Suppose it were Friday clxxi: Paris reading

I was re-reading The Tenth Muse the

other night, Judith Jones' wonderful

reflections on an active relationship

with food and wine. I wasn't yet sen-

sitized to the moral hazard of people

of means, intruding upon that natural

pursuit, and indeed it wasn't until

I overheard a Presidential candidate

warn of their presence that I was ab-

le to imagine the great risks which

lie in one's path, unless they are ex-

cluded. Suppose they should take an

interest in Paris; there might be a

Tuileries. There might be no end to

manifestations of means, and their

unbearable reminding of inequality.

It was enough to make one remorseful

for one's own appetite, for a com-

petently prepared sorrel soup. What

had been so wrong with that bitter

green, to make me want it luscious?

How hangs the fruit of Madison?

Many pundits sound worried - worry
being their stock in trade, it has
a happy edge to it - that if the
US Senate is so far gone into the
hollowed out pulp of probity that
it simply cannot conduct a trial -
then the most pervasively corrupt
Administration ever to be deliver-
ed to its dock might simply light
on no more than an expanded feast.

They could be right, you say. Rare
is the advancement of putrefaction
so lacking in suspense, as to hold
no further nibble for the lowest
taste of the foulest appetite. But
who wishes to prove that verdict?

No, the keener problem, as it

appears to our view, is that

the context of judgment might

now have shifted from its or-

iginal morbidity of predation,

to a kind of hilarity of pre-

monitory release, as if some

hideously fulminated orange

were about to plop free from

its self-executing branch, on-

ly to roll into the nursery 

as mythologically mistreated.

It seems as if we no longer

quibble over how repulsive a

fruit can become, that's over-

stayed its season. Rather, at

issue is to avoid the re-runs.

Origins of Wednesday cvi: Time to get dressed

The President of the United States, in the best maudlin air of his narcissist king-predecessor, Richard Second, issued a hand-emblazoned diatribe to the Congress on the crime of oversight which is to befall him today.

He never did expect
there would come a
time to get dressed.

Don Worth
Mt Baker, Washington
  gelatin silver print
1962


William Shakespeare
Richard II
  III, 2
1595

A room at the Post Office, anyone?

Everyone's agog over Larry Tribe's

inspiration, to tease the US Senate

with articles of Presidential im-

peachment, without delivering them.

Shades of Golly McConnell's theory,

that you can't do anything about an-

other branch of government in an e-

lection year. No Justice Garland? 

No rush to waste the People's time

with a President who's on the way

out. Unless, that is, he isn't. All

the time in the world, for the Sen-

ate to decide to run an honest bar. 

  

Needless to say, there is a middle

ground, which is to send over a few

articles every month, until the e-

lection, to see how they play by way

of attrition and the confusion of his

alibis. There is the merit, too, of

tying up the Chief Justice, who must

preside, so that his ill-gotten ma-

jority of ideologues will be strained

to ruin the nation in the next year,

as M'lord of casuistry incarnate su-

pervises his elected understudies.

Heaven knows, there is an abundance

of impeachable incidents to haul the

fellow up on, and we're not going

away. A room at the Trump, anyone?

Sunday nibbled sleeve xii: Connecticut young

 Newtown High beat Darien yesterday,
 in the final seconds of a game that
 was tied, 7-7. Seven years ago, the
 same players survived a conflict we
 couldn't save them from, without an
 abuse of some Constitutional right.
 Whose rites were written in heaven?