Bloomsday

More than any other writer, Joyce gave voice to the uncommon in the common, the commonness of the uncommon.

He rejected God and State for the human, who made (and makes) them.

Noisy village

I can only assume there is a "noisiest village" contest today, which I did not know about.

Or perhaps it's national weed-whacker day? To celebrate what is perhaps the ultimate symbol of rude, lazy, and wasteful?

I felt quite antisocial and unpatriotic quietly scything the dog pen amidst the roar of gas engines near and far.

environment, environmentalism, Vermont, anarchism, ecoanarchism, "Guns, Gas Engines, and Jesus"™

Military Hero Worship

Thomas H. Naylor writes at Counterpunch:

Nations which amass military might always find a way to use it. The risk of war increases in direct proportion to the military power of the state. Wars also cover up a plethora of political and economic problems by deflecting public attention away from the real issues.

Many, but not all, of our troops are naïve, well intended, ill-informed, patriots, who have been manipulated into risking their lives for false gods by our prowar media and political system. But heroes they are not.

In stark contrast to the troops, Obama, Biden, Panetta, Clinton, Petraeus, Stevens, Leahy, and Sanders know better. They are all people of the lie. They know exactly what business they are in. It’s call technofascism.

Vermont, anarchism, anarchosyndicalism

Blinded by industry

A friend writes, regarding “On wildness and carbon” by David McKay:

If anyone finds the wind industry compelling, there’s a lot they aren’t getting and probably never will, because they don’t want to. People are reluctant to admit there is no solution, [that] all we can do on an insanely overcrowded planet full of greedy people is use far less energy, and start planning massive overhauls of cities and towns, making our lives smaller, getting some trains running, getting rid of cars, bike lanes everywhere, electricity only for parts of the day, smaller stores, small passive energy houses, using air conditioning only in extreme weather, shut down the meat and dairy industry, the list is endless. But that is apparently not ever going to happen on a large scale, because the changes are too huge for people to comprehend and corporate lobbyists wouldn’t allow it. Modern lives are built around electricity and technology, so going back to a more natural, sustainable way of life is probably impossible. People’s lives in the not so distant future will be forcibly curtailed by nature, not because they chose a wiser path.

wind power, wind energy, wind turbines, wind farms, environment, environmentalism

Mr Dooley spurns the church and state

From “Dooleysprudence” by James Joyce (1916):

...

Who is the funny fellow who declines to go to church
Since pope and priest and parson left the poor man in the lurch
And taught their flocks the only way to save all human souls
Was piercing human bodies through with dumdum bulletholes?

...

Who is the tranquil gentleman who won’t salute the State
Or serve Nebuchadnezzar or proletariat
But thinks that every son of man has quite enough to do
To paddle down the stream of life his personal canoe?


anarchism

Coey 2012

Learning about the power of genetic engineering are St Anne’s pupils T— and K— with Monsanto Education Officer Laura Coey.


Learning about the power of hydraulic fracturing are St Anne’s pupils T— and K— with Halliburton Education Officer Laura Coey.


Learning about the power of unmanned drone warfare are St Anne’s pupils T— and K— with General Atomics Education Officer Laura Coey.


Learning about the power of submission to Jesus are St Anne’s pupils T— and K— with Billy Graham Crusades Education Officer Laura Coey.


Learning about the power of wind energy are St Anne’s pupils T— and K— with Action Renewables Education Officer Laura Coey.

Time waves

Just as, in listening to Cottard, Brichot and many others, I had come to realise that, through common culture and fashionable fads, a simple undulation sends the same mannerisms of speech and thought over the surface of the globe, in the same way over the whole expanse of time great tidal waves bring up from the depths of the ages the same hatreds, the same sorrows, the same types of bravery, the same strange fancies running through superposed generations, each section made at various levels in the same series giving a repetition (like shadows cast on a row of screens) of a phenomenon as identically reproduced although often not as trivial, as the family trait which set M. Bloch junior at odds with his father-in-law, M. Bloch senior with M. Nissim Bernard, and others before them whom I had never known.

[De même qu’en écoutant parler Cottard, Brichot, tant d’autres, j’avais senti que par la culture et la mode, une seule ondulation propage dans toute l’étendue de l’espace, les mêmes colères, les mêmes tristesses, les mêmes bravoures, les mêmes manies, à travers les générations superposées, chaque section prise à plusieurs niveaux d’une même série, offrant la répétition, comme des ombres sur des écrans successifs, d’un tableau aussi identique quoique souvent moins insignifiant que celui qui mettait aux prises de la même façon M. Bloch et so beau-père, M. Bloch père et M. Nissim Bernard et d’autres que je n’avais pas connus.]

—Marcel Proust, The Past Recaptured
(1932 translation of Le Temps Retrouvé (1928) by Frederick Blossom):