If there is an IMAGE NOT FOUND in the column you received in your email, it was a glitch on Substack, and I have corrected it in the online version of the column.
Not Starsucks. There is actually very good stuff that is not over roasted and then served a bit shy of enough to save million$ over time. I hate it. Peets taught the Star dude how to do it four decades ago. In the begining, it was pretty good, but money became the goal and if nobody noticed, $o much the better. I still have my Starbucks stainless vacuum travel mug from the early 90s when there were three places in Seattle and thinking of expanding to Portland. The mug was made in USA and fell off my truck several times and driven over and the dents fit my thumb and fingers and the vacuum still holds. Chineese cheap is all you can get now. My wife still orders from Zabar's. Not too bad either. She did grad school at Rutgers. NYC is wher all the art students could be found.
I was joking with you Mr. RR....but, thank goodness, someone else thinks that Starbuxs is the most gawdawful nasty stuff on the planet, bar none. And agree about the superiority of a 30 year old stainless steel vacuum travel mug. I have a very old quart size Stanley vacuum thermos (NOT as convenient as a travel mug, but it keeps my morning tea and afternoon coffee secure and hot) It's amazing the abuse that poor thing has taken and yet, still in service!
Thank you so much for changing the narrative from the banality of evil to the banality of goodness.
I worry much about where our country's heart is when we're in danger of letting an asshole run it. But I'm assured by the fact that your heart is in the right place.
Best wishes for a long, healthy and happy life to you and Tracy. And here’s to many more Substack columns that we readers eagerly await every day! And a big hello to everyone on this site. I enjoy reading your responses.
Reading pieces like this gives me hope that we will make it through these trying times. We're all just working day in and day out to survive the onslaught of derangement. Wishing you and Tracy and your feline friends the best. Keep the faith.
Happy that you both are here to enjoy what is a good and grateful life.
Not much different here, a pace we couldn’t envision when we were younger. But glad to be here, (amazingly) despite everything.
Hoping the heart of our nation is kept as safe through the years ahead. For our children, collectively for all our children, for the world and the world’s children too because they are uneasy watching what’s unfolding here.
The sign out front of Labor Retreat is FINALLY in the trash, the one that read "HUD Project 470460" - AFL-CIO renovation of the entire 77 units, which has consumed my time and scheduling since the first week of December, including temp relocation (albeit, paid stay in a good hotel - the Renaissance at the Depot) so NOW I can plan on taking philosophy classes, located Green's copies of The Hellenistic Philosophers -2 Vols. - for $95 on alibris.com, he is 99 years old, nearly blind, in Iowa City Iowa, - this guy flew for the RAF in Burma in WW2, a famous scholar in the field for many years; and thus to Colin Burrow's review in the LRB!
I also walked around for several miles on campus today, abuzz with activity as it's the seventh day of finals, but that was setting up a "reunion picnic / coffee" with a fellow Macalester alumni for next week, nothing to do with enrolling etc. The demo encampment ended peacefully and all regularly scheduled commencements (it's one of the largest universities in the US, there's a bunch of them!) will proceed as usual.
And much like Ulysses ventures to war (I’ve been through similar tests as Lucien’s so I know) and return, you have withstood a long winter of upheaval as your apartment is turned into a habitat you enjoy - so glad for you enjoying your home and campus there. The articles are substantial but read through interpretation of return of Ulysses to Penelope. She is revered by Greek women as an example of fidelity and tenacity - something her wanderer husband didn’t abide by…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_War - Patris there seems to be a perennial, nearly ubiquitous, righteous battle for human rights being fought by women ["and their males allies," yes, their greatly outnumbered allies] against the worst instincts and legalized repressions of the male sex in general with exceptions noted, who can find the words? Why must this persist, when its negative, even disastrous, brutalizing consequences are so blatantly obvious? "O tempora, O mores," and why must it be fitting to express "O the times, O the [dubious] mores," several thousand years after the phrase originated? About not only women's oppression, but pointless wars of aggression, of choice, of conquest? And etc.
This would date the war (or conflated wars that together served for the Homeric epics) THREE THOUSAND YEARS AGO, I mean, how many "Penelopes" with dubiously unfaithful and hypocritical spouses like the admittedly fascinating and wily Ulysses, are alive right now?
"The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the 12th or 13th century BCE. The war was waged by the Achaeans (Greeks) against the city of Troy after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology, and it has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably Homer's Iliad. The core of the Iliad (Books II – XXIII) describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid." *******
Both ‘books’ whatever the translation are, at their core, a recitation of perhaps the essential nature of the sexes. From Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter to the gods to Penelope’s steadfast faithfulness, focal points demanding constancy and usefulness against the individual and communal instincts of men to set fire to themselves and to the world.
Essential nature until they (especially men, but also Penelope as a symbolic avatar for women's rights, in the sense of learning the art of open rebellion against oppression, once her good faith has been abused - not sure if she ever learns about what Odysseus has been doing on the voyages leading to his return, also not sure how she would plausibly respond to any defenses he might offer, either! All we have to guesswork) learn that art is sometimes far more valuable? Sure, that's pure Nietzsche!
None of it would be easy or done overnight (learning, rebellion, making compromises, deciding some compromises are too costly, overcoming one's selfish drives and seeing more widely how to sublimate them for a greater good, plus much more).
Prof. Jennifer Hudgens on Nietzsche and misinterpretations and/or mistranslations of his views on women - beginning right in the title*: file:///H:/Forget%20Not%20the%20Whip!%20Nietzsche%20Perspectivism%20and%20Feminism%20A%20No.pdf
Forget Not the Whip! Nietzsche, Perspectivism, and Feminism: A Non-Apologist
Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Polemical Axiology
The quote from Thus Spake Zarathustra has been rendered as "Thy whip," implying the use of it (or metaphorical domination) as a possession - instead, it's "THE" whip, Hudgens deals with far more bogus approaches to Nietzsche that only a brief passage, but thought it was worth using in her essay's title.
15 From TSZ I:18, see p. 65-67, particularly “ ‘ “You are going to women? Do not forget the whip!” ’ ” –
the nested quotes here indicate that I am quoting Zarathustra, who is himself quoting an old woman he encountered the previous evening.
In any case it's the battle of existentialists rebelling against all forms of Platonism and their Eternal Forms, or essences, that strikes me as a possible Nietzschean response to Penelope and Odysseus's dilemma - assuming Penelope resists any more unfaithfulness from her spouse, and he wants to remain married. Evolve your views, Odysseus!
No hope, is there? Somewhere along the line women scared hell out of men and the push back/push down was on!
Odysseus didn’t stay in Ithaca (according to legend( - Penelope likely had enough after having run her household while he was out galavanting (as my mom would say). I’m all for peaceful cohabitation of the planet, personally. The particular island heritage I’m descended from being largely matriarchal as a result of centuries (or more) of the men going to sea, and when back to visit seemingly pretty content to leave things as they are, apart from generating a new addition to the family.
There’s such peace in being in a place both familiar and - looking for the word closest to the feeling here - well, ‘right’ I’d guess is nearest. Each of us best when surrounded in a configuration and filled with what we love and find most necessary.
If you’ve searched long enough (here years favor us) you know what that is, and know you are lucky. That’s what I hope for you, for Lucien, for everyone who needs it.
As Gilda Radner’s news reader character Roseann Roseannadanna loved to say “It’s always something!” when she got exasperated…with trump and the GOP, it’s always something…
Talk about continuity, we got that on here too today!
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo (61 – c. 113), better known as Pliny the Younger (/ˈplɪni/),[1] was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him.
Pliny the Younger wrote hundreds of letters, of which 247 survived, and which are of great historical value. Some are addressed to reigning emperors or to notables such as the historian Tacitus. Pliny served as an imperial magistrate under Trajan (reigned 98–117),[2] and his letters to Trajan provide one of the few surviving records of the relationship between the imperial office and provincial governors.[3] ******
And this guy was on on that "Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD" thing!
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 – AD 79), called Pliny the Elder (/ˈplɪni/),[1] was a Roman author, naturalist, natural philosopher, naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field.
Among Pliny's greatest works was the twenty-volume Bella Germaniae ("The History of the German Wars"), which is no longer extant. Bella Germaniae, which began where Aufidius Bassus' Libri Belli Germanici ("The War with the Germans") left off, was used as a source by other prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Tacitus may have used Bella Germaniae as the primary source for his work, De origine et situ Germanorum ("On the Origin and Situation of the Germans").[2]
Pliny the Elder died in AD 79 in Stabiae while attempting the rescue of a friend and his family from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.[3] *******
Lucian's columns provide a perspective we simply cannot find elsewhere, case closed, no appeals!
We are the healthiest wealthiest best sheltered best clothed best fed people in history and also in the right now and it ain't even close. Yet we have a collective bitch that just won't quit I swear to pete.
Yes. Never mind. Interesting. I had a similar experience today. This morning, my Colorectal surgeon told me things look pretty good up there. Any damage from the prostate cancer radiation was negligible and for one my age, (right behind you), Lucien, the hemohroids are small eneoughto not worry about. Hit the hardware store, three minutes down the hill an hour ago and all the good folks there are doing it all, just as you describe. A very pleasant day that should be what our days are, always. but, if it can be.....
It’s great that you can get state of the art healthcare living in a charming small town. As a physician I can relate to what you’re going through. As your contemporary I have my own battery of physicians. Keep soldiering on as we enjoy and learn from your work. And let’s hope that Medicare survives the next election.
I, too, am grateful for the small town I live near. And my neighbors. Although most of them are GOP - I live in TN after all - we don't discuss politics, nor hold anyone's views against them. They see me every election seated at a table asking them for ID and, for primaries, which party ballot they want. We help out each other, share farm tools and equipment, garden bounty and good times. We all look past our own backyards to national issues, but they pale in comparison to the good people, friendly small businesses, good service and camaraderie found close to home.
Thank you for this. You could have been speaking for me in Memphis, TN. I often wonder how it is that the people around me are, for the large part, so very decent, and so many public figures so... well, you know.
If there is an IMAGE NOT FOUND in the column you received in your email, it was a glitch on Substack, and I have corrected it in the online version of the column.
I see a very shiney classic diner. Two eggs over easy with home spuds and Aidell chicken apple sausage, please!
And I bet they have the best coffee in the world!
In that world, but out here on the Leftist Coast, we got damn good brew too!
I know you do! But I grew up in Philly and nothing beats diner coffee in a big old diner mug!
True.
Oh, you guys have Dunkin D's coffee? (Just kidding...I know you Left Coastals like that black Seattle brew)
Not Starsucks. There is actually very good stuff that is not over roasted and then served a bit shy of enough to save million$ over time. I hate it. Peets taught the Star dude how to do it four decades ago. In the begining, it was pretty good, but money became the goal and if nobody noticed, $o much the better. I still have my Starbucks stainless vacuum travel mug from the early 90s when there were three places in Seattle and thinking of expanding to Portland. The mug was made in USA and fell off my truck several times and driven over and the dents fit my thumb and fingers and the vacuum still holds. Chineese cheap is all you can get now. My wife still orders from Zabar's. Not too bad either. She did grad school at Rutgers. NYC is wher all the art students could be found.
I was joking with you Mr. RR....but, thank goodness, someone else thinks that Starbuxs is the most gawdawful nasty stuff on the planet, bar none. And agree about the superiority of a 30 year old stainless steel vacuum travel mug. I have a very old quart size Stanley vacuum thermos (NOT as convenient as a travel mug, but it keeps my morning tea and afternoon coffee secure and hot) It's amazing the abuse that poor thing has taken and yet, still in service!
Always do
That is one memorable diner! You are lucky to have it so close by!
Lucian, keep on ticking.
Thank you so much for changing the narrative from the banality of evil to the banality of goodness.
I worry much about where our country's heart is when we're in danger of letting an asshole run it. But I'm assured by the fact that your heart is in the right place.
Best wishes for a long, healthy and happy life to you and Tracy. And here’s to many more Substack columns that we readers eagerly await every day! And a big hello to everyone on this site. I enjoy reading your responses.
Reading pieces like this gives me hope that we will make it through these trying times. We're all just working day in and day out to survive the onslaught of derangement. Wishing you and Tracy and your feline friends the best. Keep the faith.
Happy that you both are here to enjoy what is a good and grateful life.
Not much different here, a pace we couldn’t envision when we were younger. But glad to be here, (amazingly) despite everything.
Hoping the heart of our nation is kept as safe through the years ahead. For our children, collectively for all our children, for the world and the world’s children too because they are uneasy watching what’s unfolding here.
That reminds me, as soon as I saw this I was thinking you would have a special comprehension of it, and very interesting it is, too!
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n08/colin-burrow/light-through-the-fog
The Odyssey
translated by Peter Green.
California, 538 pp., £24, April 2018, 978 0 520 29363 2
The Odyssey
translated by Emily Wilson.
Norton, 592 pp., £30, December 2017, 978 0 393 08905 9
The Odyssey
translated by Anthony Verity.
Oxford, 384 pp., £7.99, February 2018, 978 0 19 873647 9
*******
The sign out front of Labor Retreat is FINALLY in the trash, the one that read "HUD Project 470460" - AFL-CIO renovation of the entire 77 units, which has consumed my time and scheduling since the first week of December, including temp relocation (albeit, paid stay in a good hotel - the Renaissance at the Depot) so NOW I can plan on taking philosophy classes, located Green's copies of The Hellenistic Philosophers -2 Vols. - for $95 on alibris.com, he is 99 years old, nearly blind, in Iowa City Iowa, - this guy flew for the RAF in Burma in WW2, a famous scholar in the field for many years; and thus to Colin Burrow's review in the LRB!
I also walked around for several miles on campus today, abuzz with activity as it's the seventh day of finals, but that was setting up a "reunion picnic / coffee" with a fellow Macalester alumni for next week, nothing to do with enrolling etc. The demo encampment ended peacefully and all regularly scheduled commencements (it's one of the largest universities in the US, there's a bunch of them!) will proceed as usual.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Green_(historian)
And much like Ulysses ventures to war (I’ve been through similar tests as Lucien’s so I know) and return, you have withstood a long winter of upheaval as your apartment is turned into a habitat you enjoy - so glad for you enjoying your home and campus there. The articles are substantial but read through interpretation of return of Ulysses to Penelope. She is revered by Greek women as an example of fidelity and tenacity - something her wanderer husband didn’t abide by…
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_War - Patris there seems to be a perennial, nearly ubiquitous, righteous battle for human rights being fought by women ["and their males allies," yes, their greatly outnumbered allies] against the worst instincts and legalized repressions of the male sex in general with exceptions noted, who can find the words? Why must this persist, when its negative, even disastrous, brutalizing consequences are so blatantly obvious? "O tempora, O mores," and why must it be fitting to express "O the times, O the [dubious] mores," several thousand years after the phrase originated? About not only women's oppression, but pointless wars of aggression, of choice, of conquest? And etc.
This would date the war (or conflated wars that together served for the Homeric epics) THREE THOUSAND YEARS AGO, I mean, how many "Penelopes" with dubiously unfaithful and hypocritical spouses like the admittedly fascinating and wily Ulysses, are alive right now?
"The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the 12th or 13th century BCE. The war was waged by the Achaeans (Greeks) against the city of Troy after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology, and it has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably Homer's Iliad. The core of the Iliad (Books II – XXIII) describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid." *******
Both ‘books’ whatever the translation are, at their core, a recitation of perhaps the essential nature of the sexes. From Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter to the gods to Penelope’s steadfast faithfulness, focal points demanding constancy and usefulness against the individual and communal instincts of men to set fire to themselves and to the world.
Essential nature until they (especially men, but also Penelope as a symbolic avatar for women's rights, in the sense of learning the art of open rebellion against oppression, once her good faith has been abused - not sure if she ever learns about what Odysseus has been doing on the voyages leading to his return, also not sure how she would plausibly respond to any defenses he might offer, either! All we have to guesswork) learn that art is sometimes far more valuable? Sure, that's pure Nietzsche!
None of it would be easy or done overnight (learning, rebellion, making compromises, deciding some compromises are too costly, overcoming one's selfish drives and seeing more widely how to sublimate them for a greater good, plus much more).
Prof. Jennifer Hudgens on Nietzsche and misinterpretations and/or mistranslations of his views on women - beginning right in the title*: file:///H:/Forget%20Not%20the%20Whip!%20Nietzsche%20Perspectivism%20and%20Feminism%20A%20No.pdf
Forget Not the Whip! Nietzsche, Perspectivism, and Feminism: A Non-Apologist
Interpretation of Nietzsche’s Polemical Axiology
The quote from Thus Spake Zarathustra has been rendered as "Thy whip," implying the use of it (or metaphorical domination) as a possession - instead, it's "THE" whip, Hudgens deals with far more bogus approaches to Nietzsche that only a brief passage, but thought it was worth using in her essay's title.
15 From TSZ I:18, see p. 65-67, particularly “ ‘ “You are going to women? Do not forget the whip!” ’ ” –
the nested quotes here indicate that I am quoting Zarathustra, who is himself quoting an old woman he encountered the previous evening.
In any case it's the battle of existentialists rebelling against all forms of Platonism and their Eternal Forms, or essences, that strikes me as a possible Nietzschean response to Penelope and Odysseus's dilemma - assuming Penelope resists any more unfaithfulness from her spouse, and he wants to remain married. Evolve your views, Odysseus!
No hope, is there? Somewhere along the line women scared hell out of men and the push back/push down was on!
Odysseus didn’t stay in Ithaca (according to legend( - Penelope likely had enough after having run her household while he was out galavanting (as my mom would say). I’m all for peaceful cohabitation of the planet, personally. The particular island heritage I’m descended from being largely matriarchal as a result of centuries (or more) of the men going to sea, and when back to visit seemingly pretty content to leave things as they are, apart from generating a new addition to the family.
There’s such peace in being in a place both familiar and - looking for the word closest to the feeling here - well, ‘right’ I’d guess is nearest. Each of us best when surrounded in a configuration and filled with what we love and find most necessary.
If you’ve searched long enough (here years favor us) you know what that is, and know you are lucky. That’s what I hope for you, for Lucien, for everyone who needs it.
As Gilda Radner’s news reader character Roseann Roseannadanna loved to say “It’s always something!” when she got exasperated…with trump and the GOP, it’s always something…
Thanks for this, and for all your other columns for that matter. Stay healthy, please — we need you, you make a difference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Elder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger
Talk about continuity, we got that on here too today!
Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo (61 – c. 113), better known as Pliny the Younger (/ˈplɪni/),[1] was a lawyer, author, and magistrate of Ancient Rome. Pliny's uncle, Pliny the Elder, helped raise and educate him.
Pliny the Younger wrote hundreds of letters, of which 247 survived, and which are of great historical value. Some are addressed to reigning emperors or to notables such as the historian Tacitus. Pliny served as an imperial magistrate under Trajan (reigned 98–117),[2] and his letters to Trajan provide one of the few surviving records of the relationship between the imperial office and provincial governors.[3] ******
And this guy was on on that "Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD" thing!
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 – AD 79), called Pliny the Elder (/ˈplɪni/),[1] was a Roman author, naturalist, natural philosopher, naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic Naturalis Historia (Natural History), which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field.
Among Pliny's greatest works was the twenty-volume Bella Germaniae ("The History of the German Wars"), which is no longer extant. Bella Germaniae, which began where Aufidius Bassus' Libri Belli Germanici ("The War with the Germans") left off, was used as a source by other prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Tacitus may have used Bella Germaniae as the primary source for his work, De origine et situ Germanorum ("On the Origin and Situation of the Germans").[2]
Pliny the Elder died in AD 79 in Stabiae while attempting the rescue of a friend and his family from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.[3] *******
Lucian's columns provide a perspective we simply cannot find elsewhere, case closed, no appeals!
Very refreshing column. We need more things like this.
We are the healthiest wealthiest best sheltered best clothed best fed people in history and also in the right now and it ain't even close. Yet we have a collective bitch that just won't quit I swear to pete.
Yes. Never mind. Interesting. I had a similar experience today. This morning, my Colorectal surgeon told me things look pretty good up there. Any damage from the prostate cancer radiation was negligible and for one my age, (right behind you), Lucien, the hemohroids are small eneoughto not worry about. Hit the hardware store, three minutes down the hill an hour ago and all the good folks there are doing it all, just as you describe. A very pleasant day that should be what our days are, always. but, if it can be.....
It’s great that you can get state of the art healthcare living in a charming small town. As a physician I can relate to what you’re going through. As your contemporary I have my own battery of physicians. Keep soldiering on as we enjoy and learn from your work. And let’s hope that Medicare survives the next election.
If Medicare doesn't survive, the scope of the die-off will bury the funeral homes (so to apeak).
I, too, am grateful for the small town I live near. And my neighbors. Although most of them are GOP - I live in TN after all - we don't discuss politics, nor hold anyone's views against them. They see me every election seated at a table asking them for ID and, for primaries, which party ballot they want. We help out each other, share farm tools and equipment, garden bounty and good times. We all look past our own backyards to national issues, but they pale in comparison to the good people, friendly small businesses, good service and camaraderie found close to home.
You and Tracy are the best LT. Keep on trucking’ and enjoying life. You do so much to keep us on track
A really wonderful piece. A touch of "It's a wonderful life."
Rinse and repeat and smile.
I for one am glad you're alive. Be well, stay well--and kiss those kittens
Thank you for this. You could have been speaking for me in Memphis, TN. I often wonder how it is that the people around me are, for the large part, so very decent, and so many public figures so... well, you know.