Dinner for just two, I think

   I laid in a rack of lamb
   from the midwest for the
   election returns, but it
   turned out I'd be dining
   by myself. That protect-
   ed the Vieux Télégraphe,
   but I sacrificed a Saint
   Émilion on spec, violat-
   ing my own maxim against
   a fine wine with any oc-
   casion of its own cachet.

   A simple dinner for two,
   is when to explore them,
   and now I've had this on
   my mind sufficiently for
   tasting it at its pique.

Michael Morgan

What on earth could make one think

          he wasn't simply

          waiting for some

          scrap of soap we

          might share then

Suppose it were Friday cxix: After this week

                           After this week,

I should turn to

friends for what

I had to do, who

never say a word

Who plays?

         All of this hinges

         on a gyroscope al-

         lowing us to do it

         again, trusting in

         each other's game,

         and asking for it.

         Primitive? Enough.

         

         

What comfort

    What comfort to this great decay may come
    Shall be applied .. 
    All friends shall taste
    The wages of their virtue, and all foes
    The cup of their deservings. O see, see!

  

















William Shakespeare
King Lear
  v, iii
ca 1606
George Ian Duthie
John Dover Wilson
  editors
The New Shakespeare
Cambridge University Press, 1960©


Don Ryan
Oregon coast
undated

Is taste a human right iv

    What I owe to Donald Trump,

    is the discovery of what is

    owed to rejecting exclusiv-

    ity. I don't feel a buzz of

    being stronger, together. I

    just renounce separation be-

    cause it costs everyone our

    nature. Nothing is so great

    that someone can't discover.

Live from New York: Parsifal in persiflage

Everyone is "powerless" in a

democracy which works; every-

one has no more than one vote. 

And no less. But in this democ-

racy, SNL has been a balsam to pretty much everyone who still 

believes in our Birth Reality - 

and Kate McKinnon, Larry David, 

and Alec Baldwin, along with 

delicious writers, have step-

ped into that void of Jon Stew-

art's retirement with extraor-

dinary generosity of encourage-

ment, stimulation, and consola-

tion. The campaign has been a 

wounding one, and these play-

ers have poured a needed, heal-ing elixir. They did for me.

Arthur King

View from 

  the Manhattan Bridge

1958

More taffy

You know? I mean, rully.

Does the director of the

most massive and inher-

ently partisan domestic

spy operation condoned

by American law, have no-

thing better to do than

to intervene repeatedly

in the People's obvious-

ly vulnerable electoral

melodrama, with missives

on how powerful a fool he

is - all in subtle aid of

posing as the most innoc-

uous little martinet that

he wants to appear to be?

Then at least we have the

right to demand that he

tuck in his shirt. Intim-

idation is vulgar enough,

without spoiling the day.

update, November 8th:

The Question for 

  James Comey

Editorial Board

The New York Times

November 7, 2016©

Save the clock

  As if this campaign had not
  gone long enough, it picked
  up an extra hour somewhere.
  Oh, my loyal clockface. How
  should I ever explain this? 

i  Dominik Sadoch

Blind chance

It was fortunate to encounter

the portrait published Satur-

day, because it helps to re-

call Poland's unyielding abil-

ity to preserve a culture, de-

spite the most horrific tor-

ments of the last 100 years. 

Compromises; yet just to im-

agine developing a child then,

becomes urgent to understand.

Now, as Americans entertain 

the exotically alluring temp-

tation of inflicting similar 

excitement upon ourselves -

a society in the mold of Fox

News - one naturally must pre-

pare for the prospect of some

generations (while courts are

mended, media reclaimed, par-

ties created, breath resumed)

of utter waste.

How did Europe's ornament get through it?

Timothy Snyder

Bloodlands

Basic Books, 2010

Anne Applebaum

Iron Curtain

Doubleday, 2012

Tony Judt

  with Timothy Snyder

Thinking the Twentieth

  Century

Penguin Books, 2012

Krzysztof Kieślowski

Blind Chance

1987