Paul Krugman: Don’t ask whose fault this was. Plenty of time for second-guessing and recriminations. Ask instead, what can you do? For my part, that means telling the truth as I see it, as long as I can. The media will be under a lot of pressure to toe the line; don’t capitulate in advance

The world is violent and mercurial—it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love—love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share. Tennessee Williams

Daniel Hunter: we have to pay grave attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion or constant disorientation.

Article

John Pavlovitz

Kamala Harris didn't lose, America did. As a nation, we collectively failed her—and in doing so we failed girls and women, the LGBTQ community, people of color, Muslims, Jewish people, immigrants, the sick, the poor, the elderly, the people of Ukraine, and Gaza, and the planet. 

 

It's unthinkable, that instead of being able to celebrate a beautiful, hopeful new chapter in the story of this nation with a leader who appealed to the best of our natures—we will instead be holding a postmortem for democracy as we enter our 250th year, stewarded by a malevolent sociopath who despises empathy and shuns the law. 

 

I truly thought we were better than this, that our shared humanity would show up. I thought we would reject this hatred and ugliness once and for all. 

 

I hate being wrong about the majority of the people of this nation. 

 

I don't know what's ahead. All I know is that good-hearted human beings are more necessary now than ever. 

 

We did all that we could to avoid this moment, but now that it's here we'll just have to decide who we will be. 

 

There is no way to comprehend or measure how grievous an error this is, but the only thing the decent people of this nation can do is wake up tomorrow and fight like hell for what we still believe is worth the fight, and we will. 

 

I'll be doing that with whoever has the strength to join me.

 

I'm mourning the country we could have been and the one we apparently are—but I refuse to give up believing that compassion is the right path, that diversity makes us better, and that love is greater than fear.

John Pavlovitz    Author of  'Worth Fighting For'

'If God is Love, Don't Be a Jerk’ https://johnpavlovitz.com/

@johnpavlovitz

Dream

I dreamed I bought a shiny red fire truck for eight hundred and fifty dollars. It was an impulse purchase. I drove it in a small loop around the city. It was difficult and overwhelming to drive. It was a stick shift and I was stalled in traffic. I decided to sell it. My husband said, Don't worry many people want to buy a fire truck. Someone else will buy it.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

 Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor

Something goes on that makes it easier when it does come well. And the fact is if you don't sit there every day, the day it would come well, you won't be sitting there. Flannery O'Connor

Nisha Vora

 https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/09/harvard-law-vegan-cookbooks-nisha-vora

Every once in a while a pie is made

Zebra Soup Spoons

 

The Unstrung Harp by Edward Gorey

The Unstrung Harp Edward Gorey On November 18th of alternate years Mr. Earbrass begins writing his new novel. Weeks ago he chose its title at random from a list of them he keeps in a little green note-book. It being tea-time of the 17th, he is alarmed not to have thought of a plot to which The Unstrung Harp might apply, but his mind will keep reverting to the last biscuit on the plate. So begins what the Times Literary Supplement called "a small masterpiece." TUH is a look at the literary life and its "attendant woes: isolation, writer's block, professional jealousy, and plain boredom." But, as with all of Edward Gorey's books, TUH is also about life in general, with its anguish, turnips, conjunctions, illness, defeat, string, parties, no parties, urns, desuetude, disaffection, claws, loss, trebizond, napkins, shame, stones, distance, fever, antipodes, mush, glaciers, incoherence, labels, miasma, amputation, tides, deceit, mourning, elsewards. You get the point. Finally, TUH is about Edward Gorey the writer, about Edward Gorey writing The Unstrung Harp. It's a cracked mirror of a book, and it's dedicated to RDP or Real Dear Person.

“The Unstrung Harp” is the first book in the collection Amphigorey, a compilation of Edward Gorey's work. The title Amphigorey comes from the word amphigory, which means a nonsense verse or composition. “The Unstrung Harp” is about the writing process of novelist Clavius Frederick Earbrass, and is considered a commentary on the literary creation process.

Queen Victoria photobombing her son's wedding photo by sitting between them wearing full mourning dress and staring at a bust of her dead husband, she blamed her son for Albert's death.

 

Brooklyn Halloween

 

Halloween Photo from The Museum of Curiosities

 

The Red Hand Files ISSUE #302 / OCTOBER 2024 Creativity, Disipline Freedom

please read this!

The last thing I want is to feel the frustration, the frivolous torment, of being around a person who can’t see past her own suffering.

― Anthony Veasna So, Afterparties: Stories

It is like working out!

It is like working out! You do it every day. You’d never work out for 5 hours in one day — that would be unsustainable, but also just bad for you. Similarly, taking a month off is okay, but it’s going to really fucking hurt that first day back in there. None of this is fun. But it can feel good.

ANTHONY VEASNA SO

Rebecca Solnit

Writing is not typing. Thinking, researching, contemplating, outlining, composing in your head and in sketches, maybe some typing, with revisions as you go, and then more revisions, deletions, emendations, additions, reflections, setting aside and returning afresh, because a good writer is always a good editor of his or her own work. Typing is this little transaction in the middle of two vast thoughtful processes.

REBECCA SOLNIT

Pumpkin Head with Best Friend Paper Bag Owl

The Museum of Curiosities

@CuriosMuseum

Monsieur Pompier's Museum of Curiosities.

Dublin, Irelandmuseumofcuriosities.ieJoined January 2012

Amateur comes from the Latin word Amare which means TO LOVE