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Monday, May 22, 2017

Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize








I came across a very interesting article re: Bob Dylan & Nobel Prize. Below is a small excerpt from a long and insightful article in Boulevard.


Excerpt from: Symposium: Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize in literature
By Adrian Matejka   –   Boulevard  Vol 32



The Nobel committee did the right thing at the right time, reminding us of what is greatest about our poetic tradition and also making the point that our bests days are behind us, just at the moment when we are saddled with the worst fascism that has ever inflicted our land. The committee posed the urgent question of whether literature is restricted to the page, to solitary consumptions, to the academy, and to the establishment, or if it is something more diffuse, blending disturbing art forms and methods of expression, stemming from the energies of the people in a voice that can hardly be captured before it escapes. The conditions of prophecy in which Dylan came into being ceased to exist in the 1960s, as the full impact of the Kennedy assassination, the American government turning upon its own people to carry forward empire’s logic, began becoming manifest, as Dylan well recognized, and as his many retreats (which we also affirmations) of the second half of the 1960s, and really all the decades since then, have amply testified to. There will be no more Dylans: he ended his prophecy by way of the famous motorcycle accident in 1966, leaving us in the lurch, as he should have.

Monday, May 8, 2017

The Oligarchy Tango


The Oligarchy Tango






First you hire your wife and then
Your daughter and her manly friend
Your uncle Joe and then his brother
Find a nice job for your mother.

Friends that you once went to school with
Others not so safe to fool with
Younger siblings wait in line
To make sure future will be fine
For them – but not so much for us
We are the people on bus.

Friday, May 5, 2017

Zipper


Taken from Writer’s Almanac:



Today in 1913, a Swedish engineer named Gideon Sundback was living in Hoboken, New Jersey, when he patented the modern zipper under the name, “Hookless No. 2.” The public, however, was far from sold. Preachers initially called the device “the Devil’s fingers” because it eased the process of removing clothing. Other early zipper models were patented under names like “C-curity Fastener” and “The Automatic, Continuous Clothing Closure.” It didn’t take off until a boot company adopted the technology for their “Zipper Boot,” launching both the method and the word into fame.