What happened to the ACLU? 🔗
A fantastic story in Tablet about how the organization abandoned long-held principles in pursuit of relevance:
The embrace of political partisanship, the dropping of standards, the buckling to donor demands at the expense of long-held principles—[former director Ira] Glasser says all of these developments have rendered the ACLU unrecognizable from the group he once led.
The organization known as the ACLU is now led by people beholden to an ideology purporting that the essential function of the Constitution has been to serve as a blueprint for white supremacy, and that its broad free-speech protections are not a tool of emancipation for society’s underdogs but rather the handmaiden of their oppression.
Robert Pogue Harrison reviews several recent books by and about the wonderful Shirley Hazzard. 📚
As she once remarked to me, were Virgil to sail into [the Bay of Naples] today, he would recognize all the lineaments of his adoptive city.
Freddie deBoer’s Substack has been excellent lately. From a recent post of thoughts for new writers:
For a long time now media has been overtaken by a cult of expression which forbids any style or mode other than contemptuous blank irony.
The NYT obit for Adam Zagajewski is quite touching.
I remember talking with a peer at a conference. She taught with A.Z. at the University of Houston. She spoke glowingly of him: “Adam is such a sweet, wonderful man.” He was clearly a colleague of hers, not the superstar. 📚
RIP Adam Zagajewski, my favorite contemporary poet. 📚
Happy new year / public-domain day! 🎶 📚
Happy new year & happy public-domain day! The works coming out of US copyright protection this year are pretty impressive: Mrs. Dalloway, The Great Gatsby, The Trial; music by Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, & Fats Waller.
Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain has a detailed overview.
Your annual reminder that Geri Allen’s A Child is Born is the pinnacle of Christmas jazz, and the title track is sublime. 🎶
Busy morning on the river
The Charthusian monks: brewing Chartreuse in the Alps during a pandemic
A fascinating essay in the NYT on the Charthusian monks, brewers of Chartreuse: “An Elixir from the French Alps, Frozen in Time”. It’s filled with amazing quotes & quips like:
The days pass very quickly when you’re immersed in the shadow of eternity.
Or, from the president of the Charthusians' business:
I am very scared always. Only three of the brothers know how to make Chartreuse — nobody else knows the recipe. And each morning they drive together to the distillery. And they drive a very old car. And they drive it very badly.
They’d be capable of writing a business-strategy book that even I’d love to read:
When you have roots this deep, it allows you to forget the short term and project your vision far in the future.
And if I was ever forced to get a tattoo, I’d probably choose their motto:
Stat crux dum volvitur orbis
In English: The cross is fixed while the world is turning.
My favorite year-end list is always Ted Gioia’s 100 favorite albums of the year. I guarantee you’ll find something excellent you didn’t previously know about.
(If you think 100 albums isn’t quite enough, well, he includes 100 honorable mentions as well.) 🎶
Leibovitz on the Supreme Court & religious liberty 🔗
Supreme Court decisions rarely make for page turners, but the one handed down last night, siding with Jewish and Catholic groups opposing the draconian restrictions placed on religious services by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is an exception. In just 33 pages, the highest court in the land gave us a thrilling study in how the two tribes that compete for dominance in our ravaged America approach the world.
~Liel Leibovitz in Tablet, dissecting the opinions on both sides of the Supreme Court’s recent religious-liberty decision.
Shouldn’t it be “philosophy schimosophy”? 🔗
Is there an anecdote that better describes our current moment than this one?
Probably. But this one is exquisite. From NY Mag’s essay on the mess that is the NYT:
The conversation turned into what more than one Times employee described to me as a “food fight.” During the mêlée, “Opinion” columnist Elizabeth Bruenig uploaded a PDF of John Rawls’s treatise on public reason, in an attempt to elevate the discussion. “What we’re having is really a philosophical conversation, and it concerns the unfinished business of liberalism,” Bruenig wrote. “I think that all human beings are born philosophers, that is, that we all have an innate desire to understand what our world means and what we owe to one another and how to live good lives.”
“Philosophy schmosiphy,” wrote a researcher at the Times whose Slack avatar was the logo for the hamburger chain Jack in the Box. “We’re at a barricades moment in our history. You decide: which side are you on?”
The Politics We Don't Have 🔗
Most Americans want secure work, safe streets, healthcare, dignity, freedom, and a governing class that prioritizes them above itself. People want plenty else besides, of course, that politics cannot provide, like love and meaning—but even a movement organized around the minimum would threaten entrenched interests in both parties. It would undermine the Democrat’s dependency on Silicon Valley’s surveillance economy, elite-driven offshoring, and embrace of corporate consumerism in liberation drag. And it would finish off the well-funded Republican party of fiscal responsibility and austerity politics underwritten by foreign policy and financial globalism.
~Jacob Siegel, in an entertaining Tablet essay on what Joe Rogan represents
Out this week: Songs from Home, beautiful solo piano from Fred Hersch. 🎶
A beautiful day to prep the garden for winter. 🏡
You think it is helpful having a fluorescent praying mantis coming into their office, telling them about German philosophy? Do you think that’s helpful? I can tell you, it’s not helpful.
~Alex Karp, Palantir CEO, profiled in the NYT Magazine 🔗
Currently reading: Montaigne: Life Without Law by Pierre Manent 📚
Moving day. Our first day of snow for the season, too. 🏡
Currently reading: Jane Austen: Writing, Society, Politics by Tom Keymer 📚
The Big Move 🏡
Our family is getting ready to move from the Minneapolis – St. Paul metro area up to central Minnesota. We’ll be closer to my wife’s parents and my own, and right in the heart of beautiful MN lake country. It’s something we’ve wanted to do as a family for a number of years. Since we’re homeschooling the kids this year anyway, now seemed like a good year to make a move like this.
Of course, we’re all anxious about the move, particularly about leaving our siblings and their families behind, about leaving our dear friends at church behind, about leaving our beloved current home behind.
Yesterday, one of my five-year-old sons was having a rough day: arguing about everything, picking fights with his siblings, his mother, & me—all very unusual behavior for him. We found him in his bedroom, pouting. (He wasn’t hard to find, since he slam the door as hard as he could on his way in.) We said to him, “Even though we knew you’re excited to live in our new house, are you feeling kinda angry that we’re moving?”
He looked shocked for a second, wide-eyed, then started sobbing. “Yes! Why do we have to move to a stupid new house? I just want to keep our house!”
The one time we moved when I was an older kid, my parents moved the week I was at summer camp. I now understand why: the stress of moving is everywhere in our family; the kids don’t have a sufficiently established sense of time to know when it will all be over. (Answer: a week and a half.) To them, this move just feels like a gigantic, vague monster that will never leave them alone.
It might be good to re-watch Inside Out sometime this week. And, of course, to just keep on letting the kids talk about what they’re feeling. Turns out it’s not far from what we’re feeling: excitement mixed with a vague sense of unease, fear of all the uncertainty, and a desire to just have it all be done.