July 2021
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I've been going through scattered notes that exist as loose scraps of paper, disconnected sentences and paragraphs and whole pages in at least half a dozen notebooks, and text files on my computer, trying to get rid of the junk and put anything worth keeping in some place where I can find it again. The…
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I have the local library to thank for my having read this invigorating little book. They took it out of circulation (or rather, no doubt, non-circulation) and put it on the giveaway shelf, and I, having heard a few things about Eagleton that sounded interesting, took possession of it. And I'm glad I did. The…
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I finally got it onto the sidebar. Or I guess at the bottom if you're looking at it on a phone. See, right there below the search box. It's provided by the follow.it service. Just enter an email address and click "Subscribe." And read this for more information about what happens after that. I've wanted…
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John Darnielle, as you may know, is the principal in The Mountain Goats. In effect, he is the mountain goat, as the band seems to be (or at least to have been for some time), essentially a one-man project consisting of Darnielle and various accompanists. He's a brilliant (and astonishingly prolific) songwriter, and the great…
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Email notifications of new posts are provided by the follow.it service. When you subscribe, a confirmation email will be sent to the address you provided. You’ll need to open that email and click on the confirmation link for the subscription to begin. If this is the first time you’ve used that address with follow.it, an…
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I’m referring to the song alone, not the album. And although I don’t think the answer is an absolute “yes,” if only because you can’t reasonably pick one, if I did have to pick one, this might be it. I have trouble coming up with something that I would definitely place above it, or alongside…
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I didn't know until I looked for information about this group that there is a genre–okay, subgenre–of music called "dark jazz." And I bet you didn't know how many subgenres of jazz there are: see this Wikipedia page for a list and brief descriptions. I often suspect that some of the many, many subgenres of…
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As I've surely mentioned before, the little town where I live has grown fashionable and affluent. And of course where there is fashion and affluence there progressives will be also. Which is ok, but as Justice Ginsburg said, there are certain populations that you don't want to have too many of. (I can't bring myself…
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Kyle Smith of National Review thinks so. I half-agree. I don't think I've heard it more than half a dozen times, and always on a car radio. But I do remember the first time, because "Ain't that America" jumped out at me as a perfect expression of amused and unillusioned affection: "Yeah, it's a crazy…
Light On Dark Water 