Sunrise — 7:27, 7:31.

"Right now, I’m in trouble because the Jewish community is upset. But I cannot express this enough: No matter what you read..."

"... about that show in Boston, you will never see quotation marks around anything I said. They don’t know what I said. It’s all hearsay.... The other night, I said something about Palestine in Boston and got misquoted all over the world... And I will not repeat what I said." 

Said Dave Chappelle, at a show in Raleigh, N.C., quoted in "Dave Chappelle Laments ‘Nightmare’ Facing Israelis and Palestinians/The comedian, whose remarks about the Israel-Hamas war last week made headlines, returned to the subject at a show in North Carolina" (NYT).

"South Park" lands a shot at Disney.

That's just a clip, 2-and-a-half minutes... and the way to watch the whole thing now is to subscribe to Paramount.

If suddenly called on to recite Shakespeare from memory, how would you do?

Judi Dench was on Graham Norton last night to push her new book about her life and work with Shakespeare. After making the point we quote Shakespeare daily without knowing it, this happened: pic.twitter.com/CIhP39b4Bs

— Justin Sherin (@wychstreet) October 27, 2023

L.A. guy finds it stressful to order a "scooped" bagel in NYC.

It's TikTok, so I'm making a page break because I don't want to hear complaints:

"So a couple of years ago, when I was doing some late-summer decluttering of my daughter’s bedroom..."

"... and had to figure out what to do with the dolls she’d outgrown, the answer came to me like a disembodied whisper: 'October’s almost here. Place them out on the lawn.'... Doll decor can be as uncomplicated as dumping a pile of tattered and disfigured dolls on your lawn, because few things are weirder than an unexplained pile of dolls... I suggest letting your own twisted whims serve as your guide. This year, for example, I’ve toyed with sticking several dolls in my shrubbery, limbs akimbo...."

From "The Cheapest, Easiest, Freakiest Halloween Decor Is a Bunch of Old Dolls" (NY Magazine).

Your old trash + your twisted whims = Halloween.

Sunrise — 7:23.

"The American Civil War began in 1861, and people were 'dealing with so much death and warfare in unprecedented ways'..."

"... [said Mandi Shepp, 38, Lily Dale’s former library director and an archives coordinator at the State University of New York at Fredonia]. Many turned to Spiritualism to help cope with the mass sense of loss.... 'Spiritualism offers this very nice, comfortable ideology that these sons that were lost in battle aren’t really gone forever,' she said. In the 1870s, Spiritualists and Freethinkers camped out in what would become Lily Dale during the summertime.... The pursuit of mediumship was particularly appealing to women because 'it was a way for them to create independent careers for themselves and have a job at a time where it wasn’t really seen as a thing you could do,' said Ms. Shepp. Since women were already seen as 'the religious center of their household,' becoming a medium was more socially acceptable than following other career paths. Giving readings in public also allowed for women to speak independently and in front of audiences...."

 
From "This Community Welcomes Mediums, but First You Have to Prove Yourself/A lawsuit against the nonprofit that runs Lily Dale, a New York haven for Spiritualists, has put a spotlight on the hamlet where residents believe death does not exist" (NYT).

"I believe that scripture, the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority."

Said Mike Johnson, orating just before taking the oath as Speaker of the House:

Transcript. 

Excerpt:

"The hoedown was to celebrate the closing of the harvest season and thrown by Shani Mink, 29, the flower farmer and D.J...."

"...  and also a food-systems educator and advocate, and Peter Treiber Jr., 35, an artist and [grower of] things like bergamot and asparagus on Long Island’s North Fork, where the humble potato farms that once dominated the area are increasingly crowded out by vineyards and the weekend escapes of Manhattanites. Many of the farmers were Manhattanites who had escaped themselves. The oyster farmer, Will Peckham, 31, for example, left a job in corporate finance in the city to start West Robins Oyster Company, a mollusk farm in Peconic Bay about seven years ago. 'I thought it would be a really easy switch, because I had been through this super-grueling desk job in New York... I never knew how hard it could be.'... Sitting on a hay bale was Sara Hyman, 32, who left a job in human resources in 2017 in the city to work at Amber Waves. She seemed to be growing melancholy.... She’d fallen in love with the oyster farmer, Mr. Peckham, but found that with two farmers’ salaries, they were struggling to make ends meet on Long Island. This was her last season on a farm, she said, for good.... She took solace that at least one-half of the couple would keep growing things: Mr. Peckham will remain farming his oysters."

From "They Fled City Jobs. Now, It’s Time for Farm Prom. A group of young urbanites gave up desk jobs to become farmers. They have earned the harvest party" (NYT).

I'm sure Peckham is doing humor. Right?

Didn't we boomers all have back-to-the-land fantasies (and experiences!) back in the day? And didn't the NYT covered our madness too?

"Last Saturday in a small foundry, a man in heat-resistant attire pulled down his gold-plated visor, turned on his plasma torch and sliced into the face of Robert E. Lee."

"The hollow bronze head glowed green and purple as the flame burned through layers of patina and wax. Drops of molten red metal cascaded to the ground."

I'm reading the New York Times version of the story of the melting down of the Charlottesville Robert E. Lee statue.

The Washington Post had its piece up first, with similar ornate prose — "dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze.... a flash of bluish white light and orange sparks... seven long gashes into Lee’s severed head" — and I blogged it yesterday here. 

I avoid re-blogging something I've already blogged, but that precept doesn't save me from blogging the NYT piece, "The Most Controversial Statue in America Surrenders to the Furnace."  The WaPo article was written by reporters who observed the cutting and melting. The NYT's writer, Erin L. Thompson, also a first-hand witness, is a professor of art crime who has written a relevant book — "Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments" (Amazon link/commission earned).

So, though I am loath to read any more prose featuring deep gashes and glowing globs, I'm interested in Thompson's take on the ethical problem of destroying a work of art. We're talking about a statue that was already removed from its original position of honor in a public space, that could be moved somewhere else, perhaps to private grounds, to a museum, or into storage. In this case, a choice was made to melt the statue — Robert E. Lee and his horse — with some idea of using the bronze to cast a new sculpture, conveying the anti-Robert E. Lee point of view.

The forest floor after the rain.

Talk about anything you like in the comments.

"Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, marries Riley Hawk, son of Tony Hawk, in ceremony officiated by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe."

Metafilter discusses this event, saying things like: "The bride and groom are 31 and 30 respectively. You cannot fathom how old this headline makes me feel in my bones" and "My 46-year-old self, realizing that Frances is four years older than her father was when he died, is going to be sitting in the semi-dark this evening, listening to old albums and thinking about things."

What movie did I watch?

 

ADDED: Marcus Carman identified the actor: "That's Cornel Wilde."

That caused Yancey Ward to guess: "Well, if that is Cornel Wilde, then a clown makes me think 'Greatest Show on Earth.'"

Ha ha. Does that look like a circus setting? Does Wilde seem like a circus person there?

Then Quaestor got it right: "Leave Her to Heaven."

Think what you will about this movie, but here's my description: A woman marries a man because he looks like her father, and though she's incredibly beautiful, the new husband would rather sit around typing novels and go swimming with his much younger brother and sing folk songs with the hired man than have sex with his wife. It's not a comedy.

"SOMEWHERE IN THE U.S. SOUTH — It was a choice to melt down Robert E. Lee. But it would have been a choice to keep him intact, too."

"So the statue of the Confederate general that once stood in Charlottesville — the one that prompted the deadly 'Unite the Right' rally in 2017 — was now being cut into fragments and dropped into a furnace, dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze.... With a flash of bluish white light and orange sparks, a trio of foundry workers carved seven long gashes into Lee’s severed head. 'It’s a better sculpture right now than it’s ever been,' one of the metal-casters said. 'We’re taking away what it meant for some people and transforming it.'"

Flowery prose in The Washington Post celebrating the destruction of a work of art — "Charlottesville’s Lee statue meets its end, in a 2,250-degree furnace Melted down in secret, the divisive Confederate monument will be turned into a new piece of public art."

"[O]n Saturday the museum went ahead with its plan in secret at this small Southern foundry, in a town and state The Washington Post agreed not to name because of participants’ fears of violence... They made arrangements for Lee to be melted down while they started collecting ideas from city residents for that new sculpture.... Some [of the witnesses to the melting] said the statue was being destroyed. Others called it a restoration. Depending on who you asked, the bronze was being reclaimed, disrupted, or redeemed to a higher purpose. It was a grim act of justice and a celebration all in one...."

"The welfare society is fundamentally a community, which is based on a mutual trust that we all contribute. All that is being seriously challenged by parallel societies."

Said Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, quoted in "Denmark Aims a Wrecking Ball at ‘Non-Western’ Neighborhoods/A government program is using demolition and relocation to remake neighborhoods with immigrants, poverty or crime" (NYT). 

The term "parallel societies" refers to "segregated enclaves where immigrants do not participate in the wider society or learn Danish, even as they benefit from the country’s generous welfare system."  

The government is getting rid of more than 4,000 public housing units.