Saturday commute clxxv: Gold rush trousers

  Far be it from us, to infer a mer-

  cantile commitment from a slouch in

  proletarian denim, but the seeking

  of one's fortune isn't always mere

  materialism on the march. There is

  shelter to be had, here and there,

  from the heat of Summer Saturdays,

  and a quaint refreshment to be pon-

  dered, whether or not fully taken.

Suppose it were Friday clxxvi: Pretenders, everywhere

What do you say, we give contenders

for the nomination a pass for their

antic changes of the subject of the

election, in the precedents for ex-

ploitive distraction set by the guy

who's got the job, despite himself?

He, and what he has done to the def-

inition of leadership are the issue.

This is not rocket science. Leader-

ship is not revealed by attrition.

It resists attrition, and it wins.

Nancy Pelosi
Speaker of the House
The New York Times©
June 26, 2019

The menswear candidate

A friend of mine remarked the other

day, not a little incontestably, it 

was a dark day for menswear when the 

Presidency lost this man. Those who

lived through that scintillating ep-

och have forgotten the lateral lisp,

an aplomb in the figure at all times,

even the stern rebuke of Big Steel's

impertinent price increase, through

a veil of awesomely apposite deport-

ment, calling into question how much

his clothes really do make the man,

now that we see what little Brioni

have done to humanize the incumbent.

But I stray. Laying not very far o-

ver the horizon of the next Presid-

ency, we spy a candidate who offers,

not to say threatens, to refute the

proposition that one can be made to

seem to wear what others may place

upon one's back. Tar and feathers,

for instance; or merely, a drumbeat-

en wash of hoary phobic effigies.

Have we so soon forgotten Mr Biden's

praise of an African American run-

ning, for being surprisingly clean? 

The mayor of South Bend, a place

not so far west in The Philadelphia

Story as Duluth, offers cheerily to

be elected to this office by charm-

ing the pants off the capitalist in-

telligentsia, and lightening them

of merry wads of patronage. Every-

one is tacitly avoiding the thought 

of how he shall be dressed by the

other side, if he should gain the

nomination to run for that office.

An air of make-believe, not hugely

different from the spell which ab-

sorbed the literati in Camelot, is

suspended by satisfaction with how

he dresses himself. In Center Right

and in Center Left, the sound of

ice cubes clinking in a giddy flux

is wonderfully reminiscent of the

blitheness of the last candidacy,

oblivious to the coral in the way.

Ah, but how splendid now to don

the noble togs of chivalry, what-

ever the rules of the game.

"Now why didn't I paint my room this way?"

There comes an hour in any night,

when the scholar asks himself how

much he has missed in reading the

data in the shade of House White.

Nine over 10

What is the religion
of the Italians?

They are Roman Cath-
olics.

What do the Roman
Catholics worship?

Idols and a piece
of bread.

Would not God be
very angry if He
knew that the It-
alians worshipped
idols and a piece
of bread?

God is very angry.

Recalling that on this date, in

2010, I started writing red mug

blue linen on the pretext of be-

ing under development, I'm heart-

ened to notice that although the

blog has appeared over 10 years,

it is still only nine years old.

I don't know why, but I feel this

is a sign that there's still time

for it. Meanwhile, the dialogue

borrowed above, from a Christmas

Cracker anthology by John Julius

Norwich, can stand for two impres-

sions I've never tried to subdue:

that I'm lucky in what I admire -

worship being a condition which

has discredited itself too much

for emulation, in this land in

which I write - and that what I

do is no more than superfluously

disadvantageous in God's eyes.

But this is to address only one

of the senses. As in the famil-

iar Summer towel, drying on the

rack at such length, one or an-

other of the unblinking senses

may question the freshness of

the thing. This consideration

is akin to fretting the opinion

of God, when He is an audience

I haven't pretended to address.

Flippant as this defense may be,

it deflects a hovering smell in

the air of public comment today,

of an antagonistic struggle for

the soul of the nation. We hear

a gruesome trumpet on all sides,

from Falwell's Liberty Univer-

sity, to Joseph Biden's latest

postures for the Presidency, to 

Pulitzer columnists flogging

us to do the right thing. It's

a hideous abuse of any concept

of liberty, by the foulest

simplifications and reductions

of political importuning, this

grab at the autonomous soul, to

the telling neglect of bread.

Something strikes me as malfunc-

tional in addressing each other,

to remonstrate as if grievances

endow anyone with divine judgment.

Now we are challenged to make mer-

cy popular, and who will grow it?

A student rejects this cant with

grateful resort to invigorating

refreshment in the assets of the

senses. Here I take delight in a

picture I acquired with the trade

of a bottle of Champagne, from an

artist of clarity and strength. I

think of the senses in development,

and admire the company of being.

iv   Valéry Lorenzo

John Julius Norwich

More Christmas Crackers

  being ten commonplace

  selections, 1980 - 1989

Viking, 1990©