ejp626

Will definitely be checking it out. May need to put a reminder in my calendar...

I read about half the stories right away but it took a surprisingly long time to get through the rest of them. "The Insignia" is fairly clever though quite short. I liked "Nuit Caprense Cirius Illuminata" where it is just a bit unclear whether the narrator runs into an old flame in Capri or does he run into a phantom of a different sort from the past. I'm still mulling over "Silvio in El Rosedal" which has some Borgesian touches (a code hidden in a rose garden) but ends in a much more melancholy key. This might actually be the strongest story in the collection, but I'll give it some time and reread it and see if I still feel the same. One story I did not care for was "For Smokers Only," which I hope for Ribeyro's sake was fictional and not auto-biographical when he discusses becoming deeply addicted to cigarettes and, at one point, selling off his entire book collection to allow him to buy more cigarettes. And then talks about sneaking cigarettes, even when under medical treatment. Though it seems this was largely true to life, and he did ultimately die of lung cancer at the age of 65. Sad...

Aristophanes The Clouds & The Birds (trans. Arrowsmith & Parker) I know it is a truism that comedy translates rather less well than tragedy, but I was still astounded at how hard it was to get through these two pieces. Just did not enjoy either of them at all, aside from a few moments here and there. (The amount of physical violence played for laughs in The Birds was pretty close to the Three Stooges, and I've never been one that liked that sort of thing at all, though it is true I can be a bit more forgiving if combined with clever wordplay a la Shakespeare.) For me at least, I think I would have been better off with translations that were looser translations or even adaptations than these quite faithful translations. Going to put this aside for quite a while before getting around to Lysistrata. As the libraries are now taking book returns, I need to prioritize getting through these books anyway, so that means finally sitting down and getting through the second half of Camus's Plague and Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being.

I'm well aware of that. Businesses need to do what they reasonably can, but will inevitably be sued anyway when people catch COVID. Probably most of the time they will not be held liable (for one the difficulty in proving a person caught COVID from a specific store) but it's always a gamble with juries and, no matter what, dealing with the legal system is draining. However, it is one thing to cautiously open up and have reasonable protocols in place. It is another to be encouraging rallies where, even if outdoors, there will be lots of bad behaviour from people not social distancing (particularly among right wing populist followers who seem to take special pride in not following medical guidance). So it really is a perfect storm for virus transmission, and the people involved should know better but just don't care, so then they slap on this legal fig leaf. No point in dwelling any further on it. Museums in B.C. getting ready to open. Definitely jealous. The Toronto area is about two weeks behind the rest of Ontario in terms of loosened restrictions, but the signs are positive that the new infection rates are dropping and deaths from COVID are pretty low, as these things go. Our medical system was never overwhelmed and that was really the main benefit of the lockdown. I think there's a reasonable chance we'll have barber shops, salons and hopefully museums open by July. Still not sure what schools will look like in Sept.

In Toronto, I believe urgent dental care is now being provided and they are starting to make appointments for general cleaning/check-ups. I'll probably schedule something soon. I am glad that the orthodontists are starting to see patients, as it can be a problem to not check up on the various adjustments in treatment. My daughter went this week, and my wife had to wait outside the office. Of course because coffee shops, etc. are all closed, she ended up walking up and down the street for half an hour. Maybe this hasn't really been thought through, or they are just making these policies somebody's else's problem... We've been able to start returning books to the libraries, and you can sign up for a 10 minute slot to pick up books from the hold system, but you can't go in and browse the books. I'm a little bit worried about people getting there early and hanging out around the library (as it is pretty hard to time a 10 minute slot!), but we'll just have to see how it goes. It's a small thing, but it's still kind of exciting.

Making sure the base is covered. From the Guardian but originally in NY Times: Trump rally attendees can't sue if they contract virus People attending an upcoming Donald Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have been told they cannot sue if they contract coronavirus. The sign-up page for the president’s upcoming rally includes a disclaimer about the possibility of contracting the disease. The president has implemented a policy that states rally attendees cannot sue the campaign or venue if they contract coronavirus at the event, the New York Times reports: ‘By clicking register below, you are acknowledging that an inherent risk of exposure to Covid-19 exists in any public place where people are present,’ a statement on Mr. Trump’s campaign website informed those wishing to attend his June 19 rally in Tulsa, Okla. ‘By attending the rally, you and any guests voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to Covid-19 and agree not to hold Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.; BOK Center; ASM Global; or any of their affiliates, directors, officers, employees, agents, contractors or volunteers liable for any illness or injury.’

With a few exceptions, I'd prefer the old normal back too, but I'm not going to just close my eyes and pretend that we can wish Covid-19 away. Populist political parties (mostly on the right but also the left) have engaged in anti-science and anti-expertise rhetoric for decades as part of a broader anti-elite discourse. The seeds have been present in the US basically from the very beginning but certainly more prominent since the mid-1970s. What is worrying is basically an embrace of magical thinking and perhaps most worrying is that more and more party leaders are recruited from the ranks of the anti-science crowd. In my mind it's marginally better to have politicians that just use their followers as part of a cynical ploy but still "believe" in science to having leaders who are fundamentally anti-science, which seems to be where the US has landed. It's a bad place to be right now.

I think it also depends on what one really means by defunding. I'm sure in some advocates' minds it literally means spending nothing on police and everything on social welfare programs. Which is its own kind of nihilism, since I am quite sure a city with no police force would not really be a place where most people would want to live. Anyway, in Toronto at any rate, BLM has positioned defunding the police as a minimum 10% cut in the police budget to be reallocated in various ways. This is something that I could plausibly get behind, though I still think "defunding" is a pretty loaded term that probably does more harm to the cause than gets people thinking about what we could spend the funds on if we did make modest cuts to the police budget. Also, because it sounds so ambiguous, I'm sure some individual members of BLM insist that they really want cuts of 25% or 50% or more.

As already mentioned in the Bandcamp thread, I went a little wild and ordered 4 albums by Alexander Hawkins, including Unit[e] and No Now is So. I also picked up some digital downloads from Eugene Chadbourne: The Lost Eddie Chatterbox Sessions (which is basically Chadbourne on solo steel guitar playing jazz standards (so a real departure for him)) and Jungle Cookies, which is a more typical experimental sound collage. They can be purchased here -- https://eugenechadbourne-documentation.squarespace.com/?category=digital+downloads I'm tempted by Chadbourne's Roll Over Berlusconi, but this is only available as a vinyl + mp3 download on Bandcamp, and the shipping price of the vinyl to Canada (or the US) is on the steep side. I would definitely order just the download if that becomes available down the road.

I ended up ordering Unit[e], No Now is So, Owl Jacket and Slow and Steady. A lot to listen to this weekend! Thanks for the PWYC offer!

Nice. I see a couple that I will probably snag. While I gravitate towards the smaller unit recordings, I am intrigued by the big band tracks on Unit[e]. I'll do some more serious sampling tonight and decide on that one as well.

This protect all members at all costs mentality, which is basically a design feature of many (not all) unions, is definitely problematic. I'll just stop there.

Thin Blue Line, indeed: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/05/new-york-state-57-police-resign-to-support-officers-fired-for-shoving-75-year-old

This was asked in a slightly more neutral context (last Oct.), but certainly relevant today - https://getpocket.com/explore/item/would-you-stand-up-to-an-oppressive-regime-or-would-you-conform-here-s-the-science?utm_source=pocket-newtab Millions will be facing this choice in Hong Kong (is it worth staying and fighting or should I flee to the UK or other countries, including presumably Canada) when from a pragmatic perspective there is no realistic chance of winning against an oppressive regime. Some may even be asking the question about the United States, given the structural imbalances in the system (particularly the judiciary) and the (for all practical purposes) impossibility of updating and improving the Constitution. Even Justice Scalia of all people agreed it was far, far too hard to amend the Constitution - https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/05/amending-the-constitution-is-much-too-hard-blame-the-founders.html On the flip side, rapidly changing social norms can be used for general improvements in society. I'll be among the transportation planners trying to make masks mandatory to ride transit in the future. As it becomes more normalized in urban society, it will become self-reinforcing and from a public safety (if not civil liberties) perspective, that is useful right now, at least until a COVID vaccine can be developed. But some of the other developments that go along with tracking the spread of COVID are more mixed in terms of their short-term benefit vs. long-term disbenefits of marching towards a police state featuring the ubiquitous monitoring of people's movements.

I think it is more to the point that the solutions seem pretty unpalatable to the population at large. Some things may not be as painful as they seem up front (transition to more renewable energy sources). But let's say the only way to "fix" climate change was to mandate the entire global population move to a 90% vegan diet and to completely forgo air travel. I'm not saying this is the case, but that does seem to be where the scientific recommendations are heading. How many people would willingly go along with that, and, more to the point, would support politicians who enforced it? With a few exceptions, not many. The problem is with the people in Western "democracies", not the politicians.

My condolences.

I believe (but am not 100% sure) that this is a different, non-tainted study showing that hydroxychloroquine is not an effective Covid treatment. https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/covid19-hydroxychloroquine-who-1.5596689

I did see that. Certainly ironic. My gut says they were right but for the wrong reasons. Regardless, I certainly won't be taking any hydroxychloroquine any time soon.

He should be very careful of what he is tweeting about. An open call to the Army to take out lowlife scum. I mean who knows how they might interpret that...

I've generally not minded train travel from New York to DC. Train travel from Detroit to Chicago used to be pretty good, with the emphasis on "used to." I've done the train from New York to Boston and it takes far too long, but isn't too bad. It's quite frankly ridiculous how long it takes to get between Toronto and Montreal on train (it doesn't help that virtually all the time you are routed up through Ottawa first ). But I lost my love of trains on the Chicago-New York route, which I did a couple of times (almost always coming in 4-6 hours late) and the New Orleans-Chicago train ride was truly terrible. There are all kinds of reasons train travel in North America is worse than the European experience, but the number one factor is that freight railroads are a much, much bigger player in North America and they own all the rails (except for Amtrak's Northeast Corridor) and thus passenger trains are always put second and quite literally are shunted to a side track while waiting for a freight train to go by, losing hours along the way for a particularly long train ride. The on-time performance of trains in the US is very poor outside a very few exceptions, including the Chicago-Milwaukee run interestingly enough. This is a structural (and political) issue that I do not believe will ever be resolved.

I have heard this (I can't remember if I bought the CD or just had a download). I wouldn't say it really stands up to repeated listening, but now that it has come up, I'm curious and will try to listen again. There was a self-produced CD called something like the Zen of the Bicycle Courier, which was sort of assembled from field recordings of bike couriers from Chicago back in the late 90s. Unfortunately, it didn't really live up to its promise, and I foisted it off on someone who was way more into cycling than I was.

It's been known for some time that asymptomatic carries are a big part of the problem, but I'm not sure anyone has really put a number to it yet. There is some research that seems to indicate 40-50% of people are essentially asymptomatic but potentially contagious. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/30/could-nearly-half-of-those-with-covid-19-have-no-idea-they-are-infected If true, that means there is almost no way to really get a handle on this without truly widescale testing. We're certainly not there yet, though in Ontario they are finally hitting their internal level of 20,000 tests a day and the number of new cases is heading down slowly. Personally, I'd like to see much more randomized testing and eventually an attempt to test anyone who is being called back into work by Sept.

You guys are trying to drag me back in... In this case, I will be strong (I must have 97% of the Mobley material as singles), but in another week or so I'll order the Desmond set.

I think it is an interesting approach for lesser-known writers, like Dawn Powell, Robert Maxwell, perhaps John Dos Passos and others where this is likely the only way this material will stay in print. It's probably not necessary for the Twains, Faulkners, Fitzgeralds and Hemingways of the literary world. It often is the only way that the short stories stay in print, though, maddeningly, some of the time they do selected stories and sometime they do the complete stories for that period. One might argue that this is not too dissimilar from the Mosaic treatment... I'm not sure, but I don't think that is accurate. Rights revert back to the authors and estates in many cases. I do know that many of these are held up by the estates, and I would imagine the major publishers would find it in their interest to cut a deal if they were the rights holders.

I imagine the estate wouldn't come to terms, and they have had to wait so long for these pieces to go into the public domain. I believe it is the same with the Fitzgerald but they had a bit more to work with so published the first LOA volume a while back. Due to the various extensions of copyright, it takes quite a while for these volumes to come out in the States. What is interesting is that Harper, apparently realizing that quite a few work will go into the public domain have come up with an e-book bundle that gathers up 9 of his novels, ending with The Garden of Eden. https://www.amazon.ca/Collected-Works-Ernest-Hemingway-Nine-Book-ebook/dp/B00IRDG7L8/ref=sr_1_1?crid=YPNVHA5GE2TM&keywords=collected+works+of+ernest+hemingway&qid=1590754578&sprefix=collected+ernest%2Caps%2C143&sr=8-1 That said, this seems to be only available in Canada, as the copyright laws are different (looser) here, though they are being brought in closer alignment with the States due to the NAFTA re-negotiations.