Duty and Disgust

The pain of others creates a reason for me to help them.

— John Searle

Please give now to Save the Children's Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund.

You have a duty as a human being to do so and it's a positive way to express personal disgust with Putin.

I said only yesterday that the proper response to the war news was to affirm your love for another.

I forgot for a moment there are Ukrainians suffering at Putin's hands—and that we can do something concrete about it.

Your gift to Save the Children's Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund represents real altruism, an act that is dutiful and grounded on both reason and empathy.

So please give—you can pat yourself on the back for your reason and empathy.

There's not a shred of those in the unhinged KGB agent.

Not a shred.

Above: A child enroute to the Slovak Republic two days ago. Photo by Daniel Leal.

Note: Friends ask, with so many charities requesting my money, which should I pick? Save the Children has a proven track record of financial probity, spending 86 cents of every dollar on services to kids.

Confused Alarms of Struggle and Flight

And we are here as on a darkling plain,

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

— Matthew Arnold

The war news runs from tragedy to terror and back again, moment by moment. 

Caught up as we are in the sound bites and maps and frontline photos, its enormity escapes us.

But it's time once more, like the songwriter, to resolve to die in your footsteps; and while you do, like the poet, to affirm your love for another.

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Soullessness Always Shows

A good bookshop is a genteel black hole.

― Terry Pratchett

Only once did I ever step foot into an Amazon bookshop.

I visited the one in Washington, DC, and fled after five minutes.

The shelves' contents revealed a company without spirit.

Good bookshops, as Terry Pratchett observed, lure customers to dwell—for hours on end. To book-bathe and sip coffee while communing in the presence of genteel minds.

A soulless bookshop, on the other hand, repels customers. 

Its offerings and atmosphere signal that the owners do not read and that they wouldn't know Camus from Kanye.

So it comes as no surprise that Amazon has decided to close its 68 bookshops.

The business lesson here is fundamental.

An offering with no soul is an offering bound to fail.

No amount of slick store décor can disguise an absence of Geist.

How about your business?

Does it have no soul?

Peaches and Cream

Americans hate history. What we love is nostalgia.

— Regi Gibson

Teachers, librarians, and museum curators are at sixes and sevens over how to sweeten America's story.

That's because peaches and cream trump truths in this country.

Truths just get you in trouble.

American exceptionalism, the saccharine tale of the "city on a hill," is our preferred confection. 

We serve it 24/7 at every table in town.

Right now, the GOP—the party of Putin—would make it America's official dessert.

So much for apple pie.

And the GOP would deputize its members, Stasi-like, to help the state round up dissident chefs.

I don't care for a kitchen run like that.

And will do everything in my powers to thwart the GOP.

How about you?

Are you on the side of truths?

America the Beautiful

In America, beautiful and ugly, grotesque and tragic, good and evil, each has its place.

— Nelson Algren

It's February 1947.

Chicago novelist Nelson Algren takes the El to Monroe and walks a block to the Palmer House, where he meets fellow novelist Simone de Beauvoir in a cocktail lounge named Le Petit Café. 

He buys her a drink and they try to hold a conversation, but it's tough: he speaks no French and her English is limited.

"I’m the only serious writer in this city," Algren boasts, and offers to show de Beauvoir, visiting from Paris, the "real" town.

He takes the famous Existentialist to a tiny dance club filled with down-and-out customers; old winos, ruined whores, and a crazy spastic misfit who dances alone on the empty stage. Algren used to be a hobo, himself, a member of Chicago's lowlife.

"He’s here every day," Algren says, pointing to the spastic man. 

"He's beautiful," Beauvoir replied. "They're all beautiful."

"In America, beautiful and ugly, grotesque and tragic, good and evil—each has its place" Algren says. "We don't like to think these extremes can mingle.”

We still don't.