Meta-Misfirings

A rare moment of contentment: fresh Italian roast coffee, made super-strong with a dollop* of 2% milk; felines fed with no fur flying; Fred sleeps, his toothache apparently relieved; the rosy fingers of dawn are doing their thing, but in a more purpl-y way; the lotion I discovered last night (a "gift" from the hospital) still smells lightly of oranges, and is rich; The New York Times is on deck; and I have almost finished Andre Dubos' The Garden of Last Days**, which is terrific.

*dollop
1573, from E. Anglian dial. dallop "patch, tuft or clump of grass," of uncertain origin. Modern sense of "a lump or glob" is 1812.

? ON dolp, small dangling ball

**re: the Dubus novel -- Excuse me while I have one of my meta-moments. I made the mistake of looking up reviews a few minutes ago. Janet Maslin reviewed it for the NYT on June 9, 2008, and makes the statement: “The Garden of Last Days” explores the cultural chasm between Bassam’s world and Spring’s. Well, that is just wrong. But I'll not fuss about her, as I might were the rest of her review completely ridiculous, in the manner, say of Michiko Kakutani. Maslin purports to be a straightforward straight arrow, and you cannot get far without being told that she has a BA in Math. Starting out as a rock critic, then a longtime movie critic, she has been criticized in the literary genre for not being critical. Oh yeah, and she took a degree in maths. Edward Champion, sometimes my hero, notes: "Reading the New York Times’s daily book coverage makes me so disheartened that I’d rather watch Michiko and Maslin in a nude mud wrestling match."

My favorite line from a Dubus interview, from his appearance on The Bat Segundo Show: "Listen, I do believe that we live in our bodies." They were discussing the role of coffee in his novel.

Frank Rich's Op-Ed piece today is titled "40 Years Later, Still Second-Class Americans." It has been 40 years since Stonewall. He lays Obama bare, deservedly so, in the presence of his own promises. Remember last December, as the President-Elect attempted to stave off the critics of Pastor Rick Warren?

At a press conference in Chicago this morning, President-elect Barack Obama
responded to attacks from gay-rights advocates who say they his selection of
Pastor Rick Warren, a critic of gay rights, to deliver the invocation at his
inauguration.

Warren, a leader of the evangelical Saddleback Church in
Orange County,Calif., came out in favor of Proposition 8 — a ballot initiative
that stripped gays of the right to marry in the state. The hot-button initiative
narrowly passed, setting off a firestorm among gay rights advocates who took to
the streets in protests across the state.

Obama, who often mentioned his support of gay rights in stump speeches, though not gay marriage, said today that he is a “fierce advocate for gay and lesbian Americans,” adding, “It’s something I’ve been consistent on.”

Well, I ought to sign off, as clearly I've little original to say. That was, by the way, the source of my free-floating anxiety during the dissertation process, as the effort was to be "an original contribution to human knowledge." Egads.

Unless I manage to sleep, I'll be immersed in tennis today, as well as attempting to clean The Manor a bit. Tata, then.