Monday, June 11, 2018

By the Vinegar Works



  • OK, pretend this mountain laurel blooming on Catoctin yesterday is the photo of Merkel et al v Trump, already iconic, yesterday's baking soda & vinegar cocktail.
  • Goodness! sweet hot take's effervescence!
  • Here's a mountain laurel yesterday on Catoctin: 









IN RESPONSE TO THE RUMOR THAT THE OLDEST WHOREHOUSE IN WHEELING, WEST VIRGINIA HAS BEEN CONDEMNED

James Wright

I will grieve alone,
As I strolled alone, years ago, down along
The Ohio shore.
I hid in the hobo jungle weeds
Upstream from the sewer main,
Pondering, gazing.
   
I saw, down river,
At Twenty-third and Water Streets
By the vinegar works,
The doors open in early evening.
Swinging their purses, the women
Poured down the long street to the river
And into the river.
   
I do not know how it was
They could drown every evening.
What time near dawn did they climb up the other shore,
Drying their wings?
  
For the river at Wheeling, West Virginia,
Has only two shores:
The one in hell, the other
In Bridgeport, Ohio.
   
And nobody would commit suicide, only
To find beyond death
Bridgeport, Ohio.



6 comments:

  1. I had read that Bourdain piece, too. I get quite impatient with people who don't understand the difference between someone having a stance, a position, a cultural identity and actual political propaganda; who don't understand the difference between cultural interaction and having an actual viceroy on site. I cannot help taking my cultural identity with me when I travel; it's who I am: that's not propaganda. Propaganda is an organized effort to pound the same lie over and over on a populace. If a TV show plays in Zanzibar, it's not imperialism—the latter is when one country (think Great Britain in the 19th Century) appoints its own British rulers over those chosen by the local populace. The sort of hysterical "criticism" that popaganda article employs is simply bad faith.

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    1. I should start by saying that 95% of what I know about Bourdain I've learned only since his suicide, so I do not want to imply I've given this guy any thought beyond just recently, and at that not much.

      I think Popoganda's article is written more against the beatification of Bourdain than against Bourdain himself (though there is plenty of that too) in particular and American "liberal" self-images of resistance in general (and also too the toxic worship of celebrity).

      (Yes, as someone who posted dozens of Bowie songs at his death, and countless others, I recognize my jones for beatification, I'm alert to the urge.)

      Did Bourdain explicitly parrot Corporate talking points at Corporate's instruction re: your definition of propaganda? I've no idea, but I'm guessing no. Was Bourdain's humanization of Palestinians and Iranians go against Corporate propaganda talking points? Sure, maybe. Does Bourdain dining in Vietnam with Obama serve Corporate's interest? Absofuckinglutely.

      Also posted the article because (a) Bourdain was an ass re: slaughtering and eating sentient creatures and (b) popaganda's a bud.

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    2. One's point of view and presentation thereof can be useful to the point of view corporate and/or state interests. A major media arm that allows people directly representing those interests to shed their stories with impunity can brand themselves well with someone who, even if quite coincidentally, can be expected to present the narrative those interests would like. I gather that the the former dead cook bro was merely someone who could be counted on to repeat certain lies in a manner that might convince someone who wouldn't be by Colonel Whoever. Was he a propagandist? Only for sure by default.

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    3. Would CNN have put Bourdain's show on their line-up if his views didn't align fairly closely with theirs and the State Department's? (If he'd said good things about Gadaffi or Putin, or criticized Obama, for example.) I doubt it; they'd simply have aired something else.

      And "pound(ing) the same lie over and over on a populace" might as well be the corporate slogan of both CNN and Fox. Different lies for different segments of the populace (Bourdain for some and Hannity for others) representing the competing interests of the two wings of the ruling elite (Clinton for some and Trump for others) but with no doubt that American military and monetary interests must remain dominant for (of course) the good of the world.

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  2. 1)speaking of the vinegar works, and matters culinary in general -

    i have been wondering recently about the making of ketchup

    it turns out to have been originally based on east asian fish sauce

    vinegar and sugar were added to the recipe as a way to avoid using sodium benzoate as a preservative

    one mom's adventure with her five-year-old daughter

    https://caterpickles.com/2012/06/04/how-did-they-make-old-timey-ketchup-a-caterpickles-investigative-report/


    2)speaking of asian food, spouse and self this weekend watched via netflix 'in this corner of the world' - japanese animated film set in world war ii - a major aspect of the film was food preparation during wartime scarcity

    2a)the suffering of the japanese during the war was depicted - not depicted was the suffering inflicted on other people by the japanese - but as missus charley pointed out it was not really a war movie but a life during wartime movie

    2b)in mentioning the suffering inflicted by the japanese i do not mean to imply that my own ancestors were blameless - history happens - you got to live it, live with it, or get out of the way

    2c)

    "There are really only two ways, it seems to me, in which we can think about our existence here on Earth. We either agree with Macbeth that life is nothing more than a 'tale told by an idiot,' a purposeless emergence of life-forms including the clever, greedy, selfish, and unfortunate species that we call homo sapiens - the 'evolutionary goof.' Or we believe that, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, 'There is something afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth.' In other words, a plan, a purpose to it all."

    (Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey. New York: Warner Books, 1999: xi-xii.)

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    1. and with regard to our existence here on earth - biospherically speaking - see

      https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/opinion/earth-will-survive-we-may-not.html

      also of interest to some

      https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/06/07/michael-mccarthy-the-moth-snowstorm-nature-joy/

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