, “The Labour Party’s Spectacular Defeat Had Been Coming for Decades,” NYTimes, 12-20-19)
(c) 2020 JMN
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 mouth, its deep cut, criss-cross lines, and its doughnut complexion.”
(Ed Simon, “Why We Will Need Walt Whitman in 2020,” NYTimes, 12-30-10)
“Ruth stood firmly on his sturdy legs, like the Colossus of Rhodes, and, taking a mighty swing at the second ball pitched to him, catapulted the pill for a new altitude and distance record.” [The Times description of Babe Ruth’s record-breaking “epochal clout” against the Yankees, his 28th home run.]
(Jane Leavy, “Why on Earth Did Boston Sell Babe Ruth to the Yankees?” NYTimes, 12-30-19)
(c) 2020 JMN
EthicalDative 
Goya on My Mind
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/28/goya-paintings-many-not-work-of-spanish-master-studio-assistants
(I wonder if the historian meant “imitate” instead of “illustrate”?)
I experience a moment of fatigue when the trafficking in trophy art is punctuated by an expert’s reserve over whether or not attributed paintings are “infused” with the “unique” spunk and slobber of an oldtime picture-factory boss such as Goya.
My uninformed speculation is that some of the sand kicked up occasionally over how purely authentic a work is may encourage what I theorize could be a misconception about how the old masters operated in their antique world.
Could it be that a major concern of a successful painter as he presided over his studio was to provide a steady supply of pictures to his clamoring patrons? And that delegating certain drawing and brushwork to helpers and apprentices came naturally, so that any number of pictures rolled out over his signature were touched to a greater or lesser degree by other hands? Should the value of such works necessarily “collapse”?
I don’t disparage the sleuthing that well-meaning historians perform in their researches into the validity of attributions. What’s tedious is that the astronomical sums of money in play (“millions of pounds”) tend to corrupt scientific discussion and elevate disputes into headline cheese.
(c) 2020 JMN