We Keep Talking About How Cold It Is And What We're Doing + White Collar

For example, today, in Another Place, a small gathering of disparate friends learned we all had made a fine dinner last night that featured beef.  None of us eat much beef as a matter of course.  We exchanged how we'd fixed it: two of us with a London Broil, done differently, and another with standing pot roast, and so on.

This particular group has been exchanging how we cope with weather in general, our meals and so on for years by now. But when winter comes it's more so than usual, and when the winter's exhibiting itself extremely even more so. We talk about what we wear as much as what we eat, as much as we talk about the snow, ice and getting rid of them.

I don't know, of course, but the last couple of days I've begun wondering why we exchange how we cope, handle and even, in some ways enjoy or appreciate such cold spells pretty consistently, and probably with other friends in other contexts.

First, having grown up in a community where such weather is why we have summer -- to get ready for it -- it seems that people have always done this.  At least the people who are fortunate enough to be able to prepare and take steps to stay adequately warm, clothed, fed and sheltered in such weather.

Is this a form of expressing recognition of our good fortune, to express our gratitude to wherever we feel gratitude is due, that we have all this?

Because, the longer the extreme cold lasts, the more aware we are of how many don't have the wherewithal to be adequately warm, clothed, fed and sheltered against it, much less have intervals of enjoyment too.

As the week of extreme cold here has rolled along, this weekend I started seeing people on the street who don't have any of these -- not even the companionship we all have too. I am guessing that these people have turned up on the street cold and desperate again these last two days, is that they've been evicted from whatever shelter they'd found while it was snowing and sleeting as well as cold.  Today is very cold, but bright blue and sunny . . . .

Any of us could so easily join their ranks, if one or two things only go wrong. . . .  The other day I was trying to figure out what I could do about this, for the people who aren't as lucky as I am.  I have a very hard time coming up with anything.  What I came up with, I dunno.  But today I got $50 changed into $5 bills.  The first ten people I saw who were in the street circumstance of desperation I gave $5.  $5 because you can't get a GDDmned cup of coffee any more for less than that hardly anywhere.  You can hardly get a beer.  And if, as Some will chide me for, the people to whom I gave that $5 put it toward liquor or whatever, what the hell.  Why are people who are poor not allowed to have their escape chemicals like the rest of us?  Sheesh, they need them even more than we more fortunate do. I think this approach comes from the influence of Louisa May Alcott's March family, with whom I've lived all my life.

It's not a joke, how cold it is. I came in about 1:30 PM from a run for supplies. I had another run to do. I hadn't realized how reluctant I was to go out there again, despite having been comfortable enough, in appropriate gear, and because I was moving so briskly for an extended period. But once I got back inside -- well, I had to kick my backside to go out again. It took me two hours to do that.

In that two hours, the temps had started dropping again, from the day's high which was when I first went out.

And then, I had the privilege, in my Irish merinos and my shelter, while making a very nice dinner, to drink red wine and go slack, watching season 5 of White Collar, which is entertainment, front and back.

How more privileged than this can one be?

Cold! Very COLD!

Good grief, woman, it's JANUARY in WINTER.  What does whiny me expect, hunh?

Hudson River, over which blusters the western wind 

We Iz A-Snowin' At 20º - Happy Kings Day!

Happy Three Kings Day, Twelfth Night and Epiphany, depending on what this day goes by where you are located.

The discovery of the infant Jesus by the Three Wise Men a/k/a Three Kings is as important in the annual round of uncommon observances as is the Nativity, and celebrated all around the world with street parades -- with bands and costumes -- family parties with music and dancing, as well as food.  O to be in San Juan today and tonight!

Traditionally in the Mediterreanean, South American and Caribbean world, it is Three Kings Day when children receive their gifts -- brought by the Kings, of course, not Santa Claus.

In New Orleans Three Kings is the first day of the Mardi Gras season, ya'all -- marked by the Phunny Phorty Phellows krewe * riding the street cars, with champagne and King Cake.

Mille-feuille Bakery Cafe, a superfine establishment, nothing in it is less than $5, including plain "american" coffee -- operated by young French ex-pats -- opened last year near us. They are offering French-style King Cakes (as the photo shows, the French King Cakes are less gaudy than NO's), with the tiny baby token  -- the one who finds the baby in her / his slice is the King of the party -- and, in New Orleans at least, is supposed to host the next party.

As the dinner party hostessed / hosted tonight uptown by C&K for a Louisianan actor - filmmaker - storyteller, Colin Gravois, who lives half the year in Louisiana and half in France, is tonight, I was planning on bringing one of these cakes as the hostess gift. But -- damn! they have none left! No more until later in the week.

Sheesh, it was cold when we got up today. Snowing. We're not supposed to get more than an inch. It wouldn't even stay on the ground if the ground temperature wasn't below freezing.

This is surely playing havoc with all the scheduled Kings Day parades and celebrations in the city in our large Caribbean, South American and Mediterranean communities.

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*   The Phunny Phorty Phellows were formed in 1878, in celebration of the official end of Reconstruction (which had effectively happened some time ago by an armed coup d'état) and the institution of Jim Crow -- another name for neoslavery.

Rethinking Rewriting

As mentioned, I have all these pages of content I've written about the books I'm writing about for the List's year in reading.

I collated the content, moved it into a single document, double spaced, etc., printed it out. I've read through the content several times now.

I'm cutting and pasting nothing from these 40 + pages. I'm generating all new text (with the exception of quoted text, i.e. text that is someone else's, and to which attribution is OF COURSE given -- it may be my biggest peeve, people who stick other people's words into their own screeds and pretend they wrote those obviously better written passages that are non-characteristic of their own style and usage -- how stupid do these bloggers think we are?).

This is as much work as writing always is. Why then, am I doing this, I've been wondering. I think I understand enough about writing -- at least about the desire to write as well as one is capable of doing -- to answer that.

The original texts were written over the period of a year. The books written about weren't necessarily considered in context with each other. Stringing them together, connected by short transitional passages, no matter how much restructuring was done, wouldn't work. New structure, organization, and even style are necessary to create a thematic essay. Though this is concentrated work, it isn't as difficult as it could be, but it is time consuming. It's not as difficult as it could be, since these books were read in the first place because they each explore the subject and theme of Mississippi..

But!

This explains why dissertations are repurposed as books, magazine and newspaper columns are collected, so often fail to increase the writers' audience and name recognition. Such books aren't as readable as they could be, and don't provoke the reader to continuing reading the writer.

The writer needs to start over with fresh prose purposed for a fresh audience, not the one for which the original text was written. Reemploying the same ms., or one that is dominantly cut&paste, leaves style and prose without verve and rhythm. When the new text is completely drafted. passages from the original text can / may be inserted, if it belongs seamlessly or illuminates the new text -- but still with some rewriting.

Yet I am so glad to have all those pages from my original takes on the books. They have refreshed my memory as to why I read the books in the first place, and why their connections of emotion and intellect that sparked my own while reading the work was worth the time I invested to make some sort of organized, written response to it.

There are  writers who sneer at the sheer inefficiency of writing so many non-paid words and not re-using them then, even when the venue is paying for words on the same subject and works. But writers are all different, with different goals for their writing, and we all do it differently.

The American Slave Coast

It still doesn't seem real, that 5 - 6 years of work to create The American Slave Coast:  A History of the Slave Breeding Industry, is reaching its culmination (then there is other work, once it is published, but that's different).

The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World

The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World (2013), by Professor Broodbank, Oxford University Press, is a very large book that I'd love to read, but simply don't have the time to do so presently.

Broodbank is one of the many significant scholars who have built upon Fernand Braudel and the Annales' school of historiography of the Mediterranean and the longue durée, to bring us works of exquisite scholarship that are able to take advantage of contemporary technology that helps map time and space, in geography and archeology as much as history.

It has won awards -- the Wolfson Award for History, been lauded as Best Of the Year and encomiums such as this:

"An outstanding book: the best contribution to Mediterranean history in the sixty-plus years since Braudel's 'The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II.' I suspect that this is immediately going to become the standard work and will transform the way we think about the prehistoric and ancient Mediterranean." --Ian Morris, Jean and Rebecca Willard Professor of Classics and Professor of History, Stanford University, and author of Why the West Rules -- For Now ~~~

This is the illo that  many reviews reproduce.

It's a big book in scope of content and size of the volume, lavishly illustrated, with a wide variety of images, as well as maps.

How do I know all this, since I don't posses the book at this time, as at this time I don't have the time to read it?  Well, for one thing, I listen to YouTube talking head academic lectures. I treat it them like the audio book versions or pod casts I listen to while cleaning house or working out. But this one isn't just a talking head, it's the illustrations that Prof. Broodbank throws up as slides on the screen. His lecture is a bit over an hour long, and worth listening to, more than once.

Happy New Year Ya'all -- May 2015 Allow Us Brightness and Light

Yesterday I saw something so buoyant and bright yesterday I couldn't help but become buoyant and bright myself. A parade of delivery folks walked along West Broadway about 2 PM, each one of them with

a huge cloud of golden balloons suspended high over their heads. Evidently they were delivering them to one of the expensive hotels or restaurants that are out neighborhood for a big midnight balloon drop. Under the sun and extensive patches of blue sky of the afternoon, in which the balloons did shine like gold, it was an uplifting sight.

Today and tonight -- another party, uptown, and more Cuban music, downtown, at SubRosa and a midnight rumba at the Zinc Bar.