Author: Diane Griffin

Diane is a writer of Fantasy, an intermittent blogger, and a generator of nonsense.

Object 2: Angel Night Light

soft, more monochr

On my upstairs writing desk (yes, I have 2: one for drafting and a “production” one for polishing product) sits this beautiful night light, given to me by my friend Matt. He says he found it at an antique shop in Collinsville, CT.

Angel CLoseup

It’s not only beautiful as an object, but it gives off a mellow, pinkish-yellowis, ambient light. I went looking on eBay and found a similar lamp. As an auction item, it was called “Vintage Cherub Drummer Angel Horn Glass Brass Table Lamp Night Light Electric” (oh, eBay poetry, you are a world unto yourself!) but it’s not exactly the same.

Object 1: Jason Reynolds’ Look Both Ways

Here’s something I haven’t seen many of: middle-grade short story collections.

JReyLBW

My copy is the first edition hardback. I think I bought it from Amazon to be delivered the day of its release, so it doesn’t have the book award thingamy on it. It has a beautiful cover, so I like that my copy is unblemished.

I finished reading it in about three sittings. There are ten stories, all set on the same afternoon just as school is letting out. Each story is about a different kid or set of kids and their walk home. I love Jason’s writing — he has a gorgeous prose voice — or for that matter, speaking voice — let’s just say that a Jason Reynolds reading is a fabulous experience. Plus, also, too, he’s written some of my very favorite children’s books. This one is a very good book. (My favorite of his books is As Brave As You, btw.)

I’m holding on to it — it’s a first edition. Jason teaches at my alma mater, otherwise I might never have read his work. But as it happens, I do know these books, and I am the richer for it.

Kamala

Kamala

There was a time, from about a month before until just after the first debate, when I thought Kamala was a contender. I sure don’t think she is one now.

Tulsi clobbered her at the second debate, it’s true. But that wouldn’t have stopped her if she wasn’t patently phony. Consider her record as Attorney General of California, which is what Tulsi attacked her about. Consider also that she has only been in Washington during the Trump administration, which means she’s only been on the national scene since Rachel Maddow became the Glenn Beck of the center-left. Kamala’s context is, by definition, skewed.

That weird gambit she threw out there at the fourth (and most recent at the time of this writing) debate, when she tried to get Elizabeth Warren to stand with her in her campaign to get Donald Trump kicked off of Twitter was so painful, and perfectly emblematic of what’s wrong with the Democrat’s establishment wing.

She’s just shut down her operations in New Hampshire. I wish I could say that’s surprising, but it isn’t.

In my opinion, Kamala is just a failed poster child of a failed dream: that of the centrist Democrat. What is it with the Democratic party? Why do they think being obviously in the service of the oligarchs works for them? They weren’t always like this. Our only hope as a country is if they stop being corrupt.

Let’s hope they figure that out sooner rather than later.

More Tulsi Thoughts

Tulsi is about service.

Tulsi-Gibbard_tpp_2016_ap_img

I started out this cycle liking her more than Bernie Sanders, but over the last couple of months, I’ve gotten more disenchanted with her. She has some right-wing opinions, but in the main she is progressive, and she doesn’t take corporate money.

I trust her. She is something that many of the people running for president right now aren’t. She’s principled. I can imagine very few of her opponents in the current primary dropping out of the race for two weeks for National Guard duty, but she did, for the whole two weeks right before the third debate. Would Kamala Harris do that? Would Cory Booker? I have my doubts that even Mayo Pete would do it.

Though she missed the third debate (largely because she was unable to campaign) she found her way back onto the stage for the fourth debate, even though the DNC hates, hates, hates her*. While I don’t think she had the best night (it was the weakest of her three debate performances so far, in my opinion) she was still the #1 google search the night of the debate, as she has been for each debate she’s appeared in.

She may have been weak on that debate stage because she considered boycotting it. Her numbers went up in the weeks after that third debate she missed, so it seems less crucial for her to be on that stage. With the Russian bot accusation, her numbers are going up again in Iowa. She got the Hillary Hates Her bump!

Because the DNC has been so rotten to her, and because she can’t turn away from a fight, she’s been turning up on right wing media, such as the Tucker Carlson show on Fox. Because of that, she’s doing something virtually no other Democrat has managed in a long time: she’s building a profile among conservatives and independants. Because the DNC has forced her to be an outsider, she has embraced the role and is building strength in what conventional wisdom (read: the DNC) would tell us is an impossible demographic.

Considering that she’s never going to be popular with centrist Democrats, I do wonder how she plans to win enough support to prevail in the Democratic primary, but I speculate that this may not be a reason to step out of the race. She could conceivably be a strong running mate for the most progressive-left candidate in the primary, should that candidate survive. Winning influence among conservative and independent voters might make her a strong addition to a Bernie Sanders ticket.

*Another reason I like her!

A Byzantine Reflection

The medieval Roman Empire is all around us. The more that I study, the more I realize that this is so.

Today I learned about Erasmus, a Dutch scholar, who created the New Testament, compiling over 2,000 Byzantine manuscripts into a single document. The King James Bible’s New Testament is a straight up translation of his Novum Instrumentum the Latin translation of his original Greek manuscript, also by Erasmus. The Gutenberg Bible also printed his New Testament. Martin Luther based his faith on it.

There are many ways that the Byzantines are still with us, but there are few as profound and important as the New Testament.