"[Yayoi] Kusama was... part of the artistic avant-garde. Her death, at 97, is a cold reminder that the avant-garde no longer exists...."

"It was an attempt to see the world afresh. For many of its leading figures, from the Impressionists in the 1870s to conceptual artists a century later, this also meant proposing new and better solutions to the problem of how to be and how to live together. These proposals, many times rooted in sympathy and love, were presented as alternatives to the political structures and market logic that had so often led to war, exploitation, hopelessness, and suffering. Even when attempts to turn these imagined alternatives into reality failed—and often dismally—the avant-garde stood in a clear relationship to modernity’s traumas. It was like the whistle cap in the spout of a boiling kettle: both a release of suppressed pressures (psychic and cultural) and an alarm. But society got sick of hearing the alarm. And the kettle got tired of whistling...."

Writes Sebastian Smee, in "The Limits of Yayoi Kusama's Infinity/The visionary artist once challenged ways of seeing—until she was seen by everyone" (Atlantic gift link).

"Kusama... talked about her repeating dots as an expression of an inclination toward 'self-obliteration' —an urge to dissolve into forever-expanding patterns.... The artist—an adorable maker of giant spotted pumpkins who lived in a psychiatric institution—became beyond criticism. You could no more criticize her than you could a grandmother giving a teddy bear to an orphan.... Successful branding is exactly what art at its best is not: a form of general seduction rather than specific engagement...."

"Through much of the 19th century, noncitizen voting expanded alongside U.S. territorial gains..."

"(the government offered the vote to Europeans who helped dispossess Indians and colonize the West). But in the mid- to late 1800s, immigrants started to become scapegoats for changes that native-born Americans saw as threatening.... Confederates banned immigrant suffrage during the Civil War because they thought migrating Europeans were anti-slavery, while northern states rolled back voting rights in reaction to waves of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century, which they associated with crime. By 1926, no state let noncitizens vote in federal elections. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, making noncitizen voting in federal elections a crime...."

Writes Zak Cheney-Rice, in "The Fear of Noncitizen Voting/For Trump, it is the death of America. For liberals, 'Woke 1' excess. Why is noncitizen voting so terrifying?" (New York Magazine).

My MAGA status expires in 5 minutes.

Note: I have made a political contribution approximately twice in my entire life and not even once in this century. I would never respond positively to a political text message, but obviously some people do. I'm pestered with material like this multiple times a day, but I'm choosing this one to blog because "Your MAGA status expires in 5 MINUTES" takes the cake.

"That sucker is open. The Iranian response is very mild. They don't want us to go back at them. That's the whole ball game. The rest doesn't matter."

Said President Trump to Axios, quoted in "'That sucker is open': U.S. gains the upper hand in the battle for Hormuz."

After the MOU fell apart, the military worked to reopen the strait unilaterally. The effort included several elements: Together with the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. military task force started guiding ships through the southern channel of the strait while giving them air cover and intercepting Iranian drone and cruise missile attacks. A two-week U.S. bombing campaign significantly undercut the IRGC's capacity to attack ships crossing the strait. A mine-sweeping operation involved Navy divers, Navy SEALs, underwater and surface drones, and private contractors to detect and neutralize the mines. A blockade of Iranian ports was restored.... 

The Strait of Trump. 

Sunrise.

Oh, no! Now, we have to call Lake Ontario "Lake America."

I'm reading "Trump signs order renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America, escalating Canada feud/President Donald Trump called Canadian officials 'nasty people' and said the country 'has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly.'"

“We filed all the necessary papers, documents, everything else,” Trump said. “We notified all the various people that we have to notify. So we’ve done everything that you have to do. And this is official, effective immediately.”

"A man who parked a truck carrying a guillotine in the heart of Washington was arrested by the United States Capitol Police on Tuesday...."

"The police arrested Philan-Tam-Duy Le, 35, of Julian, Calif., for 'being in possession of the guillotine,' the department said in the statement. He was charged with carrying a dangerous weapon. 'It did have a real blade,' the police’s public information office said.... The man had driven to the nation’s capital from California, the police said. The truck was parked not far from the Library of Congress and other prominent Washington buildings.... It was unclear whether Mr. Le had driven the truck across the country with the guillotine on it, a journey that could have been more than 2,500 miles."

From "Man Accused of Bringing Guillotine to D.C. Is Arrested/Philan-Tam-Duy Le, 35, of Julian, Calif., was taken into custody for 'being in possession of the guillotine,' the police said" (NYT).

Is "being in possession of a guillotine" a crime? There's this at Law Commentary:

D.C. law bans several weapons by name, including machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, switchblade knives, and knuckles. It also covers other dangerous weapons when someone possesses them with the intent to use them unlawfully against another person. A guillotine is not specifically listed.... Prosecutors must establish that it qualifies as a dangerous weapon under the law and address the required intent....

D.C.’s highest local court applied that rule last year in Carrington v. United States, throwing out a weapons conviction involving an umbrella because prosecutors had not shown that it was likely to cause death or serious injury in the way it was used....

 The police asked Le if it worked and he said, "Yeah, it’s the real deal, man."

I went back to see the APT production of "The Chairs" again.

Hard to get tickets at this point, but go here. It's not impossible. What a fantastic performance! I don't know that I've ever heard a more enthusiastic standing ovation.

How often have you gone back to see the same theatrical production? I can only think of 2 other occasions, both in this theater (the indoor theater at APT). 

"I can’t count how many messages I’ve received over time about my appearance. Especially that I have ugly teeth and thin hair."

"The fact that I have an ugly 'wart' on my nose and good advice on getting Botox. I’m fine with my body. Such as it is, when you are a woman approaching 50."

Wrote Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who got a text that asked "Do you want to get that little spot on your nose fixed?"

She's quoted in "'I’m Fine With My Body': Danish Leader Responds to Unsolicited Beauty Advice/Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had just returned from Ukraine when she received a message from a plastic surgeon asking if she wanted to fix her nose" (NYT gift link).

The Times makes this a discussion of the pressure on women to meet beauty standards. I think that's an important issue. I'd like to see it tied to the massive celebration of Dolly Parton, who went to an immense amount of trouble to manifest her ideal of highly exaggerated feminine beauty.

But what I want to talk about is the facial phenomenon often called a "wart." First of all, it's not a wart!

Devilish imagery.

 

That's at the top of the WaPo home page.

The red glow of the photograph is transfixing. If you can tear your eyes away from it and look to the text, you see "Mike Collins" and "KKK and Nazi." Emotional tainting accomplished. There's little potential for your mind to travel on to pull out "former... staffer" and "what appear to be," let alone to click through to investigate whether there's really anything to damage Collins.

Clicking gets you to this article (gift link):

"Reading Count of Monte Cristo in One Sitting."

Its a TikTok thing. I'm seeing 12 videos in this group. Check it out. Reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" is a thing these days, but why? It's super-long, so people have been avoiding it, but word has got out that it's a very exciting, gripping read. If you like — or think you might like — video of people reading, click through. It really is people reading — reading "The Count of Monte Cristo."

By the way, I have not read "The Count of Monte Cristo." It was my father's favorite book, or so he often said, often conjoined with the opinion that he hated "The Return of the Native." I have read "The Return of the Native" and 4 other Thomas Hardy novels. My son Chris recently read "The Count of Monte Cristo," though his main reading project is biographies of U.S. Presidents.

This post was inspired by a comment from Jaq on my previous post, which is about the decline of childhood reading. Jaq wrote: "Just bought The Count of Monte Christo [sic] through your link, and there it sits, like a cinder block on my coffee table, will I finish it? Now I guess I’ll have to, but it will hardly fit in my hip pocket the way I always sported one as a teenager. You can’t blame kids though, we are the ones who invented the crack, I mean smartphones."

And here's the latest photograph from a presidential biography sent to me by Chris. The scene is JFK's reception for black leaders on the 100-year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation:

"Looking back, I grew up in the last great age of childhood reading. Juvenile bookworms..."

"... were still a regular sight in the early Noughties. You could glimpse our kind on trains and in cafés: wan, bespectacled and dreamy, trailing after our parents, clutching our grubby, sticky copies of The Chronicles of Narnia or Northern Lights. It was the era of Philip Pullman, of Horrible Histories, of Artemis Fowl. Above all, it was the age of Harry Potter, with its feverish midnight queues of miniature witches and wizards up past their bedtime to get their hands on the latest instalment (my sister and I went to the cavernous, warehouse-sized Borders bookshop at Silverlink Retail Park wearing bin bags for Hogwarts capes).... [A]s the age of print fades away and the angry, distractible age of the smartphone dawns, I think we find ourselves facing a post-literate world that will resemble the pre-literate world: less democratic, less rational and less enlightened...."

Writes James Marriott in "The 36 books that changed my life/An obsession with words got the Times columnist through his eccentric childhood and his parents’ divorce. Now 33, he has written a book — in praise of reading, of course" (London Times).

I don't know if that link will work for you to see the list, but it's an excellent list. I've read many of the books, and I was motivated to buy one of them on the spot — "The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous." Another — "In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England." — I would have bought if there had been an audiobook. 

Marriott's new book is "The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society," and I will buy that too when it comes out in October, assuming there's an audiobook. There are some things I know I need to walk to read. 

If you use any of those links to buy a book, I receive a commission, and I'm telling you that because I believe that transparency is required, but in fact, I only link to books that I wanted to mention anyway.

Sunrise.

"He was the world’s most mature 12-year-old. He had a fantastic case of arrested development; he could sense immediately, 'This is what kids will love.'"

Said Art Spiegelman, quoted in "Len Brown, the Kidlike Creator of ‘Mars Attacks,’ Dies at 84/He brought a juvenile creative sensibility to the Topps Chewing Gum company, where he was able to unerringly predict what would appeal to adolescents" (NYT gift link).

The terrifying global invasion ['Mars Attacks'] played out in 55 vivid cards. But parents’ complaints about the gory incidents that were depicted — a dog being destroyed, for example, as a boy “cried out in horror” — kept them from being distributed nationally.... 

His many projects in the 1960s included helping to create a card set devoted to Soupy Sales, the mischievous TV personality. During the 1970s and ’80s, Mr. Brown was part of the team that created two major sticker series: “Wacky Packages” mocked consumer products, parodying them with names like Cap’n Crud, Jolly Mean Giant and Ratz Crackers; “Garbage Pail Kids” spoofed Cabbage Patch Kids, the wildly popular, round-faced dolls that came with adoption papers.

"I was hesitant in that, if it worked, it might be a difficult image to shake off. But then, really, I’ve always thought it wasn’t worth doing unless you took a risk, really. So I just took the risk."

Said Tim Curry, quoted in "Tim Curry, Star of ‘Rocky Horror’ and Much More, Dies at 80/The actor’s gift for garish eccentricity was indelibly appropriate for the outlandish, cross-dressing mad scientist Frank-N-Furter" (NYT gift link).

Here's Curry — who had a stroke in 2012 — discussing his roles:

"Even as Trump’s Standing Slips, He Slingshots a Political Novice to Victory."

Headline at the NYT for the story about Darline Graham's victory in yesterday's primary runoff.

You can see the story the Times wants to tell, even as the facts on the ground don't line up exactly right:

Some of the luster had seemed to come off Mr. Trump’s political brand in recent weeks. His approval ratings have drooped, his party’s midterm outlook has darkened and his chosen picks in several races for governor and the House have fallen short.

ADDED: He slingshots her. It's like something Wile E. Coyote would do to himself to cross a canyon. Or what the Lost Boys did to Robin Williams:

The Mythbusters tried it: