-- Wallace Stevens
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According to the Poetry Foundation, Wallace Stevens (1879 - 1955) is one of America’s most respected 20th century poets. He was a master stylist, employing an extraordinary vocabulary and a rigorous precision in crafting his poems. But he was also a philosopher of aesthetics, vigorously exploring the notion of poetry as the supreme fusion of the creative imagination and objective reality.
-- Ted Kennedy, 1987 hearing for Robert Bork (who was not confirmed)
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According to the Biography web site, Ted Kennedy (1932 - 2009) was the youngest brother of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. He was elected to the Senate when he was 30, and continued to work in Congress throughout his life. Though marked by scandal, Kennedy was viewed as an icon of political progressivism and liberal thought by the time of his death, on August 25, 2009.
-- Judy Garland
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According to Goodreads,
-- Doris Lessing
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According to Wikipedia, Doris Lessing (1919 - 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean (Rhodesian) novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remained until moving in 1949 to London, England. Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
Leaving Everything provides Winspear's typical satisfying story, combining a social problem (in this case the treatment of Indians in London) with the killer's very personal motives. But reading it, I experienced a stronger than usual sense of melancholy and dread about Maisie's future and the future of her friends and colleagues. I felt like I was supposed to be on Maisie's side and share her desire for adventure and self-discovery, but I kept thinking "Poor James!"
[Spoiler alert coming up for Elizabeth George readers] Midway through her wonderful series of mysteries, Elizabeth George chose to kill off her detective's beloved and pregnant wife, Lady Helen. Readers were livid. George spent time explaining herself on social media and even wrote another entire book about it (What Came Before He Shot Her). In the end, I think most readers forgave her. As George explained, it was something she had to do for her series to continue. Writing her detective as a happily married man with a baby simply didn't work. It lacked the level of angst and drama that she needed.
And my point in recounting George's journey is because I think that Winspear has arrived at the same juncture. (Meaning she arrived there in 2013, when this book was published. And if you've read all her novels and know the answer, don't tell me!) I don't think she can see her way forward if Maisie becomes happily married to James, plus she needs to change up the cast of characters, replacing Billy and Sandra with new people. She's not exactly bored and out of new ideas, but she's definitely looking for a major change of scenery. When I read the next novel, I'll report back. I remain a serious Maisie Dobbs fan and don't expect to be disappointed with her next adventure.
-- Tracey Gendron
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Dr. Tracey Gendron is chair of the Department of Gerontology at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of Ageism Unmasked: Exploring Age Bias and How to End It.
-- Ukrainian Proverb
-- Elie Wiesel
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According to the Nobel Prize organization, The Nobel Peace Prize 1986 was awarded to Elie Wiesel (1928 - 2016) "for being a messenger to mankind: his message is one of peace, atonement and dignity."
I heard Maria Ressa interviewed this morning as part of an International Women's Day event. The bad news (the embarrassing news) is that I've never heard of her before. Somehow, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to two journalists last fall didn't hit my radar screen. The good news is that now I have heard of her and listened to her impassioned plea for truth in journalism, destruction of the disinformation machine, and reining in of social media.
After the brief and impressive interview this morning, I went in search of her Nobel lecture to learn more. Wow!! She is articulate, impassioned, and persuasive. And she is courageous. It is one thing to plead for the protection of truth in journalism in "the West," where you might suffer significant bullying both online and IRL. It is a whole different thing to make that plea in a society where going to jail for what you write and say is a reality.
Ressa is of course critical of countries like her native Philippines that regularly threaten journalists with imprisonment or government sanctioned violence. She tearfully listed fellow journalists who have recently died or been imprisoned around the world. But Ressa reserves her strongest criticism for the tech algorithms that come out of Silicon Valley. She calls it a behavior modification system that encourages fear, hate, and bigotry in the service of surveillance capitalism than monetizes our clicks.
I can't begin to do justice to her powerful speech. I plan to come back to it here whenever I find myself wondering if Facebook is really so bad.
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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According to the Poetry Foundation, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was one of the most widely known and best-loved American poets of the 19th century. He achieved a level of national and international prominence previously unequaled in the literary history of the United States and is one of the few American writers honored in the Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey.
