We didn't do backpacks then, and he didn't smoke

    It's a good thing, verisimilitude 

    hasn't much to do with memories. 

    My great friend was born this day,

    and all I can think of was a mag-

    netism, the usual cluster of sec-

    rets of our era, and a resilient,

    hearty laugh. He was positively

    infamous for favoring Toscanini,

    and he would have been amused to

    see Harvey Sachs' second biography

    in publication. He didn't do any-

    thing right or finish anything he

    started, but he was an ornament

    of our Class and intensely respect-

    ed. Some guys are just absolutely

    real and yet not ever known by the

    people they keep closest. One re-

    quired no prompting, never to mind.

The President had a quiet day today

He toyed, as the Trujillo of
Fox courtiers that he is, in
teasing a domestic suspect of
murder with fun torments at
Guantánamo, his minders ev-
idently ignorant of the il-
legality of the fantasy, 
but grateful for its deni-
ability. Nobody challenged
him in his hearing, none of
his chums squealed on him - 
unless in indictments, not 
yet opened. But tomorrow is
another news cycle, Scarlett. 

He must alarm Asia to dread
him, and cheer his thrill-
starved throngs. A General,
as chief of staff, is bound
to remark favorably on his
next suggestion of a little
white man's sport, such as 
a concession to slavery, 
while good people are still
to be found, conditioned by
that heritage. Asia, however,
a continent saturated in the
antidote of patience, awaits
to dandle him on its knee.
Better that, than his paw-
ing of Marines at home.

Mario Vargas Llosa

The Feast of the Goat

Edith Grossman

  translation

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001©

The repulsive information

What is the quality that brings
to treason a distinguishing re-
pulsiveness? Or is it just the
hideousness of the punishments
so long reserved for it, exclu-
sively, that lends the trauma of
horror to its contemptibility?

People seem to remember how it
sounded, when ribaldry's Prince
Hal had become sovereignty's
King Henry V, and sent off his
most intimate peers to the spec-
tacle of treason's grisly des-
tiny in English law. I don't
sense we miss their ordeal, 
but that we dread our part as
their passive spectator. Their
crimes are his, so indelible in
his own demented transcripts
that he poses no objection to
them, and freely scoffs at how
insignificant they all are, to
him. This repulsive dismissal is
what deprives our poseur of his
postures of leadership, as we
have only William Shakespeare
to recall to us from school days.
One therefore appraises his ad-
vances against our sensibility
with regret, and an overwhelming
sense of ignominy, in giving him
our government.

The information, as it is called,
of a Grand Jury's indictment, be-
gan its pending torrent today in
charges brought against the one-
time campaign manager of the Pres-
ident of the United States, for
various offenses against our laws
on behalf of Russian subversion 
against Ukraine, and in the guilty
plea of an advisor to that Pres-
ident, for falsely denying deal-
ings with Russians on his behalf.
In a way, it lends dignity to
these proceedings to discover
how immeasurably beneath them,
the President's responses are.
Well, he should enjoy the prac-
tice of these occasions, to 
exhibit himself to his fullest.

I haven't noticed any comment

in our media, since the Pres-

ident's cheering of Russian ac-

tivities against our democracy

first came to our attention, a

year or so ago, how the nation

is expected to expunge the dis-

gust it endures to confess to 

his citizenship, much less to

his holding of office. I have

not seen any columns on the

reparations to be sought from

Russia, for its injury to our

country, albeit with his rabid

encouragement. I haven't seen

any computation of the damage

these unblinkable realities

have brought to our diplomacy,

worldwide; but more to the

point, I haven't seen anyone

remarking on the vicious abuse

they inflict upon legitimate

expectations of a generation

only beginning to exercise the

right Republicans oppose al-

most as much as free public

education, the right to vote.

But I remember the discovery

of Richard Nixon's crimes, as

an unpardonable devastation of

idealism, catalyzing an out-

burst of cynicism and material-

ism climaxing last November, in

the triumph in which we bask to-

day. As everyone agrees, this

was not the fault merely, or

even sufficiently, of the in-

formation which was revealed.

It was the fault of hiding it,

in plain sight. Second only

to all the crimes to be dis-

closed, is that we knew them.

Alexander Calder

untitled lithograph

1965

Joakim Heltne 

untitled photograph

undated

Latest news of Russia's domicile

Having established in this Wednesday's

report, our fake readership from Russia,

I take interest to announce that for the

past three days her uniquely unified mar-

ketplace of ideas has been unrepresented

in rmbl's map of visitors. Ukraine remains

attentive, however, so one cannot reliably

suppose the Russian State does not keep an

eye open through that window - or our own,

for that matter, given our new government.

Yes, to watch so much of two continents, e-

rasing itself on cue, is possibly less ex-

citing than to ask where it has crept now:

a rainy-day parlor game for our times?

The Philippines have suddenly loomed quite

strong, to cite only another strange bed-

fellows State, ruled by an authoritarian.

Manila's such a congenial nest for looters.

It can't have to do with laundering, can it?

Karen Dawisha

Putin's Kleptocracy:

  Who Owns Russia?

Simon & Schuster, 2014©

Saturday commute cxlvii: Sense and recompense

There are all kinds of love

in the world, but never the

same love twice.

The building down the avenue

is a hotel, and used to keep

rooms at a discount for under-

graduates in those days. I saw

this remark from one such fel-

low, in a story entitled, The

Sensible Choice; and it seemed

to fit to perfection a time, so

many years later, when we were

still suspended in the fantasy

of seemingly advancing beauty.

Now we find, this was not so.

But what was true, was a pas-

sion for that aspiration, em-

bodied in the second edifice: 

the one exemplification of it,

rising over every imitation -

that love we would have once.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
1924

Ezra Stoller, photography
Waldorf-Astoria and the
  Seagram Building, 375
  Park Avenue, New York
1960

And everything had been going so well

It was Friday last, when I found my-
self in a bustling port city, south
of Washington - the very harbor, now
that I think of it, where the Monitor
met the Merrimack, and also many Af-
ricans their new terrain. Yet all of
that seemed well washed away, in the
copious splashing of hooch upon the
wharves, where eddies of Mercedes al-
so swirled, of romance by injection.

To a corner doorway, then, I ventured
for reflection in a glass. As with so
many chances taken in this region -
the American South, that is - the im-
manence of God is not slow to be re-
revealed. Not in just any of the de-
tails, as Mies had once implied, but
exquisitely in the mistakes. 

So pleased by the impressions of my
cocktail, I found myself asking the
barkeep to divulge its secrets. And
this he did with such meticulous care
in every dimension, even in penman-
ship, that one could find the hand
of our Lord drawing one's own, down
his roster of ingredients and tech-
niques, to that very blaze of rev-
elation for which the region is so
celebrated. 

                       Bombay Sapphire, 2.0 oz.

                       Dolin vermouth, 0.75 oz.

                       Saint-Germain, 0.25 oz.

                       orange bitters, 2 dashes

                       stir for 30 seconds

                       strain into chilled glass

                       garish w/lemon peel

                       

Origins of Wednesday lviii: Social media we don't need

The managers of Russia's internet
access have been generous in open-
ing their sea cocks to rmbl since
we announced Anne Applebaum's new
book, and Ukrainian readership hit
new highs. Now, the Russians' bold
attention to this page cannot have
been triggered by another ornament
in the English language, but rather,
by a likely arousal of interest in
the direction of Russian internet
aggression. For our part, we wish 
there were a way to enable access
for Russian residents, without the
nasty little robots in their govern-
ment's employ. It is an interesting-
ly unfree market: sometimes, Russian
interest outweighs that of America
and France, combined - this page's
default audience; at other times,
it is absolutely zeroed out for days
on end -- weeks, months. Has anyone
else noticed, there is no such thing
as a Russian reading market: only a
valve operated by the State, to ad-
vance one of its furtive interests?

Has anyone else noticed, this is ex-
actly the game plan and wish list of 
the new American government, in its
saturation of society with delusion,
division, dysfunction, and decay? It
is as hard to imagine, America voted
for this, as it is to say Russia did.
The monsters don't need to censor the
speaker, if they isolate the listener.

What is left of any such distinction?

Robbie Wadge

Tonight we would go

"A blithe heart makes a blooming visage."

This evening at the Whitney

the exuberant exhibition of

sculptural works by Alexan-

der Calder, Hypermobility, 

will be brought to a close

with a reception in honor

of the publication of his

authorized biography, it-

self a blooming visage of 

the blithe art of seeing.

Jed Perl

Citing the student yearbook

at Stevens Institute of Tech-

nology, ca 1917, captioning

a snapshot of Sandy Calder

Calder

  The Conquest of Time

    Volume I: The Early

    Years, 1898 - 1940

Alfred A. Knopf, 2017©