Category: Story & Song
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Woke?
Introduction Language The argument about what woke means is part the American polical “culture war” in the early 21st century. The conservative writer Ross Douthat suggested in an article in the liberal New York Times, that “woke” marks a change to left wing “progressive” or modern values in American politics, and the understanding of liberalism:…
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Cancel Literature
How to Read Now Essays None of the essays in How to Read Now (2022) appear to have been previously published in print elsewhere. The author of the book of essays, Elaine Castillo, is the author of the novel America is Not the Heart (2018) 1No Wikipedia entry as of September 2022; for plot summary…
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The Holy or the Broken
Episode 7 in Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast in July 27, 2016 was about his ideas about creativity, contrasting artists who revise and refine with artists who appear to produce their work whole. He illustrated with references to the development of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah by: before it became a pop standard and a secular hymn.…
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Islands Folk Festival, 2016
I camped at the 2016 Islands Folk Festival in Duncan BC. It was my first visit to this festival. The festival is held at Providence Farm, a former convent of the Sisters of St. Ann, once a boarding school, now an organic farm. It accomodates a crowd of a about 2,000 (vaguely stated as a…
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2008 is over, Hallelujah
My story about my musical year starts with a short term obsession about a song. The CBC broadcast a story about the popularity of Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah in Britain on the National (TV news) on the Friday night before Christmas. The CBC was interested because the writer was a Canadian. The story was that…
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Spinning the Golden Compass
The Golden Compass has been criticized for its negative presentation of organized religion. Its principal critic its the American Catholic League, a conservative body that speaks for conservative and traditional elements in the Catholic Church in America. The League says that the movie, like the books, promotes atheism, but their grievance appears to me to…
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Alternate Nobel Writers
The Alt-Reality Nobel prize for literature, 2007, would have gone to J.K. Rowling? Ted Gioia’s list is pretty good. He would have given the award to several genre writers. He has a different theory of aesthetics and less impressed with old canons of high art and literary fiction. His Great Books Guide site is informed…
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Wonder Books
From The American Scholar, a review of the style of popular and literary fiction based on healing journeys: Brooklyn Books of Wonder, by Melvin Jules Bukiet. It’s a savage assessment of my least favourite literature, sentimental fiction. It has a good explanation of why this stuff sellsit works: narcissistic empathy. Read it, weep and perceive…
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Sir Joseph Banks
Through the SciTech Daily site, a link to “Master of the Enlightenment”, Andrea Wulf’s review of The Scientific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1765-1820, edited by Neil Chambers. Sir Joseph Banks was Patrick O’Brien’s model for Stephen Maturin, a leading character in the Aubrey & Maturin novels. O’Brien drew on Banks in two ways. In…
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The Wild Trees
Richard Preston recognized a good story when he heard about Steve Sillett, ninja climbs and the quest for the tallest tree. He told the story effectively in “Climbing the Redwoods”, written for the New Yorker (ninja version here), and republished in Best American Science Writing 2006. He has managed to write it again, even better,…