“You won’t have to vote anymore”: The convicted felon announces his intention to end democracy in the United States

In a speech in West Palm Beach, Florida, this evening, convicted felon Donald Trump told the audience at the Turning Point USA Believers' Summit that they "have to get out and vote." He then added, "In four more years, you know what? It will be fixed. It will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote." So Trump has just announced that, if he wins the Presidential election on 5 November 2024, he does in fact intend to end voting in the United States, and hence end democracy. Or how else can this be interpreted? (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 July 2024)

Good music by local musicians: Screen Door at Tower Hill Botanical Gardens in Boylston, Massachusetts

It's nice to go out on a summer evening and hear some good music by local musicians. In this case, my sister, my daughter, and I went to Tower Hill Botanical Gardens in Boylston, Massachusetts, and heard a duo from nearby Holden called Screen Door, two vocalists playing accordeon and acoustic guitar (with subtle touches from an electric hi-hat pedal). They offered an excellent selection of covers, from Otis Redding's "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" and Paul Simon's "Me And Julio Down by the Schoolyard" to songs by The Decemberists and Ray LaMontagne, as well as a number of tunes I didn't know but others in the audience did. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 July 2024)

Doing a lazy breaststroke while listening to music, then remembering Hal Ashby’s “Harold and Maude” (1971)

 The air temperature where my sister lives is 24° C (75° F), and the water temperature in her pool is 26° C (79° F). Still, in the water, I kept moving to not be chilly. With music playing from my phone, I swam the crawl a bit. But I don't like swimming laps, so I did a lazy breaststroke with my head out of the water to hear the music. I felt like Mrs. Chasen (Vivian Pickles) slowly swimming to the first movement of Tschaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 and merely glancing at her well-dressed son Harold (Bud Cort) floating like a drowned corpse in Hal Ashby's "Harold and Maude" (1971). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 July 2024)

On United States President Joe Biden’s decision to serve out his term

One of my first thoughts when I heard that United States President Joe Biden had withdrawn from the Presidential campaign was that he should also resign the presidency now, but of course he rejected that idea in his official statement with his decision "to focus solely on my duties as President for the remainder of my term." In the meantime, I think that was the right move, as it frees up Vice President Kamala Harris to focus on campaigning. Still, if Harris were now the 47th President of the United States, that would have had the ironic side effect of ruining former President and convicted felon Donald Trump's "Trump 47" merchandise. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 July 2024)

From Biden’s poor debate performance to his withdrawal from the Presidential campaign

I was incredibly annoyed by the public discussion in the United States of President Joe Biden's poor performance in his debate with convicted felon Donald Trump on 27 June 2024. As has happened so often lately, everything seemed to be about criticizing the flaws of the Democratic Presidential candidate while ignoring the Republican candidate's weaknesses. So I'd been hoping Biden would stay in the race. But when he withdrew yesterday, he chose a good time for the decision: after the Republican convention last week. Vice President and likely Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will surely face similarly unbalanced coverage, but the age issue Republicans have been emphasizing now only applies to Trump. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 July 2024)

Word Salad: A writing activity for groups

At our family reunion this evening, I did an activity I adapted from a project by German poet Thorsten Krämer. My brother-in-law dubbed it "Word Salad": I asked everyone to write their name and six words on an index card. I then wrote each of them a short text that contained their six words. After dinner, I read all those texts out loud to the group. An alternative would be to have the group guess whose words were used in each text. I've also used this near the end of the semester in creative-writing classes, with each student writing a poem based on six words chosen by one of their classmates. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 July 2024)

Deciding to read Emily Dickinson’s letters, then stumbling on a new edition a few hours later

When I took the train into Boston yesterday, I alternated between reading R. W. Franklin's "Reading Edition" of "The Poems of Emily Dickinson" (1999) and Alfred Habegger's "My Wars Are Laid Away In Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson" (2001). In the latter, I read about letters Dickinson wrote in 1850, the year she turned twenty, and I decided that I wanted to finally read an edition of her letters. In the evening at the Booksmith bookstore in Brookline, I was browsing the "new non-fiction" section, and there was a brand-new 2024 edition of "The Letters of Emily Dickinson", edited by Cristanne Millear and Domhnall Mitchell. I bought it, of course. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 19 July 2024)

A very minor incident at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston

In the Dutch Room at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston today, I wanted to take a picture of the oil painting "A Lesson on the Theorbo," from the workshop of Gerard ter Borch the Younger (1617–1681). When I pulled my phone out of my pocket, the plastic number I'd been given when I checked my backpack fell behind a set of early 19th-century French chairs of walnut and gilded bronze. Given that the room is where two Rembrandts were stolen in 1990, I did not go down on my knees to get the number, but a security guard reached behind the chairs to pick it up for me. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 18 July 2024)

Finding an affectionate English expression for an old woman to translate a bit of German word play

In a graphic novel I'm translating from German into English, an old man on his sixtieth wedding anniversary calls his wife "meine Faltenschnitte". I played around with this word for a while to try to figure out what to do with it, but when I finally admitted I was stumped, I consulted with my wife Andrea, a native speaker of German. She associated it with "Sahneschnitte", which is both a type of pastry or cake and a word for an attractive young woman. So she made several suggestions for a possible English translation of "Faltenschnitte" as a term of endearment for an old woman, of which my favorite was "sugar wrinkle". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 17 July 2024)

“Bright pools of electric glare” outside a cinema in John Dos Passos’s “Manhattan Transfer” (1925)

In John Dos Passos's "Manhattan Transfer" (1925), in a scene that takes place in the early 1910s, before the outbreak of World War One (given an earlier reference to the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and a later reference to Sarajevo), dancer Cassandra (Cassie) Wilkins and her boyfriend Morris McAvoy leave a cinema: "They came out of the movie blinking into bright pools of electric glare." What strikes me about this is how often that is my own experience of coming out of a cinema, especially when the movie started before night fell: I am very aware of the "bright pools of electric glare", and often quite disoriented by the nighttime lights. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 16 July 2024) 

Thomas Hardy’s references to painters in “Far From the Madding Crowd” (1874)

Charles Dickens's novels are full of references to literature that inspired Dickens (especially "Robinson Crusoe"), and I have also noticed some in Thomas Hardy's novels. But unlike Dickens, Hardy also refers to painters. In "From the Madding Crowd" (1874), he compares Gabriel Oak's dog George's fur to paintings by English painter J. M. W. Turner (1775-1851), "as if the blue component of the grey had faded, like the indigo from the same kind of colour in Turner’s pictures". That comparison remains in England, but charwoman Maryann Money's "brown complexion" recalls the earlier French painter Poussin (1594-1665) with its "mellow hue of an old sketch in oils—notably some of Nicholas Poussin’s." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 15 July 2024) 

The two Presidents of the United States whose previous highest office was being in the House of Representatives: Garfield and Lincoln?

In a conversation this evening, the issue of whether Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is old enough to run for President of the United States came up. She almost is, as she will turn 35 (the minimum age) in October. But I wondered who has ever been elected President with the House of Representatives as their previously highest elected office. Unless I missed someone, there are two cases: Abraham Lincoln (Representative from Illinois, 1847-1949; elected President in 1860) and James A. Garfield (Representative from Ohio, 1863-1880; elected President in 1880). The odd coincidence is that both were assassinated (Lincoln in 1865; Garfield in 1881, after only six-and-a-half months in office). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 14 July 2024)

Taylor Swift in Zurich, 9 July 2024

Yesterday, in the baking heat at Zurich's Letzigrund stadium, we experienced three-plus hours of music and performance by Taylor Swift, her dancers,  her band, and her stage designers. The show was as intense as my previous two benchmarks for pop concerts: Leonard Cohen (Zurich 2008) and Talking Heads (San Francisco 1983). I was particularly struck by how, in part by the powerhouse arrangements and in part by the concert's sheer volume, the selections from the almost ambient recordings on Swift's two 2020 albums, “folklore” and “evermore”, were transformed live into anthems, especially in a moving performance of "marjorie": "What died didn't stay dead, / You're alive, you're alive in my head." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 July 2024)

How I memorized the setlists during concerts by The Grateful Dead

Grateful Dead setlists changed from show to show, with few or no repeats in multi-show runs at one venue. The peak for me was when they played 97 songs with only five repeats at a six-show run at the Berkeley Community Theater around Halloween 1984. I got good at memorizing the lists during shows; I’d remember the first word or letter of each title. For the second set on 30 October 1984, then, I would have remembered Scarlet Fire Far Estimated Eyes Drums Space Other Stella Sugar US or perhaps just SFFEEDSOSSU. On the way home after shows, my friends were always surprised I could remember the whole list so well. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 July 2024)

Taylor Swift could play five three-hour concerts without repeating songs + my wishes for the “surprise songs” on the first night in Zurich

Your numbers may vary, but there are 232 tracks on 11 albums in my Taylor Swift music collection, with a few duplicates, such as two versions of "State of Grace". It  comes to fifteen hours and twenty minutes of music in all. Her concerts on her Eras Tour are three hours and fifteen minutes long, so she could do five such concerts with few or even no repetitions of songs. (This is how a Deadhead thinks, of course.) But the current setlist includes 44 fixed songs plus two "surprise songs" at each concert. Tomorrow in Zurich, I'd like to hear "New Year's Day" and "When Emma Falls in Love" as surprises. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 8 July 2024)

The vividly developed conceits of George Harrison’s “Here Comes The Sun” and Ringo Starr’s “Octopus’s Garden” on The Beatles 1969 album “Abbey Road"

From 1967 on (the year of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"), John Lennon and Paul McCartney's lyrics were so consistently strong that it becomes less interesting to describe what makes them so good. I'll conclude my posts on lyrics by The Beatles, then, with "Abbey Road" (1969) – and two songs by their bandmates, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Harrison's "Here Comes The Sun" may be a very simple text, but it vividly develops its conceit from start to finish (and of course the acoustic guitar is gorgeous). The same can be said for Starr's even more vivid "Octopus Garden", a "joy for every girl and boy" – and adults as well. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 July 2024)

The first two songs on “The Beatles” (1968, aka “The White Album”)

The double album "The Beatles" (1968), or "The White Album", as fans immediately dubbed it, has so many songs I'll just comment on the first two's lyrics. Paul McCartney's "Back in the USSR" lives from its specificity, such as the BOAC flight from Miami Beach to the Soviet Union, and its humor, which peaks in the verse alluding to The Beach Boys song "California Girls": "Well the Ukraine girls really knock me out." John Lennon's "Dear Prudence" is much simpler in its address to Prudence, but it spins out variations on a theme, from "Won't you come out to play?" to "Open up your eyes" and "Let me see you smile." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 July 2024)

The vividness of Paul McCartney’s “Penny Lane” and other songs on the US version of “Magical Mystery Tour”, by The Beatles (1967)

My posts on Beatles lyrics by John Lennon and Paul McCartney have focused on the song lists on their UK releases. But the US version of "Magical Mystery Tour" supplements the six songs on the British EP with five extraordinary singles, including the brilliant pair of Lennon's "Strawberry Fields Forever" and McCartney's "Penny Lane". Those two are not only grounded in the songwriters' lives but also overflow with imagery, something completely absent from songs on the band's early albums. "Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes", McCartney sings – and the vivid descriptions of the barber, banker, fireman, and nurse make it live for our ears and eyes, too. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 July 2024)

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor summarizes the nonsensical implications of “Trump v. United States"

In her dissent in the aptly named "Trump v. United States" decision today, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotamayor explains the majority's ruling: "The majority makes three moves that, in effect, completely insulate Presidents from criminal liability. First, the majority creates absolute immunity for the President’s exercise of 'core constitutional powers.' [...] the second move [...] is to create expansive immunity for all 'official act[s].' [...] Finally, [...] evidence concerning acts for which the President is immune can play no role in any criminal prosecution against him. [...] That holding, which will prevent the Government from using a President’s official acts to prove knowledge or intent in prosecuting private offenses, is nonsensical." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 July 2024)

 

The complete opinion is here.