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Anti-hero, or Asshole? The life and times of Thomas Cromwell. ONE

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"I'm not a tiara, I simply bedazzled my horns," (most likely from) "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power,   After a moment I pushed my chair back and went over to the french windows. I opened the screen and stepped out on to the porch. The night was all around, soft and quiet. The white moonlight was cold and clear, like the justice we dream of but don’t find. ― Raymond Chandler, The High Window The anti-hero has become something of a thingie in the 20th and 21st centuries.  Main characters of books and life are understood through a series of grey shades, rather than the evangelicalized black and white paradigm.   I rather liked this treatment of the modern anti-hero:  https://www.altaonline.com/dispatches/a8699/noir-antihero-david-l-ulin/ If you use a type of 'weight scale', where good and bad are measured, I think Thomas Cromwell might come out in the middle somewhere.  Of course, if you talk to any architectural or art historians out there (Cromwell de

Would you believe that this dating game could get any more revolting? More thoughts on this embarrassing presidential election.

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DANGER--CAUTION--BEWARE. What follows here is yet another commentary on this year's presidential election, Dear Reader.  Believe me, I am more than bored with this subject matter, but the candidates keep shocking me into a catatonic state.  Honestly, we must be the laughing stock of the world. I shudder to think how the global community regards our lack of any political process.  Honor is out the window, and the election of 2024 has devolved into a cult of personality.  On the one side you've got a mainstream politician, spouting platitudes (Harris), while on the other you've got a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. I am compelled to address comments made by the dictator wannabe, Mr. Asshole (i.e. Trump): "Immigrants are no longer welcome in Donald Trump’s America. Instead, the Republican presidential nominee posited that under his potential second administration, he would round up and mass-deport noncitizens based on their “serial numbers.”  https://newrepublic.com/post/1

A lapse in time…

 I had a death in the family this week.  Will post again soon

"The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog" Let's take a deeper look at life in the internment camps

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American white people I meant in the title;  circa WW2.  Thus spake (title quote) Zarathustra, a.k.a. Mark Twain Jimmy Tsutomu Mirikitani, Cemetery, Tule Lake, 2002, mixed media on paper, Smithsonian American Art Museum  Autumn foliage California has now become  a far country ---Yajin Nakao So, what were the camp conditions?  Military style, if anything.  Windows without restrooms, and no running water.   From March 10 August, 1942, more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans were forcibly interned in concentration camps.  The living conditions were less than ideal, as the above pictures indicate.  The houses were communal-style living, with little or no insulation against extreme heat, or cold.  Camp illnesses, like dysentery and typhoid fever were unwanted denizens.  Predictably, children and the elderly suffered more than other internees, in contracting these diseases. Of course the camps were built in remote areas, and of course they were under heavy guard. Oh the threat posed by these in

Ignominious acts, Ethnocentrism, and the World War 2 internment of Japanese Americans, part one

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  Be Like the Cactus Let not harsh tongues, that wag in vain, Discourage you. In spite of pain, Be like the cactus, which through rain, And storm, and thunder, can remain. Kimii Nagata https://japaneseinternmentmemories.wordpress.com/category/japanese-internement-poetry/ Manzanar, yesterday and today. When I was a kid, back in the Neo-lithic era, one of the books we had to read was entitled Farewell to Manzanar.   I don't remember it really, now that I'm in my dotage, but I do remember being shocked that the internment of Japanese Americans occurred during the second world war.  Here's a link to the book online:   https://www.rgandara.com/uploads/1/2/3/7/123702754/james_d._houstonjames_a._houstonjeanne_wakatsuki_houston_-_farewell_to_manzanar__2013_houghton_mifflin_harcourt_trade_and_reference_houghton_mifflin_harcourt_hmh_books_for_young_readers___1_.pdf   We also used to drive past what remained of the camp on our way to Mammoth Mountain--a ski resort.  It was a long time