We'll see how it goes

As I look over my posts, I realize I sound a bit too much like an MSNBC pundit lashing out at the tomfoolery on the right, without really adding much to the conversation. I post links, but this is information anyone can find if they make a small amount of effort. There really is no point wasting time on these rightwing talking heads, as they will say anything to boost their television ratings.

So where to go with this blog? With the old gang reduced to the rare appearance of Trippler, there is nothing left of the former reading group. Most new comments are spam, which I delete as I try to keep this blog clean of viruses. I've had complaints in the past from persons who have tried to read my posts only to be hit with virus alerts. Of course, these days viruses disguise themselves as virus alerts.

The internet has become a virtual war zone. You don't know what to take seriously, what to make fun of, and what to simply avoid. Everyone is looking for their 15 minutes of fame, and is willing to go to any lengths to get it, with the most common way being to attack others more famous than you, hoping to get their attention, and thereby boost your audience. A vicious cycle. I've tried to avoid that and as a result I get very little interest in my blog. So it goes.

Another problem is that there are so many blog-hosting sites now that you have to find one that is hip at the moment, and hope to find an audience that way. If no one is following your blog then you are simply writing into the void. Anyway, I will try not to take too much pity out on myself and look for something that is more interesting and entertaining to write about than Joe Rogan taking Ivermectin.

I would love to reconnect with the old reading group or create a new one. It doesn't have to be about American history, as this blog once was. It could be anything, hence the title Potpouri for 200 dollars. Right now I'm reading Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, which is about his boyhood days growing up on the island of Corfu. I've long wanted to go to this island, after having read Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi, but have yet to do so. I've been to other Greek islands, namely Kos, Santorini, and Paros, but not Corfu.

Miller and Lawrence Durrell were great friends, with voluminous correspondence between them. Not sure how much, if any time, Gerald spent with Miller, but it would have been after his boyhood years. Gerald was too busy taking note of the insect life and contact with eccentric locals on the island, with his faithful dog always nearby.

The direction to go seems to be to make these posts more personal - discussing what I'm currently doing rather than what other persons are doing, with the hope that I can finally get myself to sit down and write that book I have long wanted to do. We'll see how it goes.

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud. -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!

Dispatches from Vilnius

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