mallorys_camera | Lament of the Toothless Old Geezer (Reply)

Who brings nuclear secrets to a golf tournament in New Jersey?

I’m kinda blown away by the indignant sputterings leaking from the Trump camp about why the FBI raid is the biggest miscarriage of justice since Pontius Pilate sentenced Jesus Christ.

But then I’m also blown away by the fact that there is like zero transparency on where the billions of dollars of war aid the U.S. is sending to Ukraine is actually going.

Neither Red Church nor Blue Church is my happy place, in other words.

This is why when I wake up every morning, I vow: As God is my witness, I’ll never read anything about politics again!

Though I always break that vow.

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And in amusing news from our cousins across the pond: The University of Essex has banned Strindberg’s Miss Julie because the titular character commits suicide and those poor little GenZ ducklings might get triggered.

The university is thinking of banning Romeo & Juliet.

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What else?

Michael sent me a bunch of pix from Sicily.

I like this one because my back is to the camera, and also, I didn’t realize before that there is a Medical Marijuana shop exactly across the street from the cathedral.

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I am deep into Sometimes a Great Notion, but also thinking about Ken Kesey’s life as a Parable of the Sixties because shortly after publishing Sometimes a Great Notion—which Kesey poured heart and soul into—Kesey gave up on writing. His life became his art in a matter of speaking.

Sometimes a Great Notion got bad reviews and sold poorly.

I think it sold poorly because it got bad reviews but also because it is very hard to read. Over 700 pages long and those shifting points of view! Also, it is a closely observed portrait of the people that Hillary Clinton lost an election by describing as “deplorables.” The novel was widely described as “misogynistic.” But I don’t think the novel itself is misogynistic. It’s describing a misogynistic milieu that whether people like it or not exists and continues to exist.

The bad reviews were the New York-based literary establishment’s way of reminding Kesey that the New York-based literary establishment can giveth and the New York-based literary establishment can taketh away. Kesey’s first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, got rave reviews. So, it was time to teach the Oregon boy some humility.

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Kesey did write more stuff later in his life, but that stuff was no good.

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Anyway, Kesey went on to become kinda the missing link between beat culture (epitomized by Kerouac and his posse) and hippie culture (exemplified by the Grateful Dead.)

I would never have described myself as a Deadhead, but I took a lot of acid at a lot of Dead shows.

And had a really good time.

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I guess there’s always more juice in the experiences you personally have when you’re in your late teens and 20s than in the experiences you read that other people are having when you’re older.

But it seems to me I had a lot more fun in my late teens and 20s than people in their late teens and 20s are having today.

And it’s not because the world today is a more dire or dangerous place.

Because it’s not.

I suppose the difference is we expected the world to be a dire and dangerous place and planned accordingly.

Young people today are really fearful. They prefer pre-curated experiences that come with trigger warnings.

Is their fear justified? They would argue that it is.

We thought fear was ignoble. Something that was trying to get between us and the experiences we wanted to have.

I suppose that's the big difference.

Though, of course, I’m also mindful that such thoughts smack of the laments of toothless old geezers everywhere since times immemorial: Why, when I was a girl, things were so much better…