Hildegarde

Okay, a couple of notes, on things I noticed and couldn’t pay attention to as I was writing.

First–has Rush Limbaugh lost his mind?  I mean, okay, he hasn’t seemed really well wrapped for a while now…but don’t contribute to the White House Haiti relief fund because they’re just going to collect your e-mail information and…and do what with it?  I never did figure that story out.  At all.

Second–at what point do we get past the assumption that people who does things have a way they should look?  I’m putting this badly.  But look at it this way, there’s nothing about writing poetry that says you have to look good to do it.  In fact, many poets over the years have been ugly as sin, or just not very charismatic in person.  But during the Romantic period, when poets were their eras version of rock stars, all the biggest poets looked like…rock stars.   When did that change?  And when will it change for rock stars? 

Third–when did the whole world start to be about school?  Or is that just me, where I’ve got kids in school and I’m teaching?  But sometimes it seems that if it isn’t school itself, then it’s a school mentality–all that constant talk about ‘assessments,’ for instance–everywhere, in everything. 

Fourth–I was right in the middle of frothing at the mouth over the biased essays contained in a new textbook we’re using when I started looking through Andrew Ross Sorkin’s Too Big To Fail.  This may sound unrelated, except that the last essay I read in the textbook was all about how class is destiny in America and there’s no real social mobility here (and boy, did that require a lot of tendentious reasoning), and To Big To Fail is full of portraits of the main players in American finance, almost all of whom seem to have grown up working or lower middle class. 

Fifth–I actually thought the nude model thing in the Scott Brown/Martha Coakley race was sort of interesting.  If it had been a Democrat running with that in his background, Sean Hannity would have gone into paroxysms of outrage.  And to be fair, Glenn Beck did go into paroxysms of outrage.  But still.  We’ve reached an interesting stage–and not necessarily a bad one–when somebody can have that in his background and still get elected.

Sixth–I finally realized that I no longer have a list of books I would take to me to be stranded on a deserted island.  Or rather, I’d either get to take ALL the books, plus regular infusions from Barnes and Noble and Amazon, or I’d go crazy.  I don’t seem to have books that I just love to pieces and that could satisfy me even if Ihad nothing else, at least not any more. 

Seventh–there is simply not enough news actually happening in the world to justify even one twenty-four seven cable news network.  News on the cable networks is beginning to resemble network sports reporting.  People sit around and blither endlessly about nothing having happened in the latest “important” story.   They repeat the obvious.  Over and over and over again.  They “speculate” in sepulchral tones over.  whatever.  Poodle hairstyles.  The look President Obama had on his face when he was playing golf.  What It All Really Means.  If they actually knew the answer to that one, it might be interesting.

Eighth–okay, the upset in Massachusetts was interesting, but it was just one race.  And, on top of that, the national news outlets all completely ignroed any possible local considerations in the election.  I’m not the only one who is repulsed by Coakley for her position and her actions on the Amirault case.  Howver that may be, however, I will absolutely guarantee you, the ascension of Scott Brown to the United States Senate has not ended the world as we know it.

Ninth–why is it that my only choice of movies lately is either some superhero action picture of Everybody Sitting Around Feeling Depressed and Morally Compromised?  Didn’t there used to be…you know… movies?  Okay, if you want one, there’s a thing called Shortcut to Happiness, with Alec Baldwin and Dan Ackroyd, that’s really very good.  But it’s from years ago and didn’t do all that well in theaters.

Tenth–the choice of genre is the choice of audience.   When you decide to write a mystery instead of a mainstream novel, or a western instead of a romance, you’re making a decision about who you’re talking to as much as about what you’re talking about.  And a lot of people who would not read a book about, say, the problems in a dying rustbelt post-industrial city will read one if it has a murder in it.  If you see what I mean.

I’ll get  more coherent as the days go on.  I promise.