Barry Graham's Blog, page 18

"Ye huvnae heard ay Rudyard Kipling? Whit school did ye go tae?"

"Actually, A went tae a convent."

With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want… Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold
— Christopher Columbus

Today the U.S. celebrates an inept navigator who thought that San Salvador was Japan and Cuba was China, and who enslaved, mutilated and murdered the natives of the lands his ineptitude took him to.

Also, it’s not true that most people thought the earth was flat in those days.

I think it’s fitting that the...

Tonight I’m listening to Harry Partch’s composition“Barstow: Eight Hitch-hiker Inscriptions from a Highway Railing,” from the album The World of Harry Partch. The album is out of print, but Sony has been generous enough to make it available on Youtube.

I listened to it often in 1993, while writing the second half of The Book of Man. Part of it inspired this passage:

We passed a bridge in the middle of nowhere. There didn’t seem to be a town for miles around, just the sea on the right of the tra...

Thatcher pushed for breakup of welfare state despite NHS pledge | Politics | The Guardian:

I lived through the Thatcher years, and it was horrible. Now it’s revealed that she wanted it to be even worse.

Between the lies: new exhibit explores how form affects function in media | Art and design | The Guardian

Walking from my apartment to the supermarket, I see this cat in front of a house on a busy street. At first I think it’s asleep, but it’s a bit too close to traffic and noise, so I stop and check. It’s dead. (I don’t like saying“it,” but I don’t know its gender.) I bow to it, once, and return to walking.

no sign of injury,

but the soft fur is as cold

as this ghetto afternoon

Last night I watched Ken Loach’sMy Name Is Joe, which I hadn’t seen since its release in 1998. It’s one of the great cinematic depictions of contemporary Glasgow (others are Red Road, Under the Skin, and, for the Glasgow of my childhood, Ratcatcher). Its only weaknesses are its predictable, melodramatic climax, and the odious presence of professional Glaswegian David Hayman (Has a less talented actor ever been taken so seriously for so long?). But Hayman’s appearances are mercifully few, and...

“

I teach a class called ‘Decolonize Your Diet,’ and I talk about the Spaniards arriving in Mesoamerica. One of the first things they tried to change—in addition to religion— was the way people ate. They introduced wheat and tried to make eating bread something that was seen as more valuable than eating corn. They outlawed amaranth, and in South America they outlawed quinoa.

I tell my students to think about how the dominant powers are invested in controlling what their subjects eat, and then...

guardian:

Over the past 25 years, Las Patronas has fed tens of thousands of Central American migrants. Every day volunteers prepare and distribute about 300 food parcels for migrants travelling on freight trains known as La Bestia (The Beast). For many fleeing violence and poverty at home, it’s a life-saving act of kindness. (x)

‘How Propaganda Works’ Is a Timely Reminder for a Post-Truth Age - NYTimes.com