"Through union activities this family has developed a desire for higher education.

https://jonathanmorse.blog/2018/07/21/through-union-activities-this-family-has-developed-a-desire-for-higher-education/

White - unto the White Creator -

The Time magazine images at

http://lightbox.time.com/2012/08/23/the-convention-draws-near-the-romney-ryan-road-trip-to-the-party-in-tampa

show the current Republican candidates for President and Vice President campaigning and fund-raising in New England and Long Island. One hundred percent of the people in every photograph are white.

But in one of the photographs (by Lauren Fleishman) the personnel have become invisible. Their traces exist only outside the image frame. A moment prior to the image's time, something human, perhaps even something unwhite, created its composition and then removed itself. Alone before the composition now, we see a still life of an airplane's tray table in repose. Resting upon it are a plastic plate in green and yellow imitation wicker, a white napkin on which rests a single chocolate chip cookie, and a transparent plastic cup of milk. As the beloved hymn of the party of the War on Christmas says,

All is calm, all is bright.

Like a tag on a toe in a morgue, a caption informs us that the cookie is still warm. When old age shall this generation waste, it will remain.

Malevich, just think how much greater an artist you might have been if you had only owned a dacha in East Hampton!

Sources: Emily Dickinson, "Publication is the auction" (Fr788) and Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: White on White. Click to enlarge.

Music for the manicure

Maeve Reston, "Donors arrive at Hamptons fundraisers with advice for Mitt Romney." Los Angeles Times 8 July 2012. http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-romney-hamptons-fundraiser-20120708,0,4909639.story

A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. "I don't think the common person is getting it," she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. "Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.

"We've got the message," she added. "But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies -- everybody who's got the right to vote -- they don't understand what's going on. I just think if you're lower income -- one, you're not as educated, two, they don't understand how it works, they don't understand how the systems work, they don't understand the impact."

Ladies, is the radio in your shop tuned to the right station?

For Newt, Dinesh, and Sheriff Joe

Taken from the lawn of Central Union Church (United Church of Christ) in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, this photograph (click it to enlarge) shows the Shinshu Kyokai Temple (Buddhist). The apartment building at the right is where President Obama spent his youth. The low, tin-roofed building between the temple and the apartment house is the True Jesus Mission, Church of the Latter Rain.

Donald and Mitt, would you be caught dead being born into such a neighborhood?

For Wisconsin: how they do it in Galt's Gulch

I was just settling into my seat when the flight attendant approached with a request: in order to let a mother sit with her small child, would I mind moving to another seat? Of course I didn't mind. The flight attendant thanked me, led me to my new seat, and then rewarded me with a free headset.

I was grateful because the flight was United 1, nine nonstop hours from Chicago to Honolulu, and I was looking forward to the distraction. The man in the seat in front of mine was looking forward to the distraction, too, because when the flight attendant came back with her armload of rental headsets, he laid out his four dollars for one. I noticed the transaction because the man's face seemed familiar but I couldn't place it. Maybe, I thought, I'd seen him on campus.

So I asked: "Excuse me, do you teach at the University of Hawaii?"

"No!" the man all but shouted. He wasn't smiling, either. Anything but.

Oh well. Some time into the flight I remembered that I'd seen the man's face not in person but on TV. He was the new chairman of the Hawaii Republican Party, and some of the media coverage had focused on his background. In a heavily Democratic state with a strong union presence, the new Republican chairman was a "labor consultant" -- that is, a professional union buster.

Meanwhile, my free headset didn't work, and the flight attendant was on the speaker, apologizing. The sound system wasn't working in the center seats, she announced. In that section, headset rental money would be refunded at the end of the flight.

The Republican chairman handed his headset across the aisle to his wife. There in her starboard section the sound did work, and she listened all the way from Illinois to Hawaii.

Then, as the airplane was on final approach to HNL, she handed the headset back to her husband. The flight attendant came down the aisle, reclaiming headsets and making refunds.

And he took the money.

Maybe I would have done the same. I don't suppose all Democrats are more virtuous than all Republicans. But I still remember that particular Republican's entitled scowl.

Update: familiarizing the defamilar

On January 2, at

http://jonathan-morse.blogspot.com/2010/01/home-front-art-familiarizing-defamiliar.html

I blogged about a painting by a Nazi artist of a soldier in Hitler's SS Wiking Division. Now, at a time when many polls are predicting a shift to Republican control following next month's congressional elections in the United States, comes the news that the hobby of one Republican candidate is dressing up as a soldier in Hitler's SS Wiking Division. The link is here (with thanks to Susan Schultz)

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/10/why-is-this-gop-house-candidate-dressed-as-a-nazi/64319/

and here (second from right) is the candidate.

Progress is being made in international history. It's making the transition from subtitles to dubbed speech, and one of these days I suppose it may become America's native language.