The fever is upon me...p.s.

I love it when the fever is upon me.
 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

The fever is upon me...

Suddenly, I have to know everything there is to know about the poet Charles Olson. 

While looking for something else, I came across an allusion to Alfred North Whitehead's influence on Olson.  Whitehead's is the philosophy that more and more has me in its grip--fused with my idiosyncratic neo-Marxism in a way that I can't quite articulate.  'Cor I haven't been acceptable to other Marxists as One of Them for a long time--but that's okay, since I have but little doubt but that *my* understanding is the absolutely correct version.  {Throw in a little Taoism, Mayahana (sp?) Buddhism & Adoptionist Christianity (univeralist version) and there you have my worldview--well simpler than much of the stuff they brew at Starbuck's}. (No offense intended, Mary P.)

 

Speaking of Buddhism--my FB friend Pat Hartman turned me on to John Burdett's series of mysteries set in Thailand. Quite shocking stuff.  I don't know how Thai people would regard Burdett's view of the Thai (he speaks through the persona of a half-westernized Thai policeman) but it has the feel of authenticity.  

 

R.

 

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Pursuit of Loneliness...

is the title of a book by Philip Slater from the 60's.  It lays out an account of the American psyche expressed in relatively simple terms drawn from psychoanalysis--which is not to say the account is wrong, but that there are other ways to say it. 

 

The book's thesis has to do with the fantasy that many Americans share, a sort of pastoral Jeffersonianism, a community of sturdy, independent yeoman farmers, one I induge in myself & I think a certain wing of the counterculture of the 60's was a clear expression of it--going back to the land, doing your own thing, etc. 

 

It is the ideal of individualism & total self-sufficiency, sometimes with modern technology, more often with "appropriate technology"--it has affinities with libertarian capitalism as well as with Jeffersonian pastoralism, and there is a definitely a certain animus against government and large institutions of any sort. 

 

Slater says, in sum,  that the overriding fear in American culture (and also British) is the fear of dependency. 

 

Professor Bernstein below points out, rather distressingly, how this same strain in the American character finds expression in the "Tea Party" movement.

 

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/the-very-angry-tea-party/
 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Dog leads...

I'm going to be pretty busy this weekend helping Teresa re-arrange the house to accommodate our student boarder (daughter Claire), who will be staying with us for her first year graduate studies before she goes down to Port Aransas at the UT Marine Science Institute.  But if I have time, I got two dawgs to check out.  There's "Charlie" a pointer/red heeler mix, and "Hampton," a Newfoundland/Lab mix.  (A red heeler, BTW, is a kind of Australian cattle dog--thank God for Wikipedia) 

 

Info about Charlie's originary breeds would suggest that he might be a bit too lively, but his foster mother says that as an individual, he's pretty laid back.  Charlie is sorta off-white with reddish markings here and there.  He weighs about 50 pounds. 

 

Hampton is at the Animal Shelter in Leander, TX.  I was told by shelter staff (who are always brutally honest, of course) that Hampton has the laid-back termperament of the Newfoundland.  I didn't ask, but from the picture it looks like he don't have the drooly mouth.  Size-wise, Hampton  is all a body could hope for in a dawg--and more.  Hampton, in fact, looks like an over-sized black Lab.  In fact, don't ask how much he weighs. 

 

If I get Hampton, I would like to train him to eat the guy who goes around slashing tires in the neighborhood.  Well, we all have our dreams.

 

R.

 

 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Hope this isn't TMI...

But I'm like that old sailor having to go on and on about having shot that dang bird. 

 

I have found this to be true: 

 

If you wash your hairs with bar soap, rinse, repeat and rinse, why your hairs come out as squeaky clean as if you had used one of them expensive shampoos with ph & stuff.  Who is with me on this?

 

R.
 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Choosing a dawg--the pleasant angst of deliberation

Having been at least tangentially involved in the rearing of two highly adequate children and with retirement looming, I think now I am adequately mature for the awesome responsibility of being au pair for a mutt of my own... 

 

And a mutt is what I want (because of the "hybrid vigor" thing)--but I do think it important to have some sense of the nature of the underlying breeds. 

 

As usual, I am beset with conflicting criteria for choice.  I want an intelligent, easily housebroken (or fait accompli), easy going, medium to large critter who won't eat kitty cats (daughter is likely get one when she comes home), or our invalid shi'tzu, who won't go haring off after birds, or hares, for that matter; who will compel me to take moderately long walks several days a week, but who doesn't need to be entertained by herding sheep or hunting boar; who will stand fast if there's an intruder, who won't yap, whom I can leave alone for much of the day during the week (at least until I retire. 

 

A lot of these goals are in conflict.  Lab & retriever mixes may be a tad too active and too prone to separation anxiety.  Terriers like to kill small things & I think they tend to yap.  Greyhounds, when they're not running, are excellent couch potatos, but they do have a need to hare quite a bit and can't be off leash unless you're an incredibly skillful and compelling trainer. 

 

I'm not really a couch potato, per se, but I am sedentary much of the time.  I do work my butt off out at my "hobby farm" for several hours once every week or two & I do some light gardening in the back yard every week or two also.

 

It seems the best dogs for me, according to the online tests, would be mixes involving the following:  Great Pyrenees, Mastiffs, Newfoundlands, Bernese Mountain dogs, Neapolitian mastiffs...but DAMN--they're HUGE--and they, well, not to put too fine a point on, they SLOBBER.  I'm not too easily grossed out, but there are other humans that live in the house.  Maybe Teresa could work overtime, or something,  so we could pay for the steaks.  But one good thing.  The internets (as G.W. Bush would say) caution against exercising those breeds too much. 

 

Oh, well.  Knowing me, I'll probably choose something completely different on impulse and be as happy as a (non-Gulf-dwelling) clam.

 

R.
 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/

Here's Juan Cole on the Gaza Blockade

& the recent Israeli engagement with the humanitarian flotilla from Turkey. 

 

(Juan Cole is a professor of Mideastern Studies.  He is conversant with the several languages of the area and comes out of the Bahai tradition himself--although he has recently distanced himself from the U.S. Bahai group because the governance of the group has come to be dominated by "fundamentalist" Iranian emigres, who seem to regard Bahai's tradition of universalism as being for lip service only.  Otherwise, the Bahais occupy a position vis a vis Islam somewhat like Unitarians do with respect to Christianity.)

 

http://www.juancole.com/
 

http://gg9-tto.blogspot.com/