Althouse: At the Sunrise Cafe....

January 5, 2021

At the Sunrise Cafe....

... you can talk about whatever you want.

94 comments:

Whiskeybum said...: Bought a bottle of “the Saint” bourbon direct from the distillery today in St. Augustine. A bit pricey at $200, but really a unique small batch blend with very limited production. 107 proof... I’d like to get into it now, but I’m saving it for cold nights when I get back north.; 1/5/21, 7:40 PM
narciso said...: Carried over

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/american-elite-tom-friedman; 1/5/21, 7:44 PM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: Why are Sunsets beautiful?

Link to 4m video; 1/5/21, 7:44 PM
Inga said...: These foggy mornings are creating beautiful soft mornings suns and skies. The trees the other morning were amazing with the rime ice. Always thought it was called hoar frost, but nope, it’s rime ice.; 1/5/21, 7:45 PM
Ann Althouse said...: Rime on all the trees this morning too.; 1/5/21, 7:48 PM
Howard said...: There's still a little snow on the hills I hike/run near the house. The boys were out fishing and playing hockey on the neighborhood pond this morning. Just enough snow on the trails to put Yak Trax on the running shoes. No snow in the forecast for the next week :^(; 1/5/21, 8:01 PM
Howard said...: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/05/well/family/well-challenge-pandemic-bubble.html

I'm doing this with my masters swimming group. We formed a hiking and snowshoeing club after the pond was too cold. We plan on doing Plein Aire painting in the spring.; 1/5/21, 8:03 PM
Breezy said...: All the geese!; 1/5/21, 8:15 PM
gadfly said...: The Trump administration is a thoroughgoing failure on the president’s own terms: The administration has managed to reorder worldwide trade relations — by witlessly facilitating the creation of a new trade pact between China and the European Union, an alliance of the world’s second- and third-largest economies at the expense of the one that remains, for now, the largest. China is in a stronger geopolitical position today than it was in 2016, and the United States is diminished. Trump focused on the trade deficit, which is the wrong policy, but he can’t even get that right: Our trade deficits are larger than ever. On immigration, there is no big, beautiful wall paid for by Mexico, nor has there been any broad reform of U.S. immigration law. The president spent the critical early days of the coronavirus epidemic trying to tweet the virus into submission because he feared a declining stock market would hurt his reelection chances. He has uttered more lies himself than can be counted, and he sent his minions out to tell countless more. He has dishonored, disfigured, and debased everything he has touched. It has been a shameful spectacle ~Kevin D. Williamson, National Review; 1/5/21, 8:15 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/5/21, 8:35 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: Bought a bottle of “the Saint” bourbon direct from the distillery today in St. Augustine

Watch For Fhe Sign Of The Saint, He Will Be Back!; 1/5/21, 8:36 PM
Fernandinande said...: Woke fakenews stories,
# 1. The Guardian, July 6: "Upward-thrusting buildings ejaculating into the sky' – do cities have to be so sexist?"

"Toxic masculinity is built into the fabric of our urban spaces, writes Leslie Kern, author of new book Feminist City. And the results aren’t just divisive – they can be lethal."; 1/5/21, 8:38 PM
John henry said...: Ann Althouse said...

Rime on all the trees this morning too

Thank you Ann, I learned a new word because of you.

Not rime, I know that one but it is a bit rare so glad to see it used.

The word you learned me is "gloss"

Your use of rime caused me to look up Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Wikipedia mentioned that the 2nd Ed. Had a number of glosses in the body. Click on glosses in the article and I find that it is a marginal explanation of a word. A collection of glosses is called a "glossary"

I can't believe that in 70+ trips around the sun I've never run across that before.

"Rime" is also an archaic spelling of "rhyme" which is how Coleridge used it. I thought it might refer to a rime of ice or salt. But no.

John Henry; 1/5/21, 8:40 PM
The Godfather said...: @John Henry: In what must be a dozen or more years reading comments here, this is the first time I've known something before you did. "Gloss".; 1/5/21, 9:11 PM
narciso said...: How to make the sausage

https://stream.org/when-dr-death-came-for-me-the-black-art-of-political-opposition-research/; 1/5/21, 9:18 PM
Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...: "Fweedom!!" -- Pwesident Hawiss, from her book "The Lies We Told"

Going to stroll around DC tomorrow-- what to wear?

...ah-- the vest with the stab plates? Or 'black bloc'??; 1/5/21, 9:34 PM
narciso said...: China arrests all the opposition candidates in hong kong.; 1/5/21, 9:36 PM
narciso said...: https://mobile.twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/status/1346655461748125704; 1/5/21, 9:40 PM
I'm Not Sure said...: "China arrests all the opposition candidates in hong kong."

We're more civilized here. We only hassle politicians while they're in office and wait for their term to end before moving on to plans for jail.; 1/5/21, 9:42 PM
D. said...: "Do not be afraid" JP II

http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1978/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19781022_inizio-pontificato.html; 1/5/21, 9:53 PM
narciso said...: Interesting

https://mobile.twitter.com/kanekoathegreat?lang=en; 1/5/21, 9:55 PM
D. said...: "5. Brothers and sisters, do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power. Help the Pope and all those who wish to serve Christ and with Christ's power to serve the human person and the whole of mankind. Do not be afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. To his saving power open the boundaries of States, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development. Do not be afraid. Christ knows "what is in man". He alone knows it. "; 1/5/21, 9:58 PM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjCM_X3xpRM

I've lived all over the world, I've lived every place; 1/5/21, 10:27 PM
narciso said...: Even when they come to the righf conclusion

https://mobile.twitter.com/HansMahncke/status/1346665277099008000; 1/5/21, 10:31 PM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KByxC7B9WH0

We're here - how surprising!; 1/5/21, 10:35 PM
Lewis said...: I meant this, 'We Are The Dead'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUflIrTSwK8; 1/5/21, 10:39 PM
Lewis said...: Nativity
“Notre crime est del’homme” Lamartine. ‘L’homme.’

Everything stained: The tea stains the cup,
The cup stains the counter, the foot stains the snow,
The moon stains the air. Everything said.
I am told this is not an original thought.
Below, what was forgotten and cold,
As if it were not merely, actually true,
There was a birth, the unthinking was done
And this messy mix of snow and blood
Produced a word that meant ‘goodbye’ or ‘hello’,
Unsorting a chaos into ‘this one and that’
And saying “Insofar as I am here, that is there.”

Or if they are ‘mad’, we are ‘mad’, since
Neither they nor we can prove the obvious:
That Johnson kicked a stone but Berkeley
Was already dead, that the delusion suffices
To make a few words bring a cup of tea
And that, without God, preserving the hollow
Takes so long to say, everyman
Could seek to find
Putrefaction of his mother,
Of his brother, of his kind.; 1/5/21, 10:43 PM
Lewis said...: I obviously know to much about Dante and purgatory. Can I confess something, Anne - I'm terrified, not of death, that would be coarse and stupid, but of Judgement. "What have you done with your life?" "Nothing."; 1/5/21, 10:56 PM
Lewis said...: Witch reminds me of a Woody Allen joke

"Sex, without love, is an empty experience"

"As experiences go, it's one of the best!"; 1/5/21, 11:03 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: Think you dropped a word there..; 1/5/21, 11:10 PM
Lewis said...: If only Allen Ginsburg was alive - he would say "Shut the fuck up - don't bully my friend - why?"; 1/5/21, 11:14 PM
Lewis said...: Churchy LaFemme, which word?; 1/5/21, 11:16 PM
Gospace said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/5/21, 11:23 PM
Lewis said...: Very English "that a few words would bring a cup of tea" - how, Anne, can I translate that, make it universal? Or should I even be thinking, maybe more personal is better? I always think of Propertius or Ezra Pounds version of it (I know you're not like me nor am I asking you to be - just let me do it and we'll be ok - I'm polite and good) where, he said, I throw it on the pillow and sigh. Women! My poetry is stronger than bronze ('Area Perrinis') but bronze tarnishes.; 1/5/21, 11:39 PM
Gospace said...: I would never say anything like this, and of course, never heard anyone I know say it, but at a restaurant closed for in person dining because it's suddenly in a dangerous orange zone, from a customer who drove there to eat in not aware of the status change:

Cust: "Someone needs to shoot our idiot governor!"
Employee: "I totally agree with you."

Shocked looks from people overhearing it: There weren't any.
Nods in agreement: many.

Like I said, I would never say anything like that- but were it happen- my flag won't be going to half mast in mourning.

It's possible to hear such serious grumblings in any takeout line. Riots don't traditionally happen in winter. Looks like Dictator Cuomo plans on locking the state up through summer. I don't think summer will be peaceful.; 1/5/21, 11:44 PM
Churchy LaFemme: said...: Churchy LaFemme, which word?

"As experiences go, it's one of the best!" ==> "As empty experiences go, it's one of the best!"; 1/5/21, 11:48 PM
Lewis said...: Never Pretty

Poets are never pretty
after thirty-five. look at Auden
Who might have said, like Socrates,
“I have mastered all the worst things
I am full of.” Disingenuously, of course.; 1/5/21, 11:48 PM
Lewis said...: Justice

The words are gone – the impotence of the poet.
I am no Jonah – do not wish to declare
A dead humanity – do not wish to declare
Apocalypse, Armageddon, holocaust.
Merely to weak to declare another’s wrong
My own so harsh, so bitter, so just.; 1/5/21, 11:49 PM
Lewis said...: All I want is her - the mother of my kid, the mother of my soul. This year my mum died - at 54 - of cancer of the oesophagus - I'm 53 but will be 54 - I want it to mean something - but I'm a liar, I know that - how much I curse myself for just being alive. I'm an idiot. But, buck up, Lewis, be brave. Show that your not merely not merely an idiot.

Sorry, Anne, you're beautiful - forgive me.; 1/6/21, 12:05 AM
Lewis said...: She died in '94 at the age 54; 1/6/21, 12:08 AM
Lewis said...: She was the most extraordinary woman, ever - my mum - brave, intelligent, beautiful. She was 4 foot 7 but she knew how to sock the men out of the park. She had 7 kids and each time she wanted a girl - herself! - but each time nature gave her a boy. Imagine - this tiny girl and out of her came us. She hated us. If I was, at that time, a man, I would have helped her. But I wasn't. As Peter Green says "Oh Well".; 1/6/21, 12:23 AM
Lewis said...: Churchy lafemme, you corrected me! Without you I'd be hanging on a rope and it would be around my kneck. Thank you! Thank you!; 1/6/21, 12:34 AM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yq-Fw7C26Y

I can't help about the shape I'm in
I can't sing, I ain't pretty and my legs are thin
But don't ask me what I think of you
I might not give the answer that you want me to
Oh, well
Now when I talked to God I knew he'll understand
He said, "Sit by me and I'll be your guiding hand
But don't ask me what I think of you
I might not give the answer that you want me to
Oh, well.; 1/6/21, 12:42 AM
Lewis said...: Me and Peter, we talk to God and he talks to us; 1/6/21, 12:46 AM
Lewis said...: Blue Eyes

I

I will not tell how I tried
To sing her into my arms.
Neither bending forward nor backward will do.
A murderous humiliation.
And what was bright has been lost now.

A poet is a wretched man. As if
we were stepped on and began to sing.
But death must make even
The most perverse silent. bored
With all this glamour and prose.
I merely want what is true.

II

A smile, two eyes so beautiful
I could only die. The burnt, racial
Stain of the brown. leaves of autumn.
And, in winter, dirty beneath the snow.
You found I was not all white.
just on of those slaves. not an Angel.
So you went. I love you.; 1/6/21, 12:57 AM
Lewis said...: Chance Of Blue II

I suppose, to confess, I always wanted
My sky to be blue. With some cloud,
To prefer us to change. A chance
Beautiful. Somewhere in the rocks
Looking towards the shore and knowing there
That family had a picnic and those, at a late hour,
Were rescued from a summer shower.
And because the sun must shine (it must)
There was someone, the children that picked seashells
And wondered and compared and forever were told
“The sea is a dangerous monster.”
And were happy, there were some people, old perhaps,
Sharing their unflasked, metallic tea,
Trying to gather the sun, who said
“I love you.” “I, too, my dear.”
“Isn’t it beautiful>” “My love, it is beautiful.”
“Aren’t we happy?” “Happiness is what we are.”; 1/6/21, 1:00 AM
Rt41Rebel said...: @Lewis

That's one of my favorite songs, I made a point of learning to play it on guitar back when I was starting to play. I'm amazed that it isn't more known, I've been out many times and requested it from live acoustical performers, and I don't recall a single time that they knew the song.; 1/6/21, 1:03 AM
Rt41Rebel said...: I was referring to Oh Well.; 1/6/21, 1:04 AM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpPzAkdXATU&list=RDRpPzAkdXATU&start_radio=1; 1/6/21, 1:15 AM
Lewis said...: To be finished would be a relief.; 1/6/21, 1:20 AM
Lewis said...: Do you remember? March

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GWsdqCYvgw&list=RDRpPzAkdXATU&index=2; 1/6/21, 1:57 AM
Clyde said...: The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- W.B. Yeats, 1919; 1/6/21, 3:53 AM
Lewis said...: To Hannah Arrant

O, Hannah, there is always this:
Between the past and the future
There is this: dead? No, but
Wanting this ‘past’, always hoping
(‘Killed by hope’) for merely a summer:
A field, a forest, the wilder, wilder flowers.; 1/6/21, 4:15 AM
Lewis said...: Rt1Rebel, I missed what you said but thanks. "Oh well"; 1/6/21, 4:28 AM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ag8DkipmQ; 1/6/21, 4:30 AM
Qwinn said...: Georgia election thread removed intentionally?; 1/6/21, 4:38 AM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpPzAkdXATU&list=RDRpPzAkdXATU&start_radio=1&fbclid=IwAR3JWHp7FbgTQaGE87Cqk3dsq_mI5X3Ooj4DmqlhkBYPdgcbAfpRfmYF5Hc; 1/6/21, 4:41 AM
Big Mike said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 1/6/21, 5:21 AM
Big Mike said...: @Qwinn, as of just now it’s the same nasty comment thread from the election post, but attached to a post about cooking with poisonous Christmas trees.; 1/6/21, 5:27 AM
Rusty said...: Well. That was fun while it lasted. The gloating chuckleheads have no idea what they have wrought. Like all preening idiots they think they have broken the code and have a new idea. The market is going to look like a rough country road.
Have fun kids. I'm out to stir up some trouble and get some of my own back.
Later.; 1/6/21, 5:32 AM
Lewis said...: Woman, woman, I love thee, I love thee - next to that wall we kissed and for one minute we were alive; 1/6/21, 6:26 AM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYfUFRYa3HU

I sing, I sing for you beauty (Krasna); 1/6/21, 6:57 AM
Lewis said...: Trying To Listen

“Take the opportunity to listen”
And, though all the chords
Had forced their disgust,
I tried: but there was merely
A laziness, a fallacy of sound
Which toured that mid-ear
Of safe distrust, of distance kept
Because no distance could be understood.
So it was presumed we began
With only an undisciplined cry
And, searching for that word,
The ‘honest genuine’, the strict
Discipline was ‘do not try’.
Those ‘triers’ who where impotent
And strange and finally excluded.; 1/6/21, 9:30 AM
Lewis said...: I just realised - I'm a fucking good writer!; 1/6/21, 9:47 AM
Lewis said...: Morecambe

Precise terms, correctly said
Might point a moral to be had:
The eviscerate beast will be fed
With the inane, the hapless or the sad,

The little joke become universal
Till cosmic gizzards grin,
A gods fading, pathetic appal
Irking some tummy ache of sin,

But we, who ‘know’ exactly when
The anti-Christ and Christ shall meet,
Bitterly say ‘I love’, again,
Hanker for the canker of defeat,

Leathery, inept, miss hued,
Burnt, blathered but staring at the sun
Our being brave merely crude,
Our families broken before they’ve begun:

A wino whine like Ovid-On-The-Sea,
We must be exiles, perpetually.; 1/6/21, 9:52 AM
Lewis said...: A Winter Poem

i

My right hand in her left hand – so they say.
Those best word we had and yet neither
God nor man could join us. But this
Is pointless, to see one smile and break and be angry
Because you could never tell what it meant.
To want the resurrection, now – why disturb
The dead? We only joked because we enjoyed
The others pain. Or guilt

ii

If I see you again and every night
Am I then better? Will I become good?
Will I love their souls, even broken?
Or laugh in a new birth? I am a bitter, bitter man,
A hollow world that falls away, a sun
That has left me in darkness, the vision
Of even others happiness I must decry.
O god, O world, , O woman – if one smile
Could disturb these stone why not
Again and again and again?

iii

Ten thousand cuts, ten thousand blows, a beating
And then to stand all night, to stare at a corner,
To joke, maybe, with your friendly betrayers
And then watch them march into death, your left
With a word, like a photograph, which says “This face is harmless.”
I don’t wish to be in this world. You wish to be
Unhappy, don’t you? You have no right to that.

iv

Dirty and unshared and in a miserable room
Winter has written our desire upon this wall
Because I am what you, perhaps, must want,
This writer. A liar, true, a thief, also, a pornographer,
A self-hater, a wanter of mans destruction,
All these things and more.
Love which bringeth understanding.

v

The eloquence a persuasion of God –
To ‘believe’, I suppose, was what I meant.
Or not to believe but to know. Because an Angel
Pressed against me. I felt his lips.

vi

No joy talking to oneself, being alone,
No joy, again, in sex, no joy in delight
Over a face seen again, no morning
Waking because you had kissed me,
No love in tears or smiles or that said “I love you.”
No love for me or you or this morning,
Just damnation, the coldest fire that could ever burn.

vii

If the streets were colder, only colder,
I could force back a time when hand in hand
I caught something of your smile.
Extremes, they say, can produce illusion
Which I could grasp, never let go
Of your presence, however mad.

viii

Chalk on the pavement
Water is a sore destroyer
Whatever trace people leave
The city will illuminate
The very same world
Even on the last day
The pavement will be laid
Sorrow or joy do not counter
What is permanent
This the same rain
That rained before

Choose merely now, then,
Forget our yesterday,
The darling face, the nay
Against belief, remember
The street must return
Shouts that defy or plead
And you, before you sleep,
Must try to make room
For tomorrow
By listening to this rain,
Today.; 1/6/21, 9:55 AM
Lewis said...: There's no way I'd be like that? Ever!; 1/6/21, 5:24 PM
Lewis said...: I fear, this end of the year, we'll have killed ourselves for the WRONG REASON.; 1/6/21, 5:32 PM
Lewis said...: Anne, I cant empathise with italics - sorry.; 1/6/21, 5:35 PM
Lewis said...: 'empathesise' I mean I can't make clear what is foolish - I know the word but I can't recall it, ok?; 1/6/21, 5:45 PM
Lewis said...: He's singing 'so je to mezaname' what is in between us (don’t worry, no 'us'!) I think about you, a lot.; 1/6/21, 9:03 PM
Lewis said...: Not in the 'wrong way' - just 'cause you are.; 1/6/21, 9:08 PM
Lewis said...: 'enthasise'!; 1/6/21, 9:10 PM
Lewis said...: I wish I could translate but it's all about sleep - or not about sleep but about love which is the same thing. A syncopia. Hey, wake up, your in love(; 1/6/21, 9:19 PM
Lewis said...: What is pitiable is how inefectual it is - I mean, if you 'storm' parliament, have it!; 1/6/21, 10:03 PM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7-Apk3tcjE; 1/6/21, 10:11 PM
Lewis said...: And you know whats it about? effing pigeons; 1/6/21, 10:14 PM
Lewis said...: 'Holu bi dum' pigeon’s come home/ Which, of course, it,s absurd. Pigeons, nasty. The idiot that bbehaves. I can't.; 1/6/21, 10:27 PM
Lewis said...: RT1Reble - Yep, I've always loved Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac - one of my favourite albums is they're live sessions in Chicago, Chess records.; 1/7/21, 3:28 AM
Lewis said...: 'thier' - sorry Anne.; 1/7/21, 3:29 AM
Lewis said...: You know Teresa Wright? So beautiful, so right. That was what my mum looked like.; 1/7/21, 4:43 AM
Lewis said...: Hitchcock - shadow of a doubted; 1/7/21, 4:45 AM
Lewis said...: And you, so pretty, how is that possible? Nothing is possible. Like the knock on the door - who's that? Oh, fucking Paul Mcarteney.; 1/7/21, 4:56 AM
Lewis said...: It's always fucking Paul McCartney!; 1/7/21, 5:00 AM
Lewis said...: And, by the way, you sados - we lost. Pick up your bed and walk.; 1/7/21, 5:02 AM
Lewis said...: And weep; 1/7/21, 5:17 AM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K3uAlyNL5o; 1/7/21, 5:39 AM
Lewis said...: Sid Viscious - isn't he sexy?; 1/7/21, 5:41 AM
Lewis said...: As a man - being objective - he's fucking sexy!; 1/7/21, 5:43 AM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnUfXYGtT5Q; 1/7/21, 6:26 AM
Lewis said...: I know terror. I suffer it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjDg3lQGmRs; 1/8/21, 11:16 PM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjDg3lQGmRs; 1/8/21, 11:18 PM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmAVyowgDVE; 1/8/21, 11:32 PM
Lewis said...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGI4RwY-frc; 1/8/21, 11:55 PM