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Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
So: I gave a little bit of time and a little bit of money to Barack Obama's presidential campaign -- not as much of either as I feel like I ought to have, and certainly not as much as I saw people around me doing. But the point is, a lot of people contributed to this victory. I think (based on my reaction to Obama's speech last night, and generalizing from myself to Americans who are longing for change) that these people would be willing and even anxious to contribute and to work towards realizing Obama's promise of a new day for America. I put myself forward as one such -- I want to volunteer to work for change. Hoping it does not involve phone banks.
posted morning of November 5th, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, November 4th, 2008
And it is a great day in America.
posted evening of November 4th, 2008: Respond
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The excitement was palpable at the polling place this morning. And not just excitement, but positive energy: people were looking at each other, smiling, talking about today as a historic day.
posted morning of November 4th, 2008: Respond
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Monday, November third, 2008
- 8 more hours until I will vote (at the Baird Center, in South Orange).
- 19 ½ hours until Talking Points Memo promises it will start carrying live coverage.
- (Approximately) 1,850 hours until Inauguration Day.
 Roy Edroso has the best "putting the election in perspective" post I've seen this year: If He Loses...How to Cope. And life will go on, whatever happens tomorrow. Man oh man do I hope I will be drinking tomorrow night in celebration, not in sorrow.
posted evening of November third, 2008: Respond
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Chapter 5 of The Golden Compass -- now things are starting to get really interesting. Sylvia and I are both on the edge of our seat. I really like the way Pullman drops hints about what's going on -- very graceful, they are not so cryptic you can't easily pick up on them, but they are not hammered into your ears either. A bit like reading a good whodunit. And at the end of the cocktail party scene, the transition to Lyra fleeing from Mrs. Coulter's house was handled very well. This book just feels elegant.
 (Note from an adult reading a kids' book -- it was such an eerie feeling I had, to be identifying with Mrs. Coulter as I read her cruel disciplinarian lines to Lyra before the party. I can't recall ever feeling this way though I've read many children's books with authoritarian adult figures in them.)
posted evening of November third, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, November second, 2008
Saramago posts today on the subject of politics. On the eve of the presidential elections in the United States, this brief observation does not seem out of place. Some time back, a Portuguese politician*, who at that time bore the responsibilities of prime minister, declared for whomever would like to hear it that politics is, in the first place, the art of not speaking the truth. The problem is that since he said that, there has not been, to my knowledge, a single politician, from the left to the right, who would correct him, who would say no sir, the truth is going to be the sole and ultimate objective of politics. For the simple reason that only in this manner can the two be saved: truth by politics, politics by the truth. (I'm pretty uncertain about the translation of the last sentence: I'm translating the preposition "con", which usually means "with", as "by", because I'm not sure how else to make sense of the sentence.** Please let me know in comments if you know better.)
 * The politician in question is António Guterres, as near as I can tell (based on a reference in this editorial from Lusopresse). I am tentatively translating Saramago's "governo" as "prime minister", since that was Guterres' position.
** Update -- Never mind, now I looked at the Portuguese source of the post (which I had been reading in Spanish) -- the preposition translated as "con" is "pela", which is Portuguese for "by". This makes me more confident in my translation of the Spanish.
posted evening of November second, 2008: Respond
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Ever since I posted the video of Harry Gibson playing "Harry the Hipster" several months ago, I get Google hits searching for his more famous song, "Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine?" -- frequently enough to make me curious. So I went and looked it up. Cool tune! And since today seems to be a good day for posting YouTube videos (here chez READIN), let's put another one up. Take it away, Harry!
posted afternoon of November second, 2008: Respond
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Slacktivist posted this video yesterday, with the note that there are only three more days -- well today there are only two more days; and this is the perfect version of the perfect song for this moment. I had totally forgotten about Tracy Chapman, glad to be reminded.
Mmm... that makes me want to hear Bob singing this song. Here he is in 1964: (Dylan is 25 in this video; Chapman is 28 above.)
posted morning of November second, 2008: Respond
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In Hovering Flight, Chapters 15 and 16 -- as Addie struggles with cancer and with chemotherapy I feel like she is finally starting to come through as a character -- still very much an odd bird, but I'm starting to understand her well enough to identify with her, and with Tom. And in parallel I'm thinking that Scarlet (who is now grown up) is beginning to understand her parents as people rather than just as cryptic "parents". By that token the writing in these chapters strikes me as more mature, more fully developed than the writing in Chapters 7 and 8 -- Scarlet is again (mostly) absent from the story, but there is no drought of character. I wonder if it would be possible (and if it would be worthwhile) to argue that the narrator "grows up" in parallel with Scarlet -- that Scarlet getting to know her parents enables the reader to know them with a fulness of human character. Would it be appropriate to call this a Bildungsroman?
 (And a nice bit of continuity at the end of Chapter 16: at the party celebrating Addie's newfound artistic success, "And there was Scarlet, watching them all and smiling...")
posted morning of November second, 2008: Respond
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Lots of long, vivid dreams this weekend! Last night I was in a sort of huge video game/maze type of setting -- the introduction is our hero disembarking from a futuristic train into a deserted station lit with purple neon and reminiscent of If on a winter's night a traveller... -- he goes downstairs and out through a turnstile and sees too late that he has dropped his wallet in the hallway of the station. The action is trying to figure out how to get back into the part of the station where his wallet is: the turnstile is built so there's no way of jumping it, and when you go into the station's entrance you are in a completely different place, very crowded with Pokemon-style figures (the ones I remember best looked like Militank). I spent a long time going up through levels searching for the train platform (because I knew how to get to the exit from there) and being blocked by the figures, which were not actively opposing me but were behaving like a crowd -- moving with no regard for where I wanted to go and not allowing me to push past them. Occasionally I would get within sight of the platform but there was always some obstacle preventing me from getting there.
posted morning of November second, 2008: Respond
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