I can't hide forever, but I can hide for a week.

By -
I have been unable to think of anything to say since the election.  Sure, I have plenty of thoughts, but I can't seem to put them into coherent paragraphs that say what I want to say (and probably nobody is too worried about my opinion anyway).  I'm certainly having a hard time facing the thought of the next four years, and while my natural bent is to be an optimist and give things a chance to work out, it's not looking great so far.

I'll come back to posting about books soon.


Comments

  1. Ruth @ with freedom and booksNovember 15, 2016 at 8:41 AM

    Keep your head up, Jean. We're all in this together. : ) While I recognize that I do not share in the majority opinion in most literary circles, (as I despised Trump as the R nominee, I am giving him a chance to rise to the occasion), I know that there is something we must be grateful for in this country: our president has term limits. He may only have his say in four to eight years, and then he is gone. We don't keep kings in this country, for good reason. : ) Now if only our Congress will do their job and keep him in check.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanNovember 15, 2016 at 1:23 PM

    I'm fairly conservative/moderate myself, but I couldn't ever vote for Trump. I want to give him a chance to rise to the occasion, but this appointment of Bannon as Chief of Staff isn't helping. I thought this article by Ben Shapiro covered it pretty well: http://www.dailywire.com/news/10770/3-thoughts-steve-bannon-white-house-chief-ben-shapiro

    I do hope that this administration will help us remember that presidents aren't kings and shouldn't govern by executive order, as has been happening far too much for the past couple of decades (if not more). We are far too prone to giving the president too much power. Maybe Trump will be our King John, ha.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ruth @ with freedom and booksNovember 15, 2016 at 1:38 PM

    Or even King Nebuchadnezzar. Only let's skip the seven years in the wilderness and get right to the humbling part. Time will only tell.

    I'll check out that link. I listen to Shapiro every morning - I know he does not care for Bannon. (As this was revealed yesterday?, I remember that these people don't last very long in their positions. So we'll see.)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ruth @ with freedom and booksNovember 15, 2016 at 1:47 PM

    I just read that link you posted. Yeah, that Bannon guy sounds dangerous. I've been reading about his racist undertones, and that would be a stupid move for Trump to adopt his ideas since a lot of Hispanic and Black Americans broke ranks to vote for him. He would lose their support in a heartbeat.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousNovember 21, 2016 at 4:47 AM

    I'm right there with you, friend. I read a lot about dictatorships and government corruption, and I am deeply unsettled by the moves the President-Elect has made so far. I hope our institutions (and like, national morals?) are strong enough to survive this, but I have not been feeling optimistic.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more