A Gorgeous 4-Cart Day

 

Fun for the household--a long story about the writer and MELVILLE BIOGAPHY: AN INSIDE NARRATIVE. Not Samson. Not now and not ever.

 

The Imaginary Museum

Adventures in Writing, Publishing, Book Collecting & Other Pursuits

Monday, April 05, 2021

Hershel Parker: Archivist Agonistes

Here the writer has a gorgeous photo of Marianne Jankowski's great cover of MELVILLE BIOGRAPHY AN INSIDE NARRATIVE.

I must have read Hershel Parker's great biography of Herman Melville sometime in 2005. It's hard to be more precise than that, but the details about Melville's unpublished (and now lost) eighth novel I used in my own short story "The Isle of the Cross" certainly came from there.

IMAGINE WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE DEMOCRATS WERE TO OPPOSE VACCINATION

 Imagine what would happen if Republicans noticed that those who were vaccinated were not dying while almost all the victims dying now are unvaccinated Republicans. Imagine what would happen if Biden now said, Well, there is not much use in masks anymore now that most Democrats have been vaccinated.  What if Fauci said, today, There is not much danger in Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida so use masks or not at your discretion. 

CAN YOU IMAGINE THE HOWLS FROM FOX NEWS!!! THE DEMOCRATS ARE KILLING US!!!! THEY ARE HOPING TO TURN FLORIDA BLUE BY KILLING US OFF!!!!

THE REPUBLICANS HAVE NOT NOTICED YET THAT THE ONLY ONES DYING IN FLORIDA FROM COVID ARE TRUMP ANTI-VACCERS AND DESANTIS SUPPORTERS.  Shhhhh!

Democrats are pathetic with naming, as when they let the Republicans become PRO LIFE even though the Republicans care nothing about the lives of the poor.

 We are doing it again with Critical Race Theory. We should say NO NO NO we don't even know what that is. All we want to do is teach HISTORY. Or we could say, ALL WE WANT TO DO IS TO TEACH AMERICAN HISTORY. Let the Republicans then admit that they do not want to teach HISTORY.

The Brouhaha over CRITICAL RACE THEORY! Proponents should just call it HISTORY and let the Republicans refuse to teach HISTORY.

 Right?

Heroic 4-year-old kite flyer

 

Beach was packed at 9 am--wore a wind shirt.

 

Kites a few days ago

 

Wild brawl breaks out on flight over luggage

  'Get the cops' »

A wild brawl erupted on a flight this week after one passenger reportedly complained to another that he was taking too long to remove his luggage from the overhead bins.  'Get the cops' »

MORRO BAY SO CROWDED THAT FULL SIZED HORSES ARE NO LONGER ALLOWED ON BEACH

 

NYT headline: Scorched, Parched and Now Uninsurable: Climate Change Hits Wine Country Sunscreen on grapes.

 Disinfected toilet water used for irrigation. Napa Valley winemakers are taking extreme steps in the face of climate change.

That's a New York TIMES headlineched, ParchDisinfectedoilet water used for irrigation. Napa Valley winemakers are taking extreme steps in the face of climate change.Uninsurable: Climate Change Hits Wine Country

Sunscreen on grapes. Disinfected toilet water used for irrigation. Napa Valley winemakers are taking extreme steps in the face of climate change.

No room in the parking lot for the first time in 23 years. Hot in the Central Valley. Not mobbed by Avalon and Stone Harbor standards

 Parked in the street nearby, so it was OK. Throngs, everyone behaving well.

Tillers of the soil, especially the Caregiver's new plantings

 

10 a.m. Fugitives from the Heat of the Central Valley

 All grateful and well-behaved.

55 degrees at 5:45 am. Caregiver comforted by feathers. Will we pay for this by fire, earthquake, slide, or election fraud?

 BRRRRRRRRR.

With Dalyon Packer

 

It is getting hard not to hope that the consequences of refusing covid vaccinations will appear faster than commentators can lie on Fox News

 "99.5 percent of all covid-19-related deaths in the United States occur among unvaccinated people; 0.5 percent of covid deaths occur among vaccinated people. If you tell people not to be vaccinated, you add to the former category."

Now, you say only 90% of deaths are to people who have not been vaccinated? Oh, well, OK.

I've been watching the Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin in 20 or 30 minute bites and love it, starting with his family's stress on coming from "good people"

 Surprise! Surprise! the revered Maupin Confederate ancestor who died at Antietam, my 5th cousin, through the Cokers and Tuckers and Parhams and Branches. And Brig. Gen Lawrence O'Bryan Branch is kin to my Grandpa Joseph McGehee through the McGehees and Pruitts and Dabbs. I always assumed we had never been of "good people," but here Armistead and I are, kin, kin to the same families. When you go back to Virginia in the 1600s and 1700s and early 1800s--well, the thing is that when you arrived in Virginia early enough you are kin to everyone, even Armistead Maupin. You could live in Maryland on an estate between various streams running down into the Potomac--that is, Silver Springs, now. That's Rosalynn Carter's and my Pottengers. In  two generations you went from the best house in Kentucky to, well, a sod house in the Panhandle. You went from vast estates because the Crown wanted you to have land. Then you could divide plantations up among sons and some of the sons in law and a generation or two later you had a small farm with a big family still and no inheritances.

Armistead would approve what I am doing now--a hard look at racial encounters and belated racial reckonings. I've got a few chapters written--in great pain, almost all of them. But I have evidence I don't think anyone else has had--9,000 or so documents about kinfolks from the 1600s on. These documents I have been collecting for almost 20 years.  Every chapter is about family members. That's why writing it is so painful. RACIAL RECKONINGS. 

What's especially painful is that the Republican Party is making everything I am writing about the 1700s and 1800s absolutely up to date, and terrifying. 

But this is a terrific documentary, Cousin Armistead's Untold Tales.

8 this cool morning--beach already filling with refugees

 

Bad News for us McGregors--As a 6th Cousin of Rob Roy, a few times removed, I confess to having broken one ankle, 2 rotator cuffs, 1 collar bone, 3 ribs, 1 wrist

 

Conor McGregor Breaks Bone in U.F.C. Bout; Dustin Poirier Declared Winner

One of the year’s most anticipated fights ended in bizarre fashion as McGregor landed awkwardly and appeared to break his lower leg or ankle.

Summer is here--Wisconsin has come to the Magic Kingdom

 

Cheese-fed Dog-Law Violator posing before getting in Wisconsin car; I had to walk up from the water behind her.

 

Headline: A Closer Look at the Colon Condition That Hospitalized the Pope

 No, thank you.

How Stan Garner first read MOBY-DICK--original letter going to Berkshire Athenaeum

 

Blue heron--graceful bird has a moment of being all elbows

 

The first thing Bill Cosby did after being let out of jail? I read an answer to that

 But I had been sure he stopped off to stock up on Quaaludes before going home.