“It’s funny when they talk about women, saying, ‘Oh, she’s so competitive,’ and it’s almost a put-down… For me, what’s the alternative? To try to lose, or to not give your best? ‘Competitive’ means you’re concentrating, and you do everything to try to prepare as well as you can, and do your best out there.”
(Martina Navratilova, quoted by Ben Rothenberg, “Martina Navratilova May Be Retired, but She Still Wants to Win,” NYTimes)
(C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.
Convergence2, JMN, photo. Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.
Sonnet: Day of a Salesman
He spoke of where he had to go, greater
doings, how and when; what he was for now
he did not seem to know, knitting his brow
often over it but none the wiser.
He would face the east and feel the matter
dawning (as clear as smog and clouds allow);
he’d sigh for a post on a bireme’s prow
piloting for Byzantium, then mutter
greetings to the inevitable day
and coffee up, prepared to press his quest
for sidewalks greener than a Queen Claude plum.
By noon he’d start to knock it all, and flay
the bitch that bore us; by night call it jest,
benched and listening to the overheads hum.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
HJN2000L Abuelita. Oil on canvas, 16 X 20 in. Framed, signed. $1450
“English is a global language with many native and nonnative varieties. Worldwide, nonnative speakers of English outnumber natives by a ratio of three to one. Even in the United States, which has the largest population of native English speakers, there are, according to one estimate, nearly 50 million speakers of English as a second language. What does it even mean to sound native when so many English speakers are second-language speakers?”
(Roberto Rey Agudo, “Everyone Has an Accent,” NYTimes)
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
St Jerome by Bellini
My theology chops are modest at best. One monotheism has been dinged by another as being slightly quasi-mono because of the Trinity and the saints and mariolatry.
The dinging party severely prescribes oneness (one God, one Messenger), whereas the dinged party revels in muchness (one Godhead in three Persons, intercession, hyperdulia inferior to latria). Many large ideas in which to delve.
Does the Word wink merrily from somewhere beyond the contesting pieties? Likely as not, I hold.
(C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.
Selfie With Tea Kettle, JMN, photo. (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.
I’m curious about too many things, which is why I haven’t achieved distinction in anything.
Consider this fascinating article in today’s NYTimes about perfumes: “The Difference Between Perfume, Cologne and Other Fragrances” by Tynan Sink. Here’s an overview, but read the article for key details:
(1) Pure perfume, parfum or extrait de parfum: 15-30 percent perfume oils, potent, noticeable, will last all day and leave your scent on others if you hug them.
(2) Eau de parfum (EDP): 15-20 percent perfume oils, still detectable when you undress at night, but won’t give people headaches or linger on their necks after a hug.
(3) Eau de toilette (EDT): 5-15 percent perfume oils, lighter on the skin, won’t necessarily last until the end of the evening, but can surge back to life unexpectedly on contact with moisture.
(4) Eau de cologne: 2-4 percent perfume oils, umbrella word for masculine scents in North America, cut with more alcohol, lasts only a few hours.
(5) Eau fraiche: 1-3 percent perfume oils (?), mixed mostly with water, good for quick refresher without long-lasting scent.
I was captivated in college by “Les fleurs du mal” (The Flowers of Evil). Baudelaire was the “poète des odeurs” (the poet of odors) and introduced me to the notion of synesthesia — sensory crossover.
I had a faint recollection of associating certain numbers with different colors, and wondered if it came from playing with numbered blocks as a toddler. Also, a lingering memory of intense perception of Christmas tree lights, especially blue, and of street light knifing through Venetian blinds into a darkened room.
As a very small child I ran my finger through the West Texas dust clinging to a car door and tasted it. Later, I asked my dad if it was OK that I had tasted dirt. He said it was OK as long as it was good clean dirt.
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
HJN, photo. (c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.
I helped him poop and pee; wiped him, washed him, lotioned him, shaved him, fed him, dispensed medicines, tugged his lanky six-foot-three frame back to semi-recumbent each time it slid down his bed.
He was stoic, docile, acknowledging, laconic at eighty-eight. He said I was “meticulous.” He said he understood now where my son, his grandson, had gotten his vocation for nursing. (My son is a Navy nurse.)
I was proud that he had observed me and commented on me. In hospital, he required the covers to be tucked around his feet as only I knew how. “Let my son do it,” he would say. We bonded more in his extremity than we had in previous life. Finally he needed me.
My eulogy at his thronged memorial service concluded: “I don’t know if I was the son Harold ordered, but I’m the son he got. I acknowledge to you that I leaned on him, relied on him, put the touch on him, more frequently and for a longer period of time than I had any right to expect to do. And he allowed himself to be leaned on. He was a support that I didn’t always even know I had, that I took too often for granted, but that I never ran out of.”
(C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.
Anne Tyler, photo from The Guardian
You used to be reluctant to give interviews, but seem to have softened lately. Why?
“I am still reluctant, to be honest, but the world has changed so much. I used to think it was my publisher’s job to get people interested in my books and persuade them to buy copies, but books are suffering. We need to do all we can to encourage people to see books and reading as part of their lives. If we don’t, then someday kids will stop reading and that will be the end.”
(Lisa O’Kelly, “Anne Tyler: Wuthering Heights strikes me as silly,” The Guardian)
(Copyright 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.)
Law West of the Pecos, Tom Jones drawing.
When I still used Facebook I put up a version of the nonsense I’ve blogged here as “A Modest Proposal” (with nod to Jonathan Swift). A Modest Proposal At the time, a bill to foment the sale of silencers was before Congress. I don’t know where the matter stands at present.
From out of the blue, a gentleman appeared in the FB comment section. He informed me that the efficacy of silencers was greatly exaggerated in the movies. They did not, he said, suppress the report and flash of a firearm to the extent portrayed. He concluded that it was right and proper for gun enthusiasts to have greater access to silencers in order to protect their hearing.
I thanked him as neutrally as I could for his feedback. I haven’t the fortitude to cross swords with Second Amendment crusaders. I surmised there might be a contingent of them who monitor social media in order to catch and rebut messages possibly adverse to their cause. Had he taken my FB post seriously? How had I even come to his attention? Who knows? The man disappeared as abruptly as he had surfaced.
The point is, the argument I put forth there, as well as here in “A Modest Proposal,” is the sheerest of sheer nonsense — as much so as Swift’s satirical claim that one-year-old children of the poor could be “delicious nourishing and wholesome food.”
Silencers? I’m not brave. I shun confrontation. Oblique satire is the only refuge I have against what I consider to be arrant folly.
(C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.
“Despite his anarchistic impulses, Wojnarowicz [pronounced voyna-ROH-vitch] was a methodical worker, a planner. The Rimbaud series was carefully developed through notebook drawings, examples of which are on view. Self-taught, he painted the way certain writers write, with deliberation rather than grace, putting down one word, one idea, one image at a time, wedging and stitching them into a dense visual weave.”
(Holland Cotter, “He Spoke Out During the AIDS Crisis: See Why His Art Still Matters,” NYTimes)
(C) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rights reserved.
EthicalDative 
Ambiguous Headline of the Day
“Putin Is Running a Destructive Cybercrime Syndicate Out of Russia” (NYTimes).
Hmmm… I run a raccoon out of my wood shop now and then.
(c) 2018 James Mansfield Nichols. All rabbits restrained.