great quote from engraver Thomas Bewick in review of Jenny Uglow's new biography--

"Bewick's aim was to make a personal, durable mark on the world. While out fishing he'd muse on suitable poems that "I would, if I could afford it, have committed to the care of a rock"."

brilliant Joe Klein takedown...

"If you gave the people Joe Klein calls "leftists" a choice -- told them they could have an instant Scandanavian-style state-directed economy, but only if The Sopranos was pulled off the air -- how many of them do you think would vote for even that kind of socialism? The A&E network has nothing to worry about, let's put it that way..."

Area Trees

Philly poet Frank Sherlock is very ill sans insurance--find out how to help here.

some Poplars, Scotch Elms & a Heron from this wonderful Disappearing Surrey Gallery

(thanks CB)

nice Altman obit by "Player" screenwriter Michael Tolkin--

"Some sort of sincerity: Robert Altman was a misanthrope who loved having people around, to watch their behavior. This made him a great host. He should have adapted Poe, he never made a horror film and if I’ve ever been sorry that I didn’t know him better, it’s for this, thinking about it this morning, I would have loved to pitch “The Gold Bug” to him, a story about something meaning something to people, the meaning being more important than the thing. This formula is a bit like his movies or marijuana, and the element that divides those who like his movies from those who don’t, since his movies don’t have the sharp perspectives that always point out the one thing the film wants watched.

I had forgotten how pot works, the way it rearranges the significance of things, the way internal distractions become interesting or threatening paths. It’s not a happy drug at all, it’s not two flutes of nice champagne and a pretty face and perfume in the air. After smoking a little pot with him—and other than one morning in the office he didn’t smoke during the day—some of his methods made sense, and if it was pot sense, the sense is not invalid..."

A Broken Windows Theory Of Tyranny

"The obvious and oft repeated has some truth -- deeply empathic people get their hearts broken young, and learn to "toughen up". Some get toughened into monsters, and some find weird paths to walk between their hardened skin and still soft hearts. If you've read Alice Miller, or any of the people who write about how authoritarian societies "break" children, and encourage this as necessary and important, you've got some idea. Breaking children is the Republican factory, near as I can tell sitting here. You learn that truth is a function of power; and what you feel is a function of what daddy or mommy want you to feel; and then you get 60 more years to untangle it, if you don't turn into a war criminal or vote one into office along the way (or even if you do). But what interested me this morning, and inspired this rant, was not the deeper cause in child rearing, but the effect of a society so cruel and insane that you cannot turn on a TV, or read a paper, or talk to a friend, without some ready evidence of the boot descending on a human face, another fresh example of cruelty and gratuitous control..."

Area Trees