LINES OF THE DAY

". . . But the past does not exist independently from the present. Indeed, the past is only past because there is a present, just as I can point to something over there only because I am here. But nothing is inherently over there or here. In that sense, the past has no content. The past -- or more accurately, pastness -- is a position. Thus, in no way can we identify the past as past." p. 15

". . . But we may want to keep in mind that deeds and words are not as distinguishable as often we presume. History does not belong only to its narrators, professional or amateur. While some of us debate what history is or was, others take it into their own hands." p. 153

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (1995) by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

Monday, July 27, 2009

What Is

This plethora of weird flying little bugs that lurve to drown themselves in my glass of beer or wine and are always in my face? They show up about this time of the year and hang about until usually sometime in mid to late September.

Additionally, do others find the concept of premium cachaça, known in Brasil among its impoverished laboring class drinkers as pinga -- which is where I first encountered it -- and grappa, which I first encountered very early in a late autumn morning in Italy when the fishermen had already returned from the sea and were warming themselves with throwing back shots of this leftover stuff from the making of wine -- absurd? Back at the end of the 80's when these alcoholic products considered previously fit only for the poor and desperate first showed up in my local liquor stores in fine handblown Venetian containers, retailed at hundreds of dollars, it nonplussed our friends and ourselves. It took no time at all then, for premium priced mescals to follow. Is this not the greatest nation of chumps for marketers evah?

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