Damon Winter, Childe Hassam, and this cavalcade

Events trigger interpretations,

not only musings drawn by mem-

ory, but observations properly

facilitated by preparedness. We

watch a parade prepared by lem-

mings, from resentments and raw

ignorance, which tasks the mind

to breathe as it was built to

do, ever conscious of a vacuum

at the core of what it sees. If

this readiness had a camera, it

would be called Damon Winter.

Now the passenger in the gaud-

iest coach in this procession

of last Friday passes an ob-

struction at First and Pennsyl-

vania, whose impertinence must

enrage him if he knew its der-

ivation. There is the memorial

to James Garfield, a President

shot for greater respect for

Civil Service than the passen-

ger could acquire in any decade

of the penance to which the

Laws cry out to deliver him,

his despotic, nepotistic cron-

ies trailing after him.

There is the memorial to Ulys-

ses S. Grant, corruption's pat-

ron saint until the passenger's

own rise transcended imagina-

tion, itself; but who had such

uncanny literary honesty as to

leave Memoirs of which we know

we can't deny two things: the

passenger hasn't read them and

will not, and they convey to 

posterity a confession every

sensate mind must mourn, of

his negligent squandering of

loyalty to rank and country 

at Cold Harbor. For that, we

have obstruction to remember,

a fortified concentration of

remorseless rebellious power.

But what Damon Winter captures

of this monumental island are

the figures, Grief and History.

The one, a sense the passenger

cannot master, the other, just

a context he condemns. Winter

expected this photograph, he

was ready for this photograph,

and this weekend The New York

Times let us see it online. We

felt it coming, long ago. We

saw what they were doing and 

they did it, but not by honest

dealing. That is not their way.

And their losing will go on.

On this morning, January 23,

around this corner in down-

town Manhattan, the first of

what must surely be a torrent

of lawsuits against the pas-

senger, personally, is being

brought in Federal Court for 

the Southern District of New

York, one of the most awesome

sites of jurisprudence in our

history. The passenger will

be hauled to the bar of jus-

tice for being in breach of

the United States Constitu-

tion's prohibition of his ac-

ceptance of any form of pres-

ent from foreign governments.

How seamlessly the strands of

memory converge to snare the

gift of reason, we know too

well. Yet how idle to deny,

this cavalcade's not new, and

not immune to its provenance.

Damon Winter
The Peace Monument
January 20, 2017
The New York Times©


Childe Hassam
Wall and Broad
Johnson Museum of Art
Cornell University
1907

Casey Jackson

Suppose it were Friday cxvii: Restoring bearings

In 1958 John Cohen made
this classic portrait of
our great photographic
discoverer, Robert Frank.
Now that picture comes
into its own in everyone.

This campaign for the
Presidency has tended
to exhaust our people
with the rhetoric re-
served for a state of
revulsion we proper-
ly resist. The New York
Times, expecting our
dismay, has despatched
a photographer to pur-
sue the sight of it in
terms which zero in un-
cannily on its cause,
its hideous grandiosity.

He sees the blustering
candidate's animal mag-
netism; he sees the an-
guish of his adherents.
He sees the rhetorical
apogee of a deception.

His project draws fear
and pity. If tragedy
bore its "original in-
tent," he would be its
translator, if we had
reserved the term from
every adverse fluke, 
flogged by the slovenly
to distract by prestige,
denying us its power.



His name is Damon Winter
and I hope he never tires
of saving us our language.

Now this is Friday, and
we haven't renounced our
dreams. Winter won a Pul-
itzer for work on a
different campaign, and
those perceptions, from
a categorically different
environment, resound in
reflecting on this one.
What can it mean, to be
in good hands, if they
are our own?

2016

Austin

Akron

2012

Las Vegas

Denver

New York

The New York Times©

A day for the attention span

To what can one object, as
Summer's statecraft rituals
persist in their debauch of
sweetness' time, itself? On-
ly their redundancy? Or the
pond'rous turn they give to
emptiness. A second treaty
of Portsmouth in 111 years,
another grief cycle in Dal-
las: really, the same day?

  Like you, one feared all of
  this coincidence would soon
  be snatched up, as it seem-
  ingly always is these days,
  as irony, and not the mean-
  ingless proof of our rather
  long sojourn in one place.


  Pope understood where we'd
  be, in a brilliant defense
  of allegory as preamble to
  his Temple of Fame. It's a
  schoolboy's recollection -
  and it's obvious, where it
  comes from. If it rolls a-
  long, it isn't irony, it's
  leading one to expect it.
  

          ..                     behold another Crowd

          Prefer'd the same Request, and lowly bow'd,

          The constant Tenour of whose well-spent Days

          No less deserv'd a just return of Praise.

          But strait the direful Trump or Slander sounds,

          Thro' the big Dome the doubling Thunder sounds,

          Loud as the Burst of Cannon rends the Skies,

          The dire Report thro' ev'ry Region flies:

          In ev'ry Ear incessant Rumours rung,

          And gath'ring Scandals grew on ev'ry Tongue.

          From the black Trumpet's rusty Concave broke

          Sulphureous Flames, and Clouds of rolling Smoke:

          The pois'nous Vapor blots the purple Skies,

          And withers all before it as it flies.

Alexander Pope
The Poems of
  Alexander Pope
John Butt,
  editor
  The Temple of Fame
  328 - 341
  1711
Yale University Press, 1963©
op. cit.

Piergiorgio Branzi
  Mykonos
  1959

Damon Winter
  Donald Trump
  June 13, 2016
The New York Times©

Rui Morais de Sousa
  Portugal
  1983

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©




   

Timely blades and second chances

No one, of course, has any appetite for
seeing a certain name again, except as

a line to avoid selecting, at the top of 

his ballot, At last the gathering of a di-

verse and remarkably distributed storm

of revulsion is poised to restore self-

determination to the United States. The

ingenious photography of Damon Winter of

The New York Times portrays a rescue op-

eration deeply reminiscent of med-evac

Hueys lifting from the battlefields of

Southeast Asia, saving the passengers if

possible, but more certainly ceding na-

tive ground from which they are removed.

Nor was this an expulsion by cruel chance,

but by the incapacity and illegitimacy of

the occupation, revealed in its helpless

incompetence and reliance on its own lies.

This chance is one not to blow, but also

not to crow. It's generous, even to desig-

nate this deliverance as a restoration, 

given how few have ever influenced their

own governance in this country. But every

such valuation is relative, and is being

re-examined under pressures both urgent -

pandemic, racial discord, economic dis-

location - and implacable - climatic

crises, other environmental despoiling,

and international security hazards both

recklessly propagated or negligently

denied by the government soon to depart.

The circumstances are auspicious for a

popular insistence on self-determination.

They are equally vulnerable to repressive

pre-emption, which is the unfailing custom

of our history. But now at least we know

why: racism has been the contortionist

corrupter of every populist opportunity in

this nation's experience. This contortion-

ist is avid to overwhelm the pending elec-

tion by intimidation, deception, malicious

prosecution, and every rejection available.

At last, the great anti-progressive energy

of the American experience has fallen into

the hands of a spent force. We now behold

the readying of an electoral swift sword -

a climax of nothing, a beginning to be de- 

termined by the People. We have our vote. 

Make us a watchman iii

we're given
an example.

           tramontate, stelle
           all'alba vincerò

  People are bound to say,
  a great power needs more
  than a coach, to run the
  place. We've already no-
  ticed, they mean a fist.

  They always did. And for
  jaw - they never offered
  theirs.

  The way of life, the way
  of love, of playing fair
  is not emboldened false-
  ly by an apostle of con-
  ditioning and endurance. 

 
























President of the United States
John F. Kennedy Airport
  New York
October, 2012
Damon Winter, photography
The New York Times©

Loammi Goetghebeur
Michael Elmquist, photography