Portland Oregon. October 17, 2020. 17 days until the election.
![The Illustrated Desolation Row [See "Streets of Phildelphia" Below]](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/slumonwater-2-150x150.jpg "The Illustrated Desolation Row [See \"Streets of Phildelphia\" Below]")
![[UPDATED with animal identified]One Spark. Just One. And there will be a massacre in the streets.](https://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/1tAIGv9e.jpeg "[UPDATED with animal identified]One Spark. Just One. And there will be a massacre in the streets.")
Next post: The New Yorker. Yes, the New Yorker
Previous post: 2020 So Far: Let’s review
WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
Gerard Van der Leun
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
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I can’t decide if I’m supposed to take note of the “peaceful protestor” being shined by the LEO, or, the lady with the high heel shoes and short skirt, who almost gives an appearance of being a normal human, though if they are both in Portland, OR, at this stage of the game, I’d say there is something seriously wrong with both of them.
America 2020 . . . : The Three Masketeers.
It’s a great picture. It says things about society, police, old vs. young, about being glib and blithe as well as earnest and serious.
If all of our journalistic institutions hadn’t been compromised over the decades, I would have said this picture deserves a Pulitzer. But considering who wins Pulitzers…
Oooh, Auntie. God will get you for that.
“But considering who wins Pulitzers…” Yeah. The thing is, the Pulitzers are decided by a small group of people who get together in someone’s loft and they throw out names of stuff they read and liked. Or, in some cases, stuff they didn’t read, but pretended to have. That’s it.
Nobel peace prizes are awarded by a subcommittee of the Norwegian parliament. That’s about like having a subcommittee of the Minnesota House of Representatives do it. “Oh ya, sure, let’s give it to that black fellow the Americans elected. Everyone says he’s super and has nicely creased pants.”
The rest of the Nobels are done by a more rigorous process in Sweden, which of course means that they’re given by white supremacists.
Very nice gams.
Not a BIPOC among them– whatever happened to diversity and inclusion?
“She’s got legs, she knows how to use them!”
-ZZ top
I was going to offer something deep and insightful about how even in a moment when you might think that a policeman would be completely focused on his job, that we men are hard-wired to appreciate the beauty in the women we see…..
But wait! Did you see the Fire Sale girl?
Whether she being nonchalant or blasé, that’s a nice set of pins. I can only give her a 7.7 because of the coat and mask…
So what? A hooker hurrying off to her next appointment – what’s news ’bout that?