I’d like to recommend a couple of books about birds: first is by Amy Tan, called The Backyard Bird Chronicles. Absolutely lovely; second is by Frieda Hughes, George: A Magpie Memoir.
Over at my Substack I published a couple of long-ish pieces about our front porch robins – one here and the other here. I’ve become one of those old people who talks about birds all the time.
I have no political analysis or opinion to offer here, but I do want to say that I read Hillbilly Elegy when it came out and I thought it was beautiful. What is interesting is that, in 2017, a lot of people said, “Hey, if you want to understand why Trump won, read this book.” Also, Tyler Cowen has a great post at his Marginal Revolution about why Trump is currently on the upswing. One of his points is that Trump is funny – he is a comic. And I think that is true, and I don’t only mean unintentionally (though at times he is unintentionally funny). He actually has great comic delivery – he can be downright Jackie Mason-esque. Someone (John Podhoretz?) wrote a column – probably in 2016 – about how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump represented different 1960s eras: Hillary is the late decade, or Laugh-In; Trump is Borscht Belt, or early decade, pre-JFK assassination. True! Another point about Vance is that I appreciate the Amy Chua connection – I’m such a fan of hers, and apparently, she encouraged him to write Hillbilly Elegy and later introduced him to his (impressive) wife. Chua is known for her non-fiction writing, but I want to recommend a historical mystery/police novel she wrote – The Golden Gate. I am dazzled by writers who can be excellent in different genres.
We truly don’t. Three animals have already died at the 2024 Calgary Stampede. The animal acts need to be stopped. Link to a piece I wrote last year and have re-pinned to the top of my Substack.
I’ve re-pinned a piece about June 18th and its significance in France to the top of my Substack, if you are interested. And speaking of France, the style icon Francoise Hardy died a few days ago and the glorious Anouk Aimee passed away today, at the age of 92. Hardy’s music was a part of my life in France – really, part of the soundtrack, to use a journalistic cliche. As for Aimee, such a list of fine performances, but my favourite has to be Une Homme et une Femme.
I wrote something over at my Substack.
Robert De Niro shouting at people on the street!! I sometimes worry that this is my future. I would probably be yelling about animal rights or something, though. That said, there are worse things one could be in their 80s than a shouty older person filled with passion. (He is still a handsome fellow, btw.)
Robert Fico, Slovakia’s Prime Minister, was shot a couple of weeks ago. He, thankfully, survived and has been discharged from the hospital. The man who tried to kill him is in jail. But one thing I noticed was that so much of the coverage of the shooting made it seem as though, well, maybe someone trying kill Fico was, you know, understandable because he is “controversial.” By that, you can guess the rest – he is a populist. He is not in favour of arming Ukraine. He is more right-of-centre than the EU might like, and so on. So therefore, isn’t it normal that one might try to shoot him? WTF? He was democratically elected, he is hardly a dictator and hardly unreasonable. (And I say this as someone who would arm Ukraine till the cows came home if I had any power.) Have we reached the point where someone who doesn’t fit the priors of the mainstream is considered to be an expected target for violence? The more I thought about it, the more I remembered the reaction to the assassination of Shinzo Abe, which I wrote about here.
So I guess we have reached that point. It is “normal” to try to kill someone you find objectionable. Brendan O’Neill writes about the attempt on Fico’s life and the subsequent reaction here.