Alexandria now and then

Sounds of mourning for this lost greatness would not be heard until later, until Cavafy, whose mirror game of anachronisms predicted the rise of the barbarians and the downfall of Hellen-ism, a future disguised as the past. You did not wish to prevent [it]. Or were you unable to, because it no longer involved a myth, but reality, history, facts? Those who have the power may bring along their own gods, while those who lose power must abandon theirs, but which god will appear when the barbarians come?

Cees Nooteboom
Letters to Poseidon
  Letter XII
2012
Laura Watkinson
  translation
op. cit.

NASA
Voyager I
Planetary Society
Cloudscape of Jupiter
1979

Will McBride
Street dog in Florence
1956

Some jokes won't wait

 "Rick." 

 "Perry."

Mark Cox

Mark Cox for Fiasco

   






 sure beats
 who we got

ii   Damon Winter
     The New York Times
     November 6, 2016©

Missal tow

   .. Let the storm come on,

   Let my little boat shudder and plunge in the turbulent sea,

   I will not do as the voyaging merchant does

   And cravenly pray and bargain with vows to the gods

   To save my goods. I'll ride the storm out, and,

   Perhaps, at last, with the help of the heavenly twins,

   Castor and Pollux, under whose fortunate sign

   The storm subsides and the clouds disperse, I'll sail,

   Carried by clearing breezes, safe into port.

In the year-ending days set aside, at least by custom, to so much reflection as events, themselves, now heap in our paths, one wouldn't like to be without the poet cited so often here, as being at one's back. This was an incredibly gutsy writer; although sustained by an imperial patron whose name is still synonymous with authoritarian magnificence, he also stood stunningly, dangerously independent, and enormously outlived his era as few ever have. Now, when we remark with any favor at all, on Caesar, it's for his gift for prose. But he's not who's hauled the wonder of his language to this day, setting true its pur-pose, as we know it still.

Horace
The Odes
23 - 16 BC
David Ferry
  translation
Book III, xxix
  To Maecenas
  [fragment]
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
op. cit.

iii  Ladislav Sitensky
      1963

An oxymoron for practicing

   Before there may be
   a Trump Administra-
   tion there is like-
   ly to be the office
   Christmas party. It
   can smooth the way. 

The refuge

I wonder if the concept of
'species' doesn't sometimes
get in the way of understand-
ing the effect humans are hav-
ing on the natural world.

After all, a species endures
even as the individuals that
make it up come and go. But
sometimes the word implies
that the collective whole -
the generality of goldfinches,
say - matters more than the in-
dividual. Only when a species
dwindles to its final numbers
do the individuals seem to be-
come, well, individual.

Reviewing a new and stimulat-

ing work of natural history

this week, our outstanding es-

sayist on the rural life has

written movingly of defending

the natural world through joy

in its autonomous qualities,

in "nature's right to itself."

At the same time, exultation

in restraint is unanswerably

exemplary resistance. Human-

ism is restored to the agenda.

To be despised for being fit,

will not be anything new; the

spectacle must always antagon-

ize a destroyer of species. To

be readier for their governance

than they are, is joy enough.

Verlyn Klinkenborg

What's Happening to the

  Bees and Butterflies?

Michael McCarthy

The Moth Snowstorm:

  Nature and Joy

New York Review Books, 2016

The New York Review

  of Books

December 22, 2016© 

i  Damon Winter, photography
   The New York Times, 2016©




   

Revenons à nos moutons

  

   Have you tried
   it with cumin,
   aperol, and an
   organic spritz
   of cherry bark

    No, really, I 
    just couldn't

    It's almost awkward even to

    try to mean well, in coming

    to grips with our era's de-

    bauches of vanity over cock-

    tails and other nourishment.

    A man used to be able to go

    home, dress for dinner, and

    get an honest apéritif with-

    out sipping it alone. Times

    speak for themselves. Where

    is Peter Arno, as we drown?

François Chartier

Papilles et Molécules

Levi Reiss

  translator

Taste Buds and 

  Molecules: The Art

  and Science of Food,

  Wine, and Flavor

Les Éditions la Presse, 2009©

John Wiley & Sons, 2012©

Peter Arno

Harriet Follansbee!

  In the flesh!

The New Yorker

Condé Nast©

The electoral college will meet in two weeks

      

      Anybody want to

      volunteer to be

      a witness? Take

      down the names?

Philippe Proust

Alexander Beck

Steven Meisel
  photography
Vogue Italia, 1996©