Mallory's Camera

The kid came over and we worked on his valedictorian speech last night. He’s an excellent writer, but doesn’t quite get the fact that speeches are about communicating with people, not about expressing yourself per se. You really want to keep the figurative flourishes to an absolute minimum in a speech.


At 5:30pm, it was still 97 degrees in the shade. Summer coming in with a literal flourish. Northeast is pretty much over the flower cycles I love. Peonies bloomed the first week I was here – I filled the apartment with them. Then came the irises, now we’re on to tiger lilies. After them, there’ll be no more cycling flowers. Stamens are all furiously metabolizing into seed pods.

I really haven’t done much in the last month.

Max comes for a week tomorrow.

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I took the apartment for a month. Among the many pieces of unfinished business hanging over me, there’s one that it would be best to complete in Ithaca – and that’s the dental work. I had planned to do it in late April but then the car broke down. Car’s been operative since the beginning of May, but the dental work involves some drastic stuff and I didn’t want to be in less than fighting trim for graduation and Max’s visit.

So I’m thinking I ought to do it now. Truth is while my teeth are in such bad shape I'm always going to be marginal. Dentalwork really defines class boundaries in the United States today. Unfortunately, this involves finding another Ithaca hideaway for July. Pickin’s are somewhat slimmer than they were a month ago so it may not be possible. All one can do is try, right?

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Price of oil is now hovering around $75 a barrel. I’m not entirely sure why this is bad for the economy, but apparently it is. Seems to me that the pump price of gas is the primary determinant of consumer confidence, and consumer confidence is the spending engine that drives the American economy. But what do I know?

Heard the economist Joseph Stiglitz on Terry Gross the other day. “One of the reasons that we have such inequality is that much of the income of those at the top arise from rent-seeking,” he said – in other words, not from labor but from asset ownership. The words have stayed with me as an explanation for everything that’s wrong with capitalism, an economic system I like in many ways because it seems to incentivize effort. But capital trumps labor every time, doesn’t it?

Marx suggested that social conflicts arise from class warfare – masquerading, as it often does, in the costume of our times -- racism, or sexism, homophobia, anti-semitism,and religious intolerance, wrote Robin. Ultimately bias is an artificial construct disguising the battle for capital.

“I am not taking that out,” he announced.

“Of course not,” I said. “That’s the truest part of your speech. But, you know, you should use words of two syllables or less for the rest of it.”

"You're talking about dumbing it down!"

"No-o. I'm talking about making sure people understand it."

I started quoting Hemingway. Line those darlings up! Blindfold them! Ready! Aim! Fire!

"Would you stop?" RTT said. "Hemingway's been dead a long time."

You always want to steer away from sweeping statements like, “Everything bad that could possibly happen did happen to me today.” The Universe will take that as a kind of dare, and before you know it a major cataclysm of such epic proportions will strike that everything that happened before will be a walk in the park on a sunny day.

So let’s just say major issues with teeth and car have befallen.

Need to figure out a way to make some additional money. Need also to remain upbeat so I can focus on doing a good job with the ghostwriting and Tucker website stuff.