Walking Under, On and In February

     . . . . Confucius: A Biography (2004) by Jonathan Clements got retrieved from the library today, thereby getting me out walking, which it is always essential to do, no matter how regularly one works out.  Jeosophat! the auto temperature reading machine worked on me -- though I had to remove my fur hat first.  But it meant in-and-out within 90 seconds or so.

It's a small book, but tries to locate Confucian thought within the man's life (551–479 BCE) and place, as well as traditions and culture within which he grew up. I wanted a book that speaks to the recent history his time and location had experienced, but I don't think this book does that. I shall have to be content with the map and google.

The book's from a British house, Sutton Publishing,  previously unknown to me -- which doesn't mean much. What matters is, despite its relatively recent publication, the paper has already turned yellow and brittle.  

As I know nothing about Confucius or his thought, I can't help but know more when I finish reading it.

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Walking in February, on top of February snow, and slop all that particular February day-after storm color,  under a grey February sky, I  spotted this street graffito, written in a neat long hand, no dabs, blots or runs, in silver paint – "*rump lost. The South did not win."  An efficient summation of too many's state of denial about history, present and past.

Which could be the title for why The New Republic currently is running this piece on American historiography and its own hisytory:

"Against the Consensus Approach to History

How not to learn about the American past"

It says a great deal about the why of the sheer horror of the Woods and Wilentzes at the premises of the 1619 Project.  It's interesting to see it running in The New Republic.   It also applies to the way the ^rump's 'legal' team is couching their argument against impeachment for inciting the 1/6 armed attack on the Capitol, as well as to the deniers of the lost election.

This fits within the spate of studies, reports and articles coming through in many places everyday as to who are the armed attackers, how did they get this way -- and also who they are not -- as well as closer scrutiny of how have so many USians become proselytists for the bottomless cray-cray of q***n, the denial of covid-19, haters of those who wear masks to protect themselves and others from getting sick.

There continues to be this weird impression that the base that is driving this movement for armed authoritarian, white supremacy, nationalist take-over of nearly the first nation to establish itself as a democracy for rights to all of liberty and equality, are not the poor and dispossessed, as some of us have been saying since long before the 2016 election. Quite the contrary. Though it is sobering to recollect how equally true this was of the driving insurrectionists of the war of independence (which again, was why the secession CSAers really believed they'd win: it would be just the same except instead of having only France helping them, they'd have Britain recognizing them as a nation in submission to their King Cotton).  So this piece in the Atlantic Monthly is very interesting too. Considering our history, particularly the determination by the rich to break from England, and the rich to break with the United States, I'm not sure I agree with the AM's piece's premise here, particularly considered side-by-side with the history of  "Consensus History" history piece in the NR.

"We analyzed 193 people arrested in connection with the January 6 riot—and found a new kind of American radicalism."

A graphic - data breakdown of who was part of the Capitol 01/06 armed attack, helping to organize, plan and direct, as well as being cannon fodder.

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In the meantime many musicians, including the one in our household who says he's retired from personally making music himself, have learned there is a pile of "unclaimed" residual money in the Hollywood Screen Actors Guild, and the other aspects of Hollywood business as composers, players, vocalists etc. for a lot of them.  Unclaimed because nobody bothered to contact them there were earnings from various aspects of what they did, if they were union members.  So those who have found out, and see the names of people they know, they are having the fun of contacting the musicians/composers and telling them, "There is money for you!"

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Began watching the third season of Gommorah on HBO last night.  The first episode felt flat, perhaps due to the endless acres of truly hideous wall paper no matter how wealthy the home or how humble. Some of the sizzle began to return in the second one. It feels different though, from the first two seasons. Is it because so much time has gone by since the second one, plus the world plunged into covid-19 -- which really would make no difference one thinks to these vile criminals -- or because I'm seeing it on an HBO screen, not a netflix screen -- both via streaming though, so that shouldn't matter.

What is the same, if even, perhaps more so: the suburb photography, the depth of the color, which does seem southern Italy, not even, Rome, much less anywhere else.  It's lushly gorgeous.