Saturday commute clx: Thunderbird days

Wistfulness for the decline in toys,

from one generation to the next, fol-

lows so well the trajectory of Thun-

derbirds that eventually the manufac-

turer felt compelled to issue a reviv-

al of the original's profile, albeit

heavily laden with extraneous amenity

and oppressive adjustments for safety.

The arrival of December can always be

counted on to stir nightmares of itchy

trousers and interminable devotional

silences, in our house at least; so if

an instant bares itself for celebration,

it is likely to be out of bounds, away

from traffic of every kind, with a

grateful dash into consoling distance.

I realize, one is expected to defer to

the taste for shorter sentences, shaped

by the extraneous and compulsory enter-

tainments of our current toys; but some

of us have never lost our distaste for

itchy pants, and devotional longueurs.

We love a time of not being followed,

our discovery of admiration at stake.

Miles Davis 
Columbia Studios
1956

English language vacation day

Kindly do not bother me,

because I am one happy

fella. Mississippi just

elected an utterly inane

poster child of Confed-

erate dog whistlers to

the Senate, against an

African American veteran

of progressive governing.

And it wasn't even close.

On top of that - can you

stand it - the President

gave an occasionally on-

the-record interview to

The Washington Post, to

certify conclusively his

imbecility. And it wasn't

even close.

November is a confusion

of holidays, some noted

for their original date,

with some known for our

penchant for long week-

ends, as in the day the

Germans quit the First

World War, and others

known for possibly not

actually happening at

all, as in Thanksgiving.

Here, on the other hand,

was a day that happened:

the most immaculate vaca-

tion ever bestowed by a

suspicious nation upon an

innocent international

language. Let the final

Tuesday in every November

hereafter, be remembered 

for no reliance at all 

upon English as the world

has ever used it before.

Placeholding

  The essential features of this
  subject require no more than a
  glance at the hands - an audi-
  ence documents its whereabouts
  at the nadir of an election cy-
  cle, entertained by its heroes
  of ballot suppression, defama-
  tion's handmaiden when the mic-
  rophone is "on." The leader of
  the free world hustles his un-
  derstudy off-stage, to bask in
  the backdrop of his power limo.
  Well, it's Mississippi, friend.

 Just when you were thinking, a
 Senate might have been formed,
 there came the simpler answer.

Cy Twombly
Alessandro Twombly
  in Rome
1965

Michelle Goldberg
Maybe they're just
  bad people
The New York Times
November 26, 2018©

Wine routes of Iberia, 2nd ed.

The half-life of meticulous scholarship,

when devoted now to the regions hereto-

fore praised for sustaining a distinctive

form of life -- as opposed, say, to the

American South's fetish for a way of life

-- has shrunk perceptibly under the novel

strain of climate adjustments, almost as

unforeseen as the transformation of Chic-

ago under the pressures of Jim Crow, asy-

lum seekers fleeing sharecropping's desert

for shelter in blue collars. There are e-

even those who say, Honduras is going out

of business under terror's pre-emption of

drought and rising sea levels. But have

these Cassandras reckoned with our Little

Father's genius for slamming the door, and

discounting the price of military hardware

to suppress the locals in situ? I fear not.

Now the chaos written on the vine of Iber-

ian viticulture has its reverberations a-

cross the vinous continent, as growers

scurry to plant varietals in spontaneous-

ly misplaced habitats, and investigate

the higher predictability in bottling Co-

ca-Cola. So much for the antiquated "chât-

eau" system, and on to the conglomerate's

dispassionate virtuosity with synthetics.

Is it the fault, strictly speaking, of a

Gamay to take on the attributes of Cab-

ernet Sauvignon under rising heat levels

and higher winds? One might as well insist

that it's the fault of an orphan, to be

suckled by wolves. Can Rome turn on a dime?

Joan Miró
Blue II
  [from a triptych]
1961