Saturday commute cxxxviii: To peace and quiet

Ovid relates, as Dryden retells,
how Jupiter and Mercury go hunt-
ing for a place to crash for the
night, and after being met with
many locked palaces, come to the
shed of Baucis and Philemon, hos-
pitable, but tellingly austere -

    Inured to want, their poverty they bore,

    Nor aimed at wealth, professing to be poor.

    For master or for servant here to call

    Was all alike, where only two were all.

    Command was none, where equal love was paid;

    Or rather both commanded, both obeyed.

    And up they held their hands and fell to pray'r,

    Excusing as they could their country fare.

John Dryden

Selected Poems

Steven N. Wicker and

  David Bywaters

  editors

  Baucis and Philemon

    out of the Eighth Book

    of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses'

1700

Penguin Classics, 2001©

i  Alair Gomes, photo

North Carolina's latest Reconstruction

     A very pretty and almost temperate

     swath of the sub-Mid-Atlantic, the

     first tier of the remainder which

     Virginia didn't want, has hatched

     a neo-classical Reconstruction bid

     to rejoin the empire of NCAA con-

     cessions, on the basis of prohibit-

     ing her municipalities to legis-

     late any steps against LGBTQ dis-

     crimination until 2020, at the cos-

     mic earliest, on pain of the usual

     pogroms fomented by Republicans to

     the contrary. Is it to be expected,

     that our collegiate sports monopoly

     is willing to throw countless North

     Carolinians under the bus, to grab

     the joys of showing off in Charlotte,

     in the shadow of a cynicism of this

     superlative perfection? We'll see.

Empiricism, and this world

The American government is now at

war with climate science. It needs

to keep in shape, and fact is mar-

velously isometric. Pushing back

against it, with that great exer-

cycle of the season, alternative

facts, is probably enough to slip

one into the profile of a politi-

cian, for a day. Supposing one 

were not enlisted, would one cower

beneath the seamstress's tape, or

whisper the obvious, Ain't it hot?

Origins of Wednesday xlvi: The road uproariously taken

I am acquainted with people
who come from large families,
and while I try not to let on
that I envy their diversifica-
sion of hereditary risk, it's
even more difficult to conceal
my awe at prospects they enjoy
for a specialization of labor,
among these strands of siblings
they flaunt, as so many bubbles
from a blow-pipe. Having grown
up with no more than a single
sibling - and he, of an avoca-
tion too precarious for memoir -
and the barest minimum of par-
ents, there never was any ques-
sion of one's father's turning
to young Evremond, for example,
You be responsible for Physics,
and on to sweet Clytemnestra,
You account for English travel
writing. Rather, it put every-
one's feet to the fire of the
basics of the orderly mind, to
have to do the reading for one-
self. The shelves expand, as
you'd fear, with prejudicial
speculation in both directions;
but with the diversions, not to
say procrastinations of experi-
mentation favoring scholarship
by conveyance, I still find my-
self slipping onto a carousel,
back studiously to the window,
to read in the travels of Bos-
well, Fielding, Byron, Durrell, 
Bedford, Chatwin, Paddy, Maugham,
Rory Stewart, and Graham Greene.
I never knew a tongue to spread
itself afield so fabulously, and
turn the telling phrase on time.

Tell me, Clytie: where am I now,
unless this is still Afghanistan? 

      We were well prepared. Bunches of chains, three spades,

      a pick, and stout ropes to prevent the lorry falling o-

      ver the edge, were quickly in action. The next mile took

      four hours. Some dug; some hung on to the ropes; some 

      cast down branches of a peppermint-smelling herb as though

      before the Saviour's ass. The day was almost gone when a

      zigzag spurt and cheers brought us to the narrow saddle of

      the Sauzak Pass. 

Robert Byron
The Road to Oxiana
1937
Paul Fussell
  introduction
1982
Rory Stewart
  preface
2006
Oxford University Press, 2007©

i Stanley Kubrick, photography
1947

Cannibals

Their big day, their grand
and gaudy roll-out of an-
other declaration of war a-
gainst humanity's inclement
interest in their greed and
rupture of an organism they
don't begin to understand,
but to steal, shred, devour.

Rape at its most gratifying.

When did even Zeus demand

some extra credit from his

idolators, for an abduction

of Europa? What is this bi-

zarre exultation in dismem-

bering the vulnerable, the

lovely, the plainly life-

sustaining, for cheap shots

of joy in some cistern of

revenge?

Now who is the better cus-

todian of the fossils, if

not those who inherit them?

Photo Marat Mukhonkin

Photo David McNew 
Power Plant, California
Getty Images©
The New York Times
March 27, 2017

Photo Vic Bakin 
L'Officiel Ukraine©
2017

Robinson Meyer
The Giant .. Climate Order
  is Here
The Atlantic©
March 28, 2017

First Class saloon, the Normandie

The radiant, febrile blonde has dis-

appeared, having betrayed him already 

once. The authorities have redoubled 

their resistance to his innocence. 

The hero absconds with himself in a 

stolen suit without defensive fire-

power, and Alfred Hitchcock has 39 

minutes left, to make it interesting. 

An art critic I admire considerably, 

has warned me that most fine cinema 

expires after a half hour. There have 

been 47 rather minor minutes already. 

God help the odds.

The hero leaps from a window to im-

merse himself in a temperance parade, 

having established his cocktail bona 

fides in the first 10 minutes. The 

strain is equally great upon us all, 

for, suddenly, originally, that man 

is the subject of no Dominion, no cus-

tom in common with anyone but himself. 

The cliffs hang with him in his flight 

for safety and rebuttal of the charge 

of willful murder. We know how Roger 

Thornhill worked it out, in North by 

Northwest. The difference in the pres-

ent film is that the story’s not played 

for comedy; and although the blonde’s 

betrayals are as constant as in Thorn-

hill’s saga, this one’s recantation 

turns upon a truth which sets them  

free as one.

We are likely to admire this movie 

more than we did, sitting by a fire 

in our college club library, half a 

century ago. In its time, it was a
scandalously free adaptation of a
popular text, without violating an
underlying pulse of stateless terror; 

bright fantasy in a time when the Wes-

tern world was coming apart, a witty 

feedback loop with no loose ends. Be-
neath it all, an immanent pressure is 
as obvious as the clock above our head.
These men act quickly, the victim says,
very quickly.

Grab a Scotch and hold a hand, and
kiss somebody senseless at the end.
It's Alfred Hitchcock, all the way.
What has it in common with the Nor-
mandie? No more than its birthday.
Yes, we have our MacGuffin today.

Alfred Hitchcock
  director
Charles Bennett
  and Alma Reville
  screenplay
John Buchan
  book
Robert Donat
Madeleine Carroll
Peggy Ashcroft
John Laurie
The 39 Steps
Gaumont
1935


Robert Doisneau
The school clock
1956


SS Normandie
1935 - 1942
Color by Walker

50 years a T shirt

Hanging outdoors another laundering
to claim the springtime air to dry.

    A collegiate standby from a fresh-
    man year supply of student requis-
    ites, the logotype from the haber-
    dasher across the street from Nas-
    sau Hall. How do things just wear?



















Telephone photo, Laurent

On to tax reform, they vow

      I suppose we could take

      that promise more seri-

      ously if they were pre-

      pared to confess income.