He was so handsome, so fine and flinty and long-boned, that he was a shock to be around — he made people stupid, or teary, or angry or skin-starved, sometimes all at once.
(Dwight Garner)
(Dwight Garner, “Sam Shepard and the Art of Expressing the Unsaid,” New York Times, 4-3-23)
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
I’m pleased to encounter Mona Kareem in Poetry, May 2023 after first reading of her in Arablit & Arablit Quarterly. The Poetry issue prints the Arabic text of Kareem’s poem Lailayāt (“Nights”) along with a translation into English by Sara Elkamel.
Bilingual texts invite the Arabic student to explore and experiment with his own translations in the stabilizing presence of the version that’s in print. The poem has 7 short, numbered stanzas. I deal here only with the first one. Here’s my version:
1
I trace a sweeping open space;
There I do a dance with death.
When I’m done I catch my breath,
then take a dip in my loud tears.
The intrigue and challenge of translation (as I conceive it) is to stay within the confines of the source’s connotative ranges while hitting upon natural English renderings that have a modicum of snap.
I give myself middling marks on my version here. It may be too idiomatic. It may have singsong rhythms. “Take a dip” may be tonally jarring for its lack of gravity.
A translation is akin to a controlled explosion: something is fractured no matter what, but energy is released as well.
Note: There’s a gross misprint in the Arabic text. The second letter of ‘urāqiṣu, “I dance,” is pointed twice with ḍamma. Mona Kareem has nothing to do with it, of course; the snafu belongs to the magazine.
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
This is a headline in USA Today:
3M fires long-time executive Michael Vale amid ‘inappropriate personal misconduct’ claims.
We’re not savages. All misconduct, be it personal or professional, should be rigorously appropriate.
This is from The New York Times:
Ms. Feinstein flew on a chartered private plane last week to return to Washington, accompanied by her dog, her longtime housekeeper and Nancy Corinne Prowda, the eldest daughter of Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former House speaker who has been a longtime friend of Ms. Feinstein’s and has been practically living at her house during her recovery.
Riddle: Who has been practically living with Ms. Feinstein during her recovery — Nancy Pelosi or Pelosi’s eldest daughter?*
*(Hint: It’s not Nancy Pelosi.)
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
It’s about God and Country. It’s about We the People. It’s about How the West Was Won. It’s about Living Off the Land. It’s about the Constitution. It’s about Good Policing. It’s about Secure Schools. It’s about Mental Health. It’s about…?
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
Pursuit of a resistant task, if persevered in stubbornly and passionately at any age, even if only for a short time, generates a kind of cognitive opiate that has no equivalent… The beautiful paradox is that pursuing things we may do poorly can produce the sense of absorption, which is all that happiness is, while persisting in those we already do well does not.
(Adam Gopnik)
(Adam Gopnik, “What We Lose When We Push Our Kids to ‘Achieve,’” New York Times, 5-15-23)
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
I love classic portmanteau words such as “spurious” — a blend of “specious” and “curious.” It’s fun to invent new ones and fantasize that one day they, too, may “go viral” as the expression puts it.
A triumph of mine in generative, artificial portmanteau-ing hybridizes “prattle” and “twaddle” into “praddle” and “twattle.”
Try your hand at this game. It’s not as hard as it looks.
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
This post is continued from here.
17 “Our fire was never snuffed out to a sojourner, and no traveller stopping over has found us wanting.
18 “Our days are well known to our enemy. They have marked blazes and pasterns.
19 “Our swords in all the west and east are notched from bashing armored men.
20 “Their blades aren’t customarily drawn, then sheathed, until a tribe has been exterminated.
21 “If you are in the dark, make inquiry regarding us and them; the clueless and the well informed are not a match.
22 “Truly the Banu Dayyān are an axis to their people round which their mill-stone turns and spins.”
Notes
(Unless otherwise noted, quotations are from Arberry.)
17 “The poet refers to the Bedouin practice of lighting a fire on the top of the nearest hill to guide night-travellers to the encampment and as a sign that hospitality was to be found there.”
18 “Our ‘days’: i.e. the famous battles in which the tribe has engaged. The white parts of the noble horse describe the ‘outstanding’ achievements.”
22 “This verse is assigned by al-Tibrīzī not to al-Samau’al, who was not of the Banu ‘l-Daiyān, but to a certain ‘Abd al-Malik b. ‘Abd al-Raḥīm al-Hārithī…”
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
“figures of dissent” 10/05/23 « Je veux que ce trait serve à [te] dessiner … » – Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs Instagram figures of dissent — Christopher Marc Ford
A disgraced politician once promised his followers he’d win so much they’d get tired of all the winning.
“Always remember any idiot can win,” Hugh Laurie’s father, an Olympic rowing medalist, told his son. “What he meant,” said Laurie, “was that winning doesn’t really teach you anything. If you’re a constant winner, you go through life without really being touched…, without ever learning anything or reconfiguring yourself.”
Tish Harrison Warren describes a “Ted Lasso” episode in which Lasso is publicly attacked by erstwhile friend Nathan. Lasso takes it good-naturedly, regaling the press with a stand-up bit making himself the butt of the joke. Warren writes: “He turns a moment of conflict into a moment of levity, even joy. This…exposes Nathan’s pettiness. In Ted’s weakness is his strength, while Nate’s grasping at strength reveals debilitating weakness.”
Sources
“Hugh Laurie,” interviewed on James O’Brien’s podcast “Full Disclosure,” 4-5-23.
Tish Harrison Warren, “Ted Lasso, Holy Fool,” New York Times, 4-30-23).
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
Once More Into the Breach, Dear Solons!
The country is experiencing mass mental health incidents in front yards, parking lots, retail centers, worship and entertainment venues, schools, parks, clubs, sporting events, parties — wherever 4 or more targets like to congregate.
State governments are circling around the urgent premise that serious consideration be given to the adequacy of funding allocated for feasibility studies about establishing mental health guidelines focused on potentially unstable constituencies.
Powerful committees are forming to deal with the issue, and lawmakers will read many reports as soon as they’ve remedied the immediate threats to public order, which are the scourge of transgenderism, the wokerati abomination, and rampant over-access to voting.
Persons on the edge, do not despair. The states of your nation are keeping you in their thoughts and agendas.
(c) 2023 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved