Tag Archives: society

Opportunities to Panic

Posted on November 10, 2020 by JMN

Ben Ehrenreich writes: The current pandemic has already given many of us a taste of what happens when a society fails to meet the challenges that face it… The climate crisis, as it continues to unfold, will give us additional … Continue reading →

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Tom, Dick, and Harry

Posted on November 9, 2020 by JMN

There was a fun question in my daily Spanish Quora: ¿Existe en inglés el equivalente a “fulano, mengano y zutano”? The consensus in the answer thread was that “Tom, Dick and Harry” was the closest equivalent. I’m reminded of my … Continue reading →

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The Squat

Posted on November 6, 2020 by JMN

I learned the term “typosquatting” today. Shortly after 2:30 a.m. on October 30, 2020, Twump tweeted the hashtag “#BidenCrimeFamiily” with no other context or link. That extra “i” circumvented Twitter’s efforts to hide the hashtag in search results. Called #typosquatting, … Continue reading →

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‘Uninvited Guests’

Posted on October 23, 2020 by JMN

Carlos G. Navarro, curator of “Uninvited Guests,” the Prado’s first post-lockdown exhibition, says it’s “partly an act of self-criticism” for the museum’s complicity in neglect of 19th-century female artists. Of 130 works displayed, 60 are by women. One wonders why … Continue reading →

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Backages & Shortlogs

Posted on October 22, 2020 by JMN

The Guardian reports a crisis fermenting in South Korea: cabbage for making kimchi has run short. Its link to the intrepid cowpoke fleshing street-level USA will not be obvious, but an old snatch from Finnegans Wake helps connect the dots: … Continue reading →

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Protecting the Male

Posted on October 18, 2020 by JMN

(c) 2020 JMN

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Slackoff from Windbaggage

Posted on October 17, 2020 by JMN

Art Spiegelman’s comment below, encountered on the fly as if on zoom wings, has helped me realize that this latest painting is just wrong: grotesque in subject, torpid in execution, and the end of a line. Fury and disgust can … Continue reading →

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Shoes, Cans, Clocks, Bricks… and Hoods

Posted on October 5, 2020 by JMN

This article describes Philip Guston (1913-1980) as an “artist’s artist” whose “deceptively simple subjects and emphatic brush strokes” influenced many painters of our era. … Part of the reason he is embraced by artists in the current moment is that … Continue reading →

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Joy Sails

Posted on October 1, 2020 by JMN

Painting is a way of providing a balm, to artist and viewer alike, in a calamitous era. “We live in almost Old Testament times, with plagues and insane kings,” says [André] Gregory. “It’s crucial that we look at those things … Continue reading →

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Rimbaud and Verlaine

Posted on September 28, 2020 by JMN

The seventy-five persons interred in the French Pantheon include Voltaire, Rousseau, Dumas, Hugo and Malraux. None is there for poetry. (Victor Hugo was honored for his political attainments.) There is now a movement afoot to transfer the remains of Arthur … Continue reading →

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