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I am a girl who loves a good fruit pie. I can think so nothing more delicious in the summer, and I love making it almost as much as I love eating it. But, I have a bone to pick with fruit pies because they are finicky and temperamental in the summer months. My biggest gripe is that the best time of the year to make fruit pies is also the most challenging. If you've ever made your own crust, you know crust's two mortal enemies are heat and humidity, and guess what New York summers are known for? Meanwhile, farmers' markets are brimming with the most ripe, fragrant fruit begging to be eaten, canned, and turned out in baked goods. Other than enjoying summer's bounty as nature intended, what more glorious way is there to showcase fruit at the peak of its season than baking it into a pie? Never mind that you dread turning on your oven when temperatures cross into the triple digits, as you yourself slowly cook in your tiny urban apartment. So when the pie is baked – so are you.
And yet to me, despite the heat and the sweat, the process of making pie is one of life's greatest pleasures. I love to see the dough, crumbly and speckled with pea-sized pieces of butter come together, love shaping the pie crusts into disks and chilling them. Love to prepare the fruit: pit the cherries, hull the strawberries, blanch the peaches. Love to flour my counter and roll out the dough out and place it into the pie dish. But nothing gives me more glee and jubilation than piling the fruit into the pie shell, seeing it tower before my eyes.
Fruit pies offer a taste of summer, a burst of sunshine topped by a sugary, flaky, buttery crust. Crust is key to a good pie, in my opinion. But with fruit pies, you often face a soggy bottom – the upside of a fruit pie is also its downside. And I used to think, such is the way of the world. I had to just make do and carry on. But there's a genius solution in place – pre-baking your bottom crust! It's genius, really, and you can kiss those soggy bottom crusts goodbye.
A solution came my way in the form of a book and a New York Times article almost simultaneously. I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of Bill Yosses' and Melissa Clark's new book, "The Perfect Finish: Special Desserts for Every Occasion". I leafed through the entire book the night it arrived in the mail, and there wasn't a single thing I didn't want to make, but a recipe for a pie crust caught my eye first. I've been a long-time fan of Bill Yosses, the executive pastry chef at the White House; and Melissa Clark's recipes and I go way way back. I've been inexplicably drawn to her recipes, not just for the New York Times, but for other publications like Food & Wine. I have, on many an occasion, clicked on tempting recipes only to discover that they have been written by her. When I saw the method for pre-baking crust, and then saw the New York Times sour cherry pie recipe, I knew that I was never again going to have a soggy crust in my pies. Hurray! I want to twirl around the room in jubilation!
Pre-baking is the bees knees! So ingenious I'm sad I didn't think of it myself. It makes absolute perfect sense and is worth the extra time spent in the kitchen. You can pour yourself one of these and read a book, or look out the window, or stick your head in the freezer for a minute to cool off. Whatever you do, you can pass the time swimmingly because it'll be well worth the extra effort.
I bet there aren't any disagreements over wanting a flaky bottom crust. So we've got that going for us, right? Now that the matter is settled, let's move on to the content of the crust. There's some debate out there, an each option with its own fervent following: all-butter, butter-with-shortening, or butter-with-leaf lard? My own personal preference (at this point) is tied between an all-butter and a butter-leaf-lard crust, between which I will alternate depending on my mood and if I have access to quality leaf lard. No matter which recipe you go with, you want to find the best quality butter around. Better butter means higher fat content. Higher the fat content means a flakier crust. It's that simple.
Whatever method you choose to go with for your crust, you will want to work quickly, be it cutting your butter into flour (in a pre-chilled bowl, of course!), shaping your dough into disks, or rolling it out. You have a few minutes between the too-hard-and-crumbly dough and too-warm-and-tearing dough; and overworking the pastry releases the dreaded glutens, diminishing your crust's flakiness. I am not trying to frighten you, my lovelies, but instead give you as much information and ammunition to tackle this perfect-time-for-pie-but-it's-too-hot-to-make-it conundrum. Knowledge is power, and I know you will do beautifully. But most importantly, I want you to not be afraid. Worst case, if your pie refuses to roll out, you can gently press pieces of it into the pie dish and then when you are ready to top your pie with the second crust, you can use a cookie-cutter to shape crust circles and lay them on top (another genius Melissa Clark idea). Which will save you the possible aggravation and yield a rather pretty pie. And you will get points for taste and looks. Bonus.
Then you can kick back and pretend the whole thing was completely effortless, because neither heat, nor humidity got anything on you. You can totally reward yourself with a slice of pie, because you earned it, friend. Just be sure to share some with me.
Blueberry Strawberry Pie
Crust adapted from "The Perfect Finish: Special Desserts for Every Occasion" by Bill Yosses and Melissa Clark and from NY Times piece by Melissa Clark
20 tbsp (283 grams) unsalted butter, chilled and cubed (use high fat butter like Plugra)
7 tablespoons (100 grams) heavy cream
3 tablespoons (40 grams)rendered lard (or use more butter)
3 3/4 cups (469 grams) all-purpose flour, plus additional for rolling the dough
1 tablespoons (12.5 grams) granulated suga
1 1/4 teaspoons kosher salt
8 cups blueberries and strawberries (mixed)
1 teaspoon fresh chopped thyme
freshly squeezed lemon juice of 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup (50 grams) granulated sugar
1/4 cup (57 grams) packed light brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon (7 grams) creme de cassis
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg white (28 grams), room temperature, lightly beaten (if using a traditional crust on top and not cutting out circles)
1 1/2 teaspoons Demerara or granulated sugar
1/4 cup (45 grams) cornstarch
For the crust:
Pre-chill a stand mixer beforehand. Once cold, place butter, cream and lard. Beat on low with a paddle attachment until smooth. In another bowl, thoroughly mix together flour, sugar and salt. Add about a third of the flour mixture to the butter mixture and beat on low until the mixture comes together like a fairly wet dough. Add the remaining flour and mix until the dough just begins to come together. Once that happens, turn the dough out on a floured surface and knead gently into a small ball. Divide the ball in half, wrap each half in plastic wrap and flatten into disks. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight (or up to 3 days).
For the filling:
In a large bowl, toss together blueberries, cut-up strawberries and thyme. Add lemon juice, sugars, salt, creme de cassis and vanilla extract. Set aside to macerate for about half an hour.
After the half hour passes, add the cornstarch and mix it until it completely dissolves. Set aside.
Assembling and Baking the Pie:
On a lightly floured surface, roll out one of the disks of dough to a 1/4-inch thickness and fold it in half. Then re-roll to a round about 12 inches in diameter and the thickness of about 2 quarters. This thickness will give you the layers of flakiness you so desire in your pie dough, particularly the bottom part. Transfer the dough to a Pyrex 9-inch pie pan (or a dark steel pie pan), and trim the edges so they are even with the rim of the pie pan. [Pyrex is particularly useful here as it allows you to see the doneness of the bottom crust due to its transparency.] Cover the dough with plastic wrap you used in chilling this disk, and place in the freezer for 1 hour.
When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 425F. Remove the pie pan from the freezer and line the dough with aluminum foil on top, delicately pressing it to form to the shape of the pan. Place the baking beads, dried beans, or uncooked rice (or lentils, etc.) on top of the foil. Bake for 30 minutes and allow to cool on a cooling rack afterward. After the pie cooled off, preheat the oven again to 350F.
While your shell is baking, roll out the second disk of dough. Using cookie cutters (I used the circle ones of various sizes) cut out a bunch of circles from the rolled out dough. Place on a baking rack and refrigerate until ready to decorate the top.
Pour the berry filling into the pre-baked pie shell. Place your pie dough circles on top of the pie, starting in the center and filling out to the outer sides. Make a pattern pleasing to your eye. I liked placing my circles slightly atop their neighbor circles to create some kind of a cohesion. I used tiny circles to fill in some gaps. When done with the top of the pie, sprinkle some Demerara sugar on top of the pie.
[If you prefer a traditional pie topping, you can, instead, roll out the pie shell and create a traditional pie crust topping. Be sure to slice a few vents on top to allow the pie to breathe. If you do make a traditional topping, then be sure to use the whipped egg white as glue for your pie crust top. Brush the edges of the pre-baked shell with the egg white before placing your rolled out raw shell on top.]
Bake for 1 hour, on an aluminum foil covered rimmed 11 x 17 inch baking sheet on the center rack until the pie is deeply golden and you can see the thick juices bubbling through the openings.
Let cool before serving as it allows the starch to set a bit and give the pie some structure. Otherwise, your pie will ooze and fall apart when you are trying to serve it. While it's the pie's taste we are all most concerned with, it is a great feeling of accomplishment to be able to serve the pie to your guests where the slice has great structure and holds its shape.


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Rep. Charles Rangel, D- NY, is now in the record books as the first member of Congress to be censured in nearly 30 years. While the punishment was overkill, somehow Black politicians must know by now that Blacks can't get away with the same misdeeds that can be normal for their White colleagues.
Despite talk of a post-racial society Black politicians still operate under a double- standard that means they had better fly right or not at all. History shows that if Black leaders are establishment puppets like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the White power system will protect them, but if they are strategic to Black progress, they are watched, targeted, and sometimes destroyed. Slipups or mistakes that might be forgiven if only the wrongdoers were White become virtually hanging offenses.
In the history of the Congress, 31 members have been censured, 22 in the House and nine in the Senate. Rangel's conduct does not measure up to the immoral and unethical conduct of the White congressmen who preceded him in infamy.
In 1983, U.S. Rep. Gerry Studds of Massachusetts was censured for having sex with a male teenage page. In 1990 U.S. Sen. Daniel Durenberger of Minnesota was censured for the unethical practice of converting campaign contributions to personal use.
The Ethics Committee found that Rangel's ethical violations were the result of sloppy record-keeping and that they did not result in personal financial gain and there was no evidence of corruption.
So if the House were not playing by the rule of "different strokes for different folks," either the case would have been dismissed or a reprimand would have been in order. Censure, the next step to expulsion, was much too harsh.
One of Rangel's biggest violations was his failure to pay some back taxes until the ethics committee got win of it. Yet when it was disclosed during confirmation hearings that Timothy Geithner did not pay $34,000 in taxes while heading the International Monetary Fund, this misconduct was dismissed as "an honest mistake," and he went on to become Treasury Secretary whose job includes ensuring citizens pay their taxes.
When are progressive Black leaders going to learn that they can't play by the same rules of their White colleagues and think they will be treated fairly?
A larger question is why didn't Rangel learn from the 1970 ethics quandary that brought down civil rights legend Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.? Rangel, who was then a young rising star state legislator, used Powell's ethical problems against him in his campaign to successfully unseat Powell.
Powell was knee-deep in reported ethics violations, which included taking trips abroad with public money and having his third wife, Yvette Diago, on his congressional payroll with no evidence she was earning her keep.
Tragically Powell and Rangel share other bitter ironies. Under pressure Rangel recently stepped down from chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, the chief tax-writing committee of the House. It was the first time a Black person had risen to that level of power in the House.
In 1967, Powell was stripped of the chairmanship of the powerful Education and Labor Committee, where he had soared as one of the chief architects of social legislation in the nation. He was also instrumental in passing legislation that made lynching a federal crime, as well as bills that desegregated public schools
Following a Judiciary Committee Investigation, the full House refused to seat Powell. Powell fought the exclusion through the courts and in June 1969, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Powell had to be seated because the House had acted unconstitutionally, a move that was blocked because of Rangel's successful electon win.
As Rangel was being censured, heads were also spinning in Prince George's County, Maryland, where two Black elected officials, outgoing Chief Executive Jack Johnson and his wife, Leslie, who was recently elected to the county council, were arrested on numerous federal corruption charges. When arrested Mrs. Johnson was reported to have nearly $80,000 hidden in her bra.
Johnson is another politician who had won respect for his work in developing the county, which prides itself in being the wealthiest prominently Black county in the nation. Yet, the county also had a reputation that in order to get contracts, people had to "pay to play." That system may have worked for Johnson's White predecessors, but it is may prove his undoing.
Maybe some day, progressive Black politicians can take stock of their true value, which far exceeds personal reputations. When they fall, opportunities for their constituents decrease, as well as collective pride.
All politicians are not created equal.

subset: commoncrawl


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Farrell Gean attended Lipscomb from 1968-72 where he achieved the rare accomplishment of lettering four years in both basketball and baseball. Gean averaged 15 points per game over his career and was team captain in 1972. He was just as accomplished on the baseball diamond where he played a leading role in the program's ascent to national prominence.
In 1971 and 1972, Gean helped lead the "Miracle Bisons" in their first trips to the NAIA World Series. During his career he set school records in hits, doubles, home runs, and RBI's. He has dedicated his career to education, first as a professor in Lipscomb's School of Business and for the past 30 years as Professor of Accounting at Pepperdine University.
Director of Athletics Philip Hutcheson on Farrell Gean:
"During his days at Lipscomb, Farrell was living proof that the terms 'student' and 'athlete' were not mutually exclusive. Farrell's exploits on the diamond and hardwood were well-known, but it was his hard work and ability in the classroom and his engaging manner around campus that helped him make such a lasting mark on the Lipscomb landscape. Equally impressive, since his days as a baseball and basketball standout and Lipscomb's Bachelor of Ugliness, Farrell has truly 'paid it forward' by continuing to share his gifts and abilities in the classroom and communities of which he has been a part, and it is for all of those reasons that we are delighted to welcome him into the Lipscomb Athletics Hall of Fame."


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Church Splits
When an atom is split, its overall mass is reduced and a tremendous amount of energy is released. The results, graphically demonstrated by the two atomic bombs that ended World War II, can be massively destructive, with effects that linger …Read More
Faithful Gardening
When Methodist missionary J. Waskom Pickett published Christian Mass Movements in India in 1933, it would've been impossible to predict its impact on American evangelicalism. His observations about rates of conversion and church growth among Indian castes may have …Read More
On Worldviews
Abortion. Euthanasia. Pornography. Same-sex marriage. Transgender rights. Embryonic research. Genetic enhancement. Christians surveying the cultural landscape in the West have a clear sense that things are headed in a destructive direction. While most believers can easily identify the symptoms of …Read More
The Podcast Pastor
Many Christians find biblical and spiritual nourishment from faithful podcast preachers. This is a good thing. It gives people the opportunity to build God's Word into their lives during the week as they jog or drive or clean or …Read More
The Ordinary Christian Church
Throughout its history, the church has tended to view itself as extraordinary. For example, in the medieval period, the church was an extraordinary place apart from the world, the sacred separated from the profane, the place of salvation, the holder …Read More
Pastor, Professor, Pilgrim: An Interview with Derek Thomas
Tabletalk: How did you become a Christian? Derek W.H. Thomas: I became a Christian during my first year at university. My best friend (who had recently become a Christian) sent me a copy of John Stott's Basic Christianity …Read More
The Ordinary Christian Family
One of my adult sons recently commented to me that the traditional family is toast. I understand what he meant. The ordinary Christian family is nearly extinct. Contemporary culture is redefining family—gay marriage, a range of creative living arrangements, and …Read More
Contending for Peace and Purity
I spent my first year of college at a second-degree separatist school that was founded by the Bible Presbyterian Church. The men who founded the college were colleagues of Carl MacIntyre, Allan MacRae, J. Gresham Machen, and Bob Jones Jr …Read More
What Is the New Covenant Church?
A churchless Christian is an oxymoron. As John Calvin famously said, echoing the church father Cyprian, "For those to whom God is Father the church may also be Mother." While the notion of "mother church" may jolt some readers, a …Read More


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Support this show at patreon.com/incitingincidentpodcast This week, Marissa and Bethany interview Billie Guerrero, a fellow speaker from the FreeThought Alliance convention, who gave a speech on teaching evolution and getting into a field predominately filled with old cis white dudes. Homo rudolfensis: https://www.infona.pl/resource/bwmeta1.element.elsevier-4951bc41-26c9-313a-b523-a02ba9513e85 Pluto: https://amp.space.com/41769-pluto-planet-definition-debate-rages-on.html The lizards she mentioned: https://relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/animals/2008/04/lizard-evolution-island-darwin This show is part of the Trans Podcaster Visibility Initiative. The theme music is written and performed by Shelley Segal and was used with permission. Contact the show at firstname.lastname@example.com, on Twitter @RisMcCool @BethanyLFutrell @SheTalksAtheism, on Facebook facebook.com/incitingincidentpodcast
Ris McCool
Marissa Alexa McCool is a podcast host, author, columnist, LGBT-rights activist, speaker, and stage performer whose goal is to speak out, speak loudly, and bring visibility to LGBT issues.
As host of the Inciting Incident podcast, she begins conversations on difficult topics in current events. In addition to many different interviews, such as with Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, Dan Arel, Matthew O'Neil, Noam Chomsky, Chris Kluwe, Dr. Bruce Kuklick, P. Andrew Torrez, Esq. , Tim O'Neill, and Alison Flowers, she hosts individual topics and conversations about LGBT rights, transgender visibility, suicide and mental health awareness, and the myths of PC Culture. For instance, her podcast hosted a Survivor of the Paris Terror Attacks, A Suicide Survivor Who Became a Motivational Speaker, and A Comedian Who Also Debates for Social Justice. Inciting Incident averages 30,000 downloads a month, and has a global reach, with 46 percent of the audience outside the United States.
McCool writes a blog, a column, and has authored seven books, including The PC Lie: How American Lives Decided I Don't Matter, and False Start: A Novel. The blog goes hand-in-hand with the podcast, but discusses issues on a more immediate level. She's used it recently as a way to shine light on the everyday experience of a transperson on a personal level as well as societal, which was also the main idea of her book The PC Lie. Chris Kluwe, former NFL star and LGBT activist, wrote the foreword, and several others like Andrew Torrez and Eli Bosnick contributed pieces to the book she wrote in the immediate post-election atmosphere. Her book was recognized in newspapers such as The Daily Pennsylvanian. False Start is a fictional work detailing life in a small conservative town, coping with mental illness, and LGBT representation under those circumstances. She won a 2014 Keystone Award for Excellence in Journalism and won the 2015 Audience Choice Award for her film Permanent Solution, focusing on the struggles of suicide survivors.
Due to her work, she has been invited as a guest on a wide variety of podcasts. These include ones with with an LGBT focus like The Gaytheist Manifesto, PolyAskery, and Bi Any Means, as well as those aimed at current events and social justice, such as Zachrilege Cast, Doubting Dogma, In the Cut: By the Daily Pennsylvanian, God Awful Movies, and many others.
An activist in the LGBT community, she's focused on being present to help with difficult questions to personalize and rationalize the issues that transpeople face. She was cast in two different productions of The Vagina Monologues, and was the first-ever transgender person in 17 years to appear in UPenn's V-Day production of the show. She has spoken and performed improv at the Tekko convention in Pittsburgh for three years running, has been invited to various Pride festivals including this year's Utah Pride, and will be one of the many guests to attend ReAsonCon3 in Hickory, North Carolina. Future appearances have been scheduled in Florida, Vermont, California, Illinois, and the list of states is likely to continue to grow. Marissa's main goal is to bring awareness and visibility to all LGBT people, especially those marginalized within the transgender community because of the recent bathroom bills attacking their rights to use bathrooms that match their gender identity.
McCool will host her own live event in July for The 100th Episode of Inciting Incident and will host Chris Kluwe, Gaytheist Manifesto, Opening Arguments, and Puzzle in a Thunderstorm, LLC as her main guests. This event will take place in the 1000-seat Carlisle Theater in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and has been referred to as a mini-convention by Andrew Torrez.
Marissa has been lovingly nicknamed "The Purple Amazon" for her bright purple hair, "Superqueer" affectionately for her openness about her identity and sexuality, and most notably, "the badass mistress of the podcast and written word universe" by the fine people at Utah Outcasts. She lives in central Pennsylvania with her husband and two children and will graduate university this spring of 2017.


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CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez remained on his sickbed in Cuba on Thursday while supporters planned to rally in his honor on the day he should have been sworn in for a new six-year term in the South American OPEC nation.
The postponement of the inauguration, a first in Venezuelan history, has laid bare the gravity of Chavez's condition after complications from a fourth cancer operation in his pelvic area.
It has also left his chosen heir, Vice President Nicolas Maduro - a former bus driver who shares his boss's radical socialist views - in charge of day-to-day government until there is clarity over whether Chavez will recover or not.
"People traveling on foot, the humble, the patriots ... tomorrow we're going to demonstrate, one proud people with one slogan: we are all Chavez!" Maduro said in a televised cabinet meeting late on Wednesday.
The president, whose legendary energy and garrulous dominance of the airwaves had often made him seem omnipresent in Venezuela since 1999, has not been seen in public nor heard from since his surgery on December 11.
Venezuela's 29 million people are anxiously watching what could be the last chapter in the extraordinary life of Chavez, who grew up in a rural shack and went on to become one of the world's best-known heads of state.
The saga also has huge implications for the likes of Cuba and other leftist allies who have benefited for years from Chavez's subsidized oil and other largesse.
A clutch of foreign friends, including the presidents of Uruguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua, were due at Thursday's events in Caracas despite Chavez's absence.
Government officials have called supporters to the streets around the presidential palace. It has been the scene of some of the biggest dramas of Chavez's rule, from protests in 2002 and a coup that toppled him briefly, to speeches after election wins and emotional returns from previous cancer treatments in Havana.
"Take your songs, take your banners, so everyone knows we are all behind Chavez in this revolution," Diosdado Cabello, the head of Congress and a close Chavez ally, urged the president's supporters.
Venezuela's opposition leaders are furious at what they see as a Cuban-inspired manipulation of the constitution by Maduro, Cabello and other Chavez allies aimed at preventing the naming of a caretaker president due to Chavez's absence on Thursday.
Henrique Capriles, who lost October's presidential election to Chavez, said the opposition had no plans to risk violence by encouraging supporters to hold a counter-demonstration.
"Not calling people onto the streets is not a sign of weakness, but of responsibility," he told reporters. "Who wins from a conflict scenario? They win, the pseudo-leaders who are not the owners of the country, nor of its sovereignty."
The U.S. Embassy in Caracas advised American citizens in Venezuela to exercise caution during the next few days.
A top Venezuelan military officer told state TV the borders were being reinforced and security forces were patrolling intensively to bring people "a sense of peace and tranquility."
With government updates short on details, little is known about Chavez's actual medical condition and rumors are flying.
On Wednesday, the state telecommunications regulator told opposition TV station Globovision it was beginning punitive administrative proceedings against it for "generating anxiety" with its coverage of the president's health.
The government's version is that Chavez suffered complications including a severe lung infection after the latest surgery. But speculation is rife on Twitter that he may be on life support or at risk of major organ failure.
He has undergone four operations, as well as weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatment, since being diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer in his pelvic area in June 2011.
He looked to have staged a remarkable recovery from the illness last year, winning a new six-year term in a hard-fought election in October. But within weeks of his victory he had to return to Havana for more treatment.
In contrast with previous trips to Cuba, the government has not released any photos or video of him recuperating, and Chavez has not made any phone calls home to state media, fueling the impression that his condition is dire.
Though supporters maintain vigils and express hope he will recover, there appears to be a growing acceptance he may not, and a slow adjustment to the idea of a post-Chavez Venezuela.
"We are all necessary but nobody should be irreplaceable and the revolutionary process in our America must continue," said one friend and close ally, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa.
Though often viewed in the West as a clownish autocrat, Chavez has a kinder image in developing nations where many admire his defiance of the United States and efforts to improve the lives of Venezuela's poor.
At home, Chavez has a cult-like appeal for many in the slums due to his "anti-imperialist" rhetoric, his pumping of crude oil revenue into welfare projects, and his own humble background.
But Venezuela is deeply split, with opponents saying he has squandered an unprecedented bonanza of oil money with misguided policies. They also accuse him of allowing corruption to flourish and oppressing political opponents and media critics.
Should Chavez die or step down, a new election would be called and it would likely pit Maduro against opposition leader Capriles, the 40-year-old governor of Miranda state.
Analysts say Maduro would be hard to beat given Chavez's personal blessing and the emotional outpouring from supporters if the president were forced to leave office, though past polls have shown Capriles to be more popular than the vice president.
Foreign investors generally hope for a more business-friendly government in Venezuela so prices of its widely traded bonds have soared over the last few weeks on Chavez's health woes, but they dipped this week as investors' expectations of a quick change apparently dimmed.
Editing by Daniel Wallis and Kieran Murray. Desking by Christopher Wilson


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The Pharaoh of Arrogance.
Emanuel to push for state-wide handgun registry I guess he imagines that
a. people will not resist his proposed tyranny, and
b. they won't hold him personally accountable for starting a civil war.
Bad guesses, the both of them. You know, it takes a certain kind of brutal arrogance to assume that you have the right to attack other people's God-given rights to liberty and property. Kind of like that possessed by the guy who dreamed up the Gunwalker Plot. As an amateur historian I would only observe that justice often comes in strange forms and from random directions as dictated by the iron-clad Law of Unintended Consequences.


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Would you pay $1000 for a hand-craft, culturally symbolic iPhone case?
Crunchgear says they're intended "to show how Japanese warlords from the Sengoku period would probably use their iPhones if they lived today":
The so-called JAPAN TEXTURE [JP] series consists of a total of five cases with different designs. Created under the supervision of a historian, SoftBank says each case is covered with special lacquer and gold dust. It takes three to four weeks to make one, which kind of explains the price.
Given the prices for lacquer bowls, tea sets, and other object d'art, maybe $1000 is no barrier? What say you?
[Picture credit - Nobi]


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Bodycon Dresses
If you're looking for a Miss Selfridge piece with just the right amount of 80s glamour, try a silhouette-sculpting bodycon dress. A true wardrobe staple for any girl who loves to get her glam on - nothing is better for a night on the town than a slinky black number, or a bright pop of colour works perfectly for standing out from the crowd. Get your heels out and you're ready to party!


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Local businesses honor employees
A new Employee of the Month Program is making third Tuesdays a lot brighter. That's when honored employees at UNC Hospitals are presented flowers from University Florist, a massage certificate from Massage Envy and a haircut/styling certificate from Great Clips.
The new program recognizes employees in eight divisions, including the NC Cancer Hospital, for their dedication, positive attitude and outstanding work ethic.
The idea for the program began with Charles House, longtime Chapel Hill resident and owner of University Florist, who lost his wife, Mary, to cancer in 2001. "Our family had great interactions with the nursing team when Mary was undergoing cancer treatment, so we wanted to honor them for their wonderful care.
"There are a lot of unsung heroes in the medical complex. This program is a way to recognize them for the great work they do in our community." Mr. House and University Florist have been joined by additional area businesses. Randall Diers, franchise owner for Massage Envy Chapel Hill and Raleigh, agrees. "We appreciate all that the UNC Oncology staff does, and once we heard about the program, we wanted to participate."
Dr. Mary Tonges, Senior Vice President and Chief Nursing Officer of the UNC Hospitals Division of Nursing, says, "We are extremely grateful to these local businesses to recognize nursing team members who demonstrate outstanding dedication to patient care, go above and beyond to serve as a resource to colleagues, and exhibit overall excellence in their work. The delivery of flowers and other gifts to these most deserving individuals is a meaningful way to applaud their efforts."
Cosby Dudley, local franchisee of Great Clips in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, shares the community spirit. "It is important to give back to the local community, and we are particularly excited about supporting this program at UNC Hospitals. These folks take great care of people in need all day long, so it's nice to be able to do a good deed in return."


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Hillary & Katherine's Favorite Things For September
From the perfect polish to the high priest of funk (no, really), please check out all the things on our radar right now!
As you know, we love a designer + Target collection—Rodarte, Proenza Schouler, Jason Wu, we're talking to you—but the shopping giant's brilliant collaboration with 3.1 Phillip Lim is truly next level. Hitting stores on September 15th, the collection features over 100 pieces that span menswear, womenswear, and accessories. You know we're going to be the first in line!
Chanel Le Vernis Nail Colour ($27) in Alchimie
There is little I love more than a metallic polish—this is Hillary writing, FYI—and while I've been on a chrome silver or rose gold kick for the better part of 2013, for fall I'm all about this slightly odd metallic khaki green from Chanel. It's such an interesting neutral, plus I'm a sucker for a little sheen, and much like gray, it goes with nothing, so therefore it goes with everything!
Club Monaco Ela Suede Moto Jacket ($695)
Clearly we're crazy about all things moto jacket for fall, and this one is definitely our crush du jour. The slightly, relaxed, lightly boxy cut is deceptively-flattering and the bright cobalt suede is simply a knockout.
You might have noticed that we've been paying a little more attention to the fellows lately—talking about how to style the man in your life, discussing the best dressed dudes—and it seems we're not the only ones. The geniuses behind one of our favorite e-commerce sites Shopbop are feeling the fellows too, and are launching a new menswear-shopping site, East Dane, this week. The site features a mix of new favorites (Alexander Wang) and beloved classics (Wolverine 1000 Mile Boots), plus styling tips and tricks, and we have a hunch the one-stop shop is going to make a really, really, really big splash.
Julianne Hough's Editorial Shoot for Byrdie.com
Full disclosure: we've been full-tilt Julianne Hough supporters for a while now, so when she agreed to do a beauty shoot for our sister site Byrdie, there was some serious celebrating in the office. Our girl crush was game for trying a look that's more runway than red carpet—rainbow brite eye makeup, but done in a majorly gorgeous way—and looked incredible doing it. Be sure to check out each look and let us know which one's your favorite.
Some of us (ahem, Katherine), really, really, really love Prince. As in, name their cat after him, love him. So the fact that the purple high priest of funk is on Twitter now, well, suffice it to say, this is totally up our alley. His sense of humor shows too; Prince not only referenced a classic Chappelle's Show line on Twitter recently, but he's also using a photograph of Dave Chappelle, dressed as Prince, as the artwork for his new song "Breakfast Can Wait." Well played, sir. Well played.
Proenza Schouler Lunch Bag Large Shearling Clutch ($1045)
We might not be able to break out our fall coats for another few months, but we can start appropriating some of the season's key fabrics into our wardrobes via other ways, like Proenza Schouler's next-level furry clutch. The simple shape lets the unexpected material really stand out, plus who can resist a textured accessory? Not us, not now.
Dior Nail Earrings ($440) In Palladium
Dior is killing it right now for us, on basically every level. While we might not have big enough budgets to splurge on the entire collection, the incredible silver earrings from the brand's F/W 13 campaign are a bit more attainable and will add the right amount of polish to any outfit.
The World According To Karl ($30)
Though it doesn't technically come out until mid-September, this book is already creating a buzz in our office. Karl Lagerfeld is wildly quotable—"Think pink. But don't wear it."—and we have a feeling this is going to be on our gifts to give list come the holidays.
Bridget Hall for Prabal Gurung Fall 13 Digital Campaign
While the latest crop of models are certainly on our radar, we'll always have a soft spot for the girls who have been a part of our collective consciousness for years, which is why we're so pleased that Prabal Gurung cast the incomparable Bridget Hall in his F/W 13 digital campaign. The 35-year-old Dallas, Texas-raised model has been one of our favorites since she burst onto the scene nearly two decades ago, and as these images prove, she's only getting better.


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The Joys of Making an Audiobook
Sometime around March last year I got an email from ACX, the company behind Audible, telling me that their previous ban on UK authors sending recordings to them was now lifted. I was delighted, and immediately set about recording an … Continue reading
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Since my last post Can You Give away too many books? I've had another go, so here's the result (so far) of my latest experiment in the Free Books world. I had a 5 day giveaway for Bold Counsel, the … Continue reading
Posted in Writing Process Tagged amazon, Bold Counsel, books, crime fiction, David Gaughran, giveaway, kdp select, Sarah Newby, Trials of Sarah Newby, writing, writing advice, Writing Process 6 Comments
The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
T.S. Eliot described The Moonstone as 'the first, the best, and the longest of all detective novels' and it is hard to disagree with any of that. I read this book many years ago, but was able to enjoy it … Continue reading
Posted in Reviews Tagged books, crime fiction, detective fiction, homicide, literature, Sergeant Cuff, The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins 3 Comments
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Telling Stories, by Beverley Jones
This is an excellent debut novel. Bev Jones has worked as a journalist in the South Wales area and she uses the background and her experience to full effect. The story starts with a group of young students at Cardiff … Continue reading
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Dark Horse, by John Bartlett
When I first read Chequered Justice I had not heard of John Bartlett and I had no interest in motor racing. But to my surprise I found he had written a marvellous, horrifying book which was impossible to put down. … Continue reading
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Many a politician suffers a setback and recovers. Rarely does a politician endure a scandal and nationwide mockery on the scale of Mark Sanford and still recover.
Sanford did. South Carolina's former governor defeated Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in a special election for Congress.
REPRESENTATIVE-ELECT MARK SANFORD: Some guy came up to me the other day. He said: You look a lot like Lazarus.
INSKEEP: Lazarus is described in the Bible as a man Jesus brought back from the dead. NPR's Kathy Lohr reports on Sanford's political resurrection.
KATHY LOHR, BYLINE: In his victory speech, Sanford thanked what he called a God of second chances for regaining the congressional seat he first won in the 1990s.
SANFORD: I just want to acknowledge a God not just of second chances, but third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eight chances because that is the reality of our shared humanity.
LOHR: The campaign focused on Sanford's character - not just the 2009 scandal when he left the country to have an affair, but said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Recently, the former governor's ex-wife Jenny accused him of trespassing at her home. During the campaign, Sanford said he'd done a lot of soul-searching, and he acknowledged that again last night.
SANFORD: If it was just about market-based ideas and limited government, this campaign would have been easily won a long time ago, but I had deficiencies that are well-chronicled, as a candidate. And at the end of the day, I was carried across the threshold, if you will, by an incredible team of volunteers that are represented in this room, and well beyond this room.
LOHR: The National Republicans withdrew their support for Sanford, but he refocused the campaign on national Democratic groups that spent nearly $1 million on behalf of Elizabeth Colbert Busch. Sanford even campaigned with a cardboard cutout of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and tried to tie his opponent to liberals in Congress.
ELIZABETH COLBERT BUSCH: Hi, everyone. Thank you for being here tonight. Thank you.
LOHR: In her concession speech, Colbert Busch - businesswoman and sister of comedian Stephen Colbert - said she knew the race would be an uphill climb.
BUSCH: The people have spoken, and I respect their decision. No, I respect their decision. This is the beauty of our country. I respect their decision.
LOHR: Mitt Romney won this district by 18 points last year, and voters here haven't elected a Democrat in more than three decades. In the end, they picked Sanford again.
ROBERT OLDENDICK: It's South Carolina, which means the Republican identification trumps everything.
LOHR: Robert Oldendick is a political science professor at the University of South Carolina. He says Sanford's personal problems did affect the race, but not enough for voters to elect a Democrat.
OLDENDICK: It kind of sent the message that this is not our favorite candidate. We're kind of holding our nose as we go into the booth here. But when it comes to that person in Congress who's going to represent our views, we'd much rather have Mark Sanford.
LOHR: The former governor appears in court tomorrow to answer his ex-wife's trespassing complaint. In a statement, the National Republicans congratulate Sanford and say the results demonstrate how devastating the policy of the president and Pelosi are for House Democrats in 2014. But National Democrats say the fact that this deeply Republican district was competitive is a testament to the strength of Colbert Busch and a warning that the GOP will have to defend this seat again next year.
Kathy Lohr, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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(Originally posted December 13, 2009)
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories: December 13
(Originally posted December 13, 2009)
3 comments:
Isn't it funny how even though our homes were so crowded, we never felt uncomfortable? We had so many people crammed into small houses, but we made it work and we loved it! Maybe the adults talked about and we kids just ignored it, but it never mattered to me that I had to sit on the floor or on someone's lap. It was always chaotic, but I wouldn't trade it for anything! :)ReplyDelete
Oh, the famous 'kids' table'. Now that I am at the adult table I sometimes wish I could go back.ReplyDelete
We're struggling with the 'kids' table at our family gatherings since there are only 3 kids and one of them is still too young to sit quietly away from his parents. So putting the other two at the kids table would be like sending them to Siberia. Sigh.ReplyDelete


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HACM Welcomes New HUD Regional Administrator
The Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee (HACM) welcomes Joseph P. Galvan as the new Regional Administrator of the Midwest Regional Office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In this role, Galvan is responsible for the oversight and delivery of HUD programs and services in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin. He previously served in the role from 2001 to January 2009.
"Mr. Galvan is a servant leader who has a distinguished record of positive impact in communities throughout the nation," said HACM Secretary-Executive Director Tony Pérez. "Having served in this role before, he has a sound understanding of the region's challenges and its assets. We are pleased to welcome him to this important leadership position."
Prior to joining HUD, he worked as a Principal with Galvan & Associates advising housing authorities on program performance, compliance and executive management issues. He was previously the owner and president of his consulting firm and directed various planning and economic development projects for private and public-sector clients. He has also served as Community Development Director and Community Development Planner for several municipalities in Northeast Illinois.


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On "Ariel"
William V. Davis
"Ariel," the title poem of Sylvia Plath's posthumous volume of the same name is one of her most highly regarded, most often criticised, and most complicated poems. The ambiguities in the poem begin with its title, which has a three fold meaning. To a reader uninformed by Plath's biography "Ariel" would probably most immediately call to mind the "airy spirit" who in Shakespeare's The Tempest is a servant to Prospero and symbolizes Prospero's control of the upper elements of the universe, fire and air. On another biographical or autobiographical level, "Ariel," as we know from reports about the poet's life, was the name of her favorite horse, on whom she weekly went riding. Robert Lowell, in his forward to Ariel, says, "The title Ariel summons up Shakespeare's lovely, though slightly chilling and androgynous spirit, but the truth is that this Ariel is the author's horse." Ted Hughes, Plath's husband, adds these comments,
ARIEL was the name of the horse on which she went riding weekly. Long before, while she was a student at
Cambridge (England), she went riding with an American friend out towards Grantchester. Her horse bolted, the stirrups fell off, and she came all the way home to the stables, about two miles, at full gallop, hanging around the horse's neck.
These two allusions, to The Tempest and to her horse "Ariel," have often been noticed and pointed out, with the emphasis, from a critical perspective, being placed on the biographical referent. But there is another possible referent in the title of the poem which no one has yet noted, although the poet, apparently, went out of her way to make reference, even obvious reference, to it. I refer to "Ariel" as the symbolic name for Jerusalem. "Ariel" in Hebrew means "lion of God." She begins the second stanza of the poem with the line "God's lioness," which seems to be a direct reference to the Hebrew or Jewish "Ariel."
Plath's obsession with Judaism and the Jewish people is clearly indicated in many of her poems.
Indeed, some of the imagery which informs the passage concerning "Ariel" in the Book of Isaiah (29:1-7) appears to have been drawn on directly by Plath for her imagery in her poem "Ariel." In Isaiah 29-5-6 we read,
And in an instant, suddenly,
You will be visited by the Lord of hosts
With thunder and with earthquake and great noise,
With whirlwind and tempest,
And the flame of a devouring fire
In short, then, the poet seems to be combining these three references to "Ariel" in her poem, and creating a context where each of the possible meanings enriches the others. She even seems to imply this when she says, in the second stanza, "How one we grow." Each of the three "Ariel's" contributes its part to the totality of the poem, and each of them merges into the others so that, by the end of the poem, they are all "one."
Now, of these three references to "Ariel," the two that seem most fruitful in terms of an analysis of the poem appear to be the autobiographical and the Biblical In terms of the autobiographical overtones, the poem can be seen as what apparently it is in fact—an account of the poet's going for a ride on her favorite horse. Each of the details she mentions with respect to the ride (at least through the first six stanzas) can be seen as exact reporting of what it is like to ride a horse. The last five stanzas of the poem obviously move beyond the literal telling of taking a horseback ride and move into something which partakes of the mystery whereby the rider experiences something of the unity which is created between horse and rider, if not literally, at least metaphorically. This change in the theme of the poem is signaled both by a change in tone and by a change in technique, and specifically by the break in the rhyme scheme.
In talking of the rhymes in Plath's poetry, John Frederick Nims points out that in The Colossus, Plath's first book, she chooses to rhyme "atonally" using one of several variations:
The same vowel-sound but with different consonants after it: fishes-pig-finger-history; worms-converge. Different vowel-sounds but with the same final consonant: vast-compost-must; knight-combat-heat (this is her most characteristic kind of rhyme in The Colossus). Unaccented syllable going with accented or unaccented: boulders-wore: footsoles-babel. She considers all final vowels as rhyming with all others: jaw-arrow-eye (perhaps suggested by the Middle-English practice in alliteration). Or she will mate sounds that have almost anything in common: ridgepole-tangle-inscrutable.
Nims goes on to say,
In Ariel, the use of rhyme is very different. In some poems it is ghostlier than ever. But more often it is obvious: rhyme at high noon. The same sound may run on from stanza to stanza, with much identical rhyme. "Lady Lazarus" illustrates the new manner. The poem is printed in units of three lines, but the rhyme is not in her favorite terzarima pattern. Six of the first ten lines end in an n-sound, followed by a sequence in long e, which occurs in about half of the next twenty-two lines. Then, after six more a's, we have l's ending eleven of fourteen lines, and then several r's, leading into the six or more air rhymes that conclude the sequence. Almost Skeltonian: the poet seems to carry on a sound about as long as she can, although not in consecutive lines.
Now up to the seventh stanza of the poem (and continuing on through the remainder of the poem once the transitions has been made in the seventh stanza, "White / Godiva, I unpeel— / Dead hands, dead strigencies"), the rhyme scheme has been, for the most part, "regular" in terms of the slant rhymes Nims has suggested, each stanza having two lines which rhyme, given Plath's approach to rhyme. "darkness" / "distance," "grow" / "furrow," "arc" / "catch," "dark"
/ "Hooks," "mouthfuls" / "else," "air" / "hair," "I" / "cry," "wall" / "arrow," and "drive" / "red." It is true that the rhymes do not all fit the categories Nims has set forth, although some of them do. Where the rhymes do not fit his scheme, another scheme, equally justifiable, could be suggested—one which the poet apparently used equally often, here as well as in other poems in Ariel. For instance, in the case of the rhymes "darkness" / "distance," the rhyme works on the duplication of the initial "d's" and the final "s's"; in "arc" / "catch," "arc" ends in the consonant "c" which is picked up as the initial letter in "catch" (also the sequence "ac" in "arc" is reversed in "catch" to "ca"); the "k" in "dark" and "Hooks" carries the rhyme for the lines ending in these two words; in the "wall" / "arrow" rhyme Plath has apparently worked the words so that the letters of the one word become inverted and duplicated backwards in the letters of the other, thus "w" begins "wall" and ends "arrow" and the double "1" in "wall" is duplicated by the double "r" in "arrow," each of the double consonants following the vowel "a"; and the initial "d" of "drive" goes with the final "d" of "red," and so forth.
But, to show the change in theme in the Godiva stanza, Plath breaks the rhyme within the stanza itself, while, and at the same time, she joins this transitional stanza to what has gone before and to what will follow by interlocking its rhyme with the dangling or unused line in both the preceding and following stanzas. Thus "heels" from the preceding stanza is made to rhyme with "unpeel" in the Godiva stanza, and "seas" of the following stanza is made to rhyme with "stringencies." The unity of the poem as a whole has thus been maintained while the shift in its theme is signaled both thematically and structurally by a shift in the rhyme scheme.
In addition to this rather complex patterning of rhyme, Plath also has her own alliterative-devices to bind together individual lines and, at times, larger units of her poems. In "Ariel," for instance, we find lines like, "Pour of tor and distances," "Pivot of heels and knees," and "Of the neck I cannot catch." In each of these lines, the internal rhyme ("pour" / "tor") or the alliteration ("cannot catch") or the assonance ("heels and knees") creates a kind of music which takes the place of exact or even slant rhyme.
On at least two other occasions, then, Plath has set forth similar experiences to the one she details in "Ariel," and in each case she has communicated her experience in terms of horses and horseback riding. All demonstrate a desire to have her reader feel, if not see, the unities of the interconnected emotions which she is attempting to express in these poems. Particularly in "Ariel," she is careful to link the thematic and rhyme devices already mentioned to an overall structure which suggests the special kind of fusions that she intends. The poem is written in three line stanzas, and, in the sense that two of the lines in each stanza rhyme, the poem might be considered to fall into a loose terza rima. Another way in which the form works to complement the meaning is in the stanzaic form itself. The very fact that the stanzas are tri-fold parallels the tri-fold allusions to horse, Ariel in Shakespeare, and "Ariel" as a reference to Jerusalem, Therefore, the stanzaic structure as well as the structure of the individual stanzas corroborates the theme of the poem.
But perhaps the most important structural, as well as thematic, line in the poem is the last line, which is also the final stanza of the poem. This line is important in a three-fold way: first, the "ro" of "cauldron" is inverted to "or" in "morning," thus continuing the duality of the double, and here internal, rhyme that occurs throughout the poem, but at the same time tightening the rhyme even further into the space of a single line; second, the words "eye" and "morning," carrying as they do the overtones of "I" and "mourning," at once incorporate the personal activity (riding a horse) with the communal concern of the Biblical passage (where "Ariel" comes to signify the whole history of the Hebrew race and the suffering, the "mourning" so immediately identified with that history); and, thirdly, the word "cauldron" mixes all of the foregoing elements together into a kind of melting pot of emotion, history and personal involvement. Thus, the poem takes on the richness and complexity we have come to expect from the poet, and, not without reason, stands as the title poem of the book. As A. Alvarez has said, "The difficulty with this poem lies in separating one element from another. Yet that is also its theme." Indeed, Plath seems to have always had a similar difficulty in separating one element of her life from another. But, that, too, was also, and always, her theme.
From "Sylvia Plath's 'Ariel.'" Modern Poetry Studies 3.4 (1972)
Jon Rosenblatt
. . . A poem like "Ariel" possesses power and importance to the degree to which the horseback ride Plath once took becomes something morea ride into the eye of the sun, a journey to death, a stripping of personality and selfhood. To treat "Ariel" as a confessional poem is to suggest that its actual importance lies in the horse- ride taken by its author, in the author's psychological problems, or in its position within the biographical development of the author. None of these issues is as significant as the imagistic and thematic developments rendered by the poem itself. . . .
. . . "Ariel" is probably Plath's finest single construction because of the precision and depth of its images. In its account of the ritual journey toward the center of life and death, Plath perfects her method of leaping from image to image in order to represent mental process. The sensuousness and concreteness of the poemthe "Black sweet blood mouthfuls" of the berries; the "glitter of seas"is unmatched in contemporary American poetry. We see, hear, touch, and taste the process of disintegration: the horse emerging from the darkness of the morning, the sun beginning to rise as Ariel rushes uncontrollably across the countryside, the rider trying to catch the brown neck but instead "tasting" the blackberries on the side of the road. Then all the rider's perceptions are thrown together: the horse's body and the rider's merge. She hears her own cry as if it were that of a child and flies toward the burning sun that has now risen.
In "Ariel," Plath finds a perfect blend between Latinate and colloquial dictions, between abstractness and concreteness. The languages of her earlier and her later work come together:
Godiva, I unpeel
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
The concreteness of the Anglo-Saxon "hands" gives way to the abstractness of the Latinate "stringencies": both the physical and psychological aspects of the self have died and are pared away. Finally, the treatment of aural effects in the poem makes it the finest of Plath's technical accomplishments. The slant-rhymes, the assonance (for example, the "I"-sound in the last three stanzas), and the flexible three-line stanzas provide a superb music. . . . the vortex of images sucks the reader into identifying with a clearly self-destroying journey. On a literal level, few readers would willingly accept this ride into nothingness. But, through its precise rendering of sensation, the poem becomes a temptation: it draws us into its beautiful aural and visual universe against our win. As the pace of the horseride quickens, the intensity of the visual effects becomes greater. The identification of the speaker with the world outside becomes more extreme; Plath's metaphors suggest a large degree of fusion between disparate objects, as in the lines "I / foam to wheat, a glitter of seas." The ride across the fields suddenly turns into an ocean voyage. The body then fuses with the external world. As the speaker's merger with the sun is completed, so is the reader's merger with her: the process of identification within the poem generates a corresponding identification on the part of the reader. If the speaker will be destroyed in the cauldron of energy, the sun, so the reader will be destroyed in the cauldron of the poem. The poem entices us into a kind of deaththe experience of abandoning our bodies and selves.
from Sylvia Plath: The Poetry of Initiation. Copyright © 1979 by University of North Carolina Press.
Alan Williamson
Consider the beginning of a much finer poem, "Ariel" itself:
Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.
The two near-spondees, rhyming, balanced around the insignificant pivot "in": a line could hardly contrive to have more "stasis," less forward movement to it. Moving ahead another five syllables, a hypothetical second line completes itself with the third occurrence of the rhyme--falling, yet again, on an abstract word denoting a privation of quality or presence. Thus, "blue" enters like the declaration of a second theme: because it is a quality; because it is formally unexpected; because it is only the second long vowel in the poem. The theme expands instantaneously, in a "pour" of long-vowel assonance and rhyme, then curiously sinks back under the first theme, as the velocity of the bolting horse melts concrete objects to an abstract blue of "distances."
This little sonata already contains the essential action of the poem. The second theme, of velocity, intensified quality, intensified selfhood, will be developed around the symbolic long i and the related long e, in what must be one of the most aurally spectacular passages in English poetry since Dylan Thomas:
And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child's cry
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
As in the mountain vision in The Bell Jar, the "I" is "honed" against the sun until it is "saintly and thin and essential." It is thrust to the end of the line, against unconditioned space; underscored with ideas of purification, expansion, intensity, and above all speed and daring ("White / Godiva," "unpeel," "seas," "child's cry," "flies," "suicidal," "drive"). But finally, at the crisis, "I" metamorphoses into "Eye," fuses with the cosmic, impersonal awareness, or sheer Being, of the sun itself. Specific identity--like specific perception in the opening stanza"melts" in the "cauldron" of its own acceleration, back to a formless monism.
I have dwelt on this poem not only because it is a tour de force, but because its melding opposites reveal a side of Plath's ontological vision peculiarly relevant to her stylistic development. In a certain sense, as we shall see, the opening stanza we examined so laboriously contains the plot not only of "Ariel" the poem but of Ariel the book.
The philosophical vacillation between motion and stasis runs through all of Plath's late writing.
From Introspection and Contemporary Poetry. Copyright 1984 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Margaret Dickie
A poem that moves from "Stasis in darkness," "substanceless," to the "cauldron of morning" cannot be adequately described as an expression of suicidal impulses, although Plath's use of that word demands explanation. The arrow and the dew, although in apparent apposition, do not reinforce each other. The arrow kills, the dew is killed; the arrow at one with the red eye is its apotheosis, while the dew is consumed by the sun. The dew, like the child's cry melting and the unpeeling dead hands and even the foaming wheat and "glitter of seas," symbolizes all that will be overcome or sacrificed in this arrow's drive into morning. But the speaker, identifying with the arrow, presents herself as no sacrificial victim on the altar of any god. The arrow, like the horse, "God's lioness," absorbs the power of the avenging God: "at one with the drive/ Into the red/ Eye," it is associated with the fury that lit the holocaust.
The sexual implications of this imagery reinforce this reading and develop as well its use in "Purdah." The female speaker here identifies with the horse, a symbol of masculine sexual potency which, as the arrow, becomes a phallic image that drives into the eye, the circle associated with female sexuality. Far from a desire to transcend the physical, "Ariel" expresses the exultation of a sex act in which the speaker is both the driving arrow and the receiving cauldron. "God's lioness" in "Ariel" calls upon both strands of the female mythological lioness: as an arrow she is associated with battle, and in her merger with the sun she absorbs its fertility. Destroyer-creator, masculine-feminine, the spirit with which the speaker identifies in "Ariel" is whole, entire in itself. The fires that burn in honor of and through this spirit are emblematic of its passion and ecstasy.
From Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. Copyright © 1979 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.
A. Alvarez
The difficulty with this poems lies in separating one element from another. Yet that is also its theme; the rider is one with the horse, the horse is one with the furrowed earth, and the dew on the furrow is one with the rider. The movement of the imagery, like that of the perceptions, is circular. There is also another peculiarity: although the poem is nominally about riding a horse, it is curiously 'substanceless'--to use her own word. You are made to feel the horse's physical presence, but not to see it. The detail is all inward. It is as though the horse itself were an emotional state. So finally the poem is not just about the stallion 'Ariel'; it is about what happens when the 'states in darkness' ceases to be static, when the potential violence of the animal is unleashed. And also the violence of the rider.
From The Art of Sylvia Plath: A Symposium. Ed. Charles Newman. Copyright © 1970 by Charles Newman and the Estate of Sylvia Plath.
Anne Stevenson
The title "Ariel," like "Medusa," carries multiple meanings; it refers to the ethereal spirit of Shakespeare's Tempest, but also significantly, Ariel happened to be the name of the (rather elderly, ponderous) horse on which Sylvia was learning to ride. Most potent of all, Ariel is the spirit of poetry, the romantic embodiment of inspiration or genius. In the canon of Sylvia's work, "Ariel" is supreme, a quintessential statement of all that had meaning for her. In it she rehearses the whole spectrum of her color imagery, moving from "Stasis in darkness" into the "substanceless blue" of sky and distance as horse and rider, "God's lioness," rush as one through clutching hostilities:
Berries cast dark
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
"Something else," too, "Hauls me through air": the speaker, increasingly ethereal, unpeels, like the speaker in "Fever 1O3°," shedding "Dead hands, dead stringencies" as woman-horse becomes woman-arrow-dew, destroying herself in her unremitting drive toward resurrection. At the end, the "child's cry" that "Melts in the wall" is that of a real child, just as the "the red / Eye, the cauldron of morning" is the real sun rising as she writes. As always - and this is one of the sources of Plath's extraordinary power - every image is grounded in some thing, depicted as if with verbal paint.
From Bitter Fame: A Life of Sylvia Plath. Copyright © 1989 by Anne Stevenson.
Stanley Plumly
"Ariel" is, of course, Plath's singular and famous example of the form completely at one with its substance, the language exactly the speedy act of its text. The point for the poet is obvious: "How one we grow,/Pivot of heels and knees." The speaker thus becomes as much Ariel as the horse, and together they become the one thing, the poem itself, "the arrow,/ /The dew that flies/Suicidal, at one with the drive." The run from stasis in darkness into the red eye of morning is a miraculous inhabiting, in which the natural and referential world dissembles, blurs into absence, to the point that the transformation of the horse and rider can become absolute. "Something else / / Hauls me through air . . . " In seconds, she is a white Godiva, unpeeling dead hands and stringencies, then, almost simultaneously, she is foam to wheat, and at that freeing instant, in terror or in esctasy, the child's cry melts in the wall. "Ariel" is as close to a poetry of pure, self-generating, associative action as we could hope for, as if the spirit, at last, had found its correlative, had transcended, in the moment, memory.
From "What Ceremony of Words" in Ariel Ascending: Writings about Sylvia Plath. Ed. Paul Alexander. Copyright © 1985 by Paul Alexander.
Kathleen Margaret Lant
The work which most perfectly embodies Plath's conflicting sets of figures concerning power and nakedness is "Ariel" (October 1962), for this poem shows how Plath's metaphorical universes collide but also how her mutually exclusive systems of representation give rise to some of the most effective and beautiful poetry she wrote. Plath noted in her journal that she was privileged to listen to Auden discuss his view of Shakespeare's Ariel as representative of "the creative imaginative" (Journals 77), so one might assume that in this poem she is revealing something about her own view of creativity.(17) What is curious is that the creativity which emerges so energetically here is ultimately undone within the context of the poet's own presentation of that creativity.
M. L. Rosenthal points to the basic conflict of the poem in observing that "In a single leap of feeling, it identifies sexual elation (in the full sense of the richest kind of encompassment of life) with its opposite, death's nothingness" (74). In fact, however, Plath is not conflating two opposing states of being; instead she is capering dangerously between metaphorical designs which seem to consume the poem from within. Obviously the movement of the poem is very powerful and very positive since the speaker proceeds from stillness and ignorance ("Stasis in darkness" [239]) toward light at a very rapid pace. The speaker moves with some potent force - a horse, a sexual partner, some aspect of herself - which compels her, and given the title and Plath's remarks concerning Auden, we can assume that this force must relate to some aspect of Plath's creative self. The speed of the journey is such that the earth "Splits and passes" before the speaker, and even those delicious and tempting enticements that come between the creator and her work are not enough to impede her; they may be "Black sweet blood mouthfuls," but the speaker of the poem consigns them to the category "Shadows," things which threaten the vision (light) and power of her creative surge.
The female force of the poem flies through air, and suddenly she begins to engage in that most essential of poetic acts - at least for the writers of Plath's generation; she removes those restrictions which threaten her gift. She tosses her clothing off like a rebellious Godiva and rides free, fast, unclothed, and fully herself toward her goal:
Godiva, I unpeel --
Dead hands, dead stringencies.
And she reaches a moment of apparent transcendence: "And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas." Her epiphany is associated with traditionally female symbols. (We might make a connection between the wheat and Demeter, goddess of agriculture, or between wheat and the mother earth. The sea, moreover, certainly seems closely connected with female cycles and with the female symbol of the moon.) Her moment of triumph, moreover, is conveyed in verbs which may suggest - if sexuality is at all to be considered appropriate here - female rather than male sexuality. To foam and to glitter have arguably much more resonance when considered in terms of female orgasm than in terms of male orgasm. The energy of these verbs is great, but it is a more sonorous and sustained energy than a directed, explosive, and aimed burst. To make use of Luce Irigaray's paradigm, woman's sexuality and woman's pleasure are not "one" but "plural" because "woman has sex organs more or less everywhere" (28).
But now the speaker enters a different metaphorical paradigm. Her final "stringency" is removed, "The child's cry / / Melts in the wall," and she can become more powerful only by moving her fully exposed (naked) female self toward the power which she so covets, the power of light and heat and vision - the sun. To make this journey she must transform herself from wheat and water to something much more dangerous and traditionally powerful - an arrow. And here Plath is forced - by the desire of her speaker to assert herself, to move and fly - to appropriate an inappropriate figure for her speaker's flight: the speaker of "Ariel" becomes an arrow. She transforms herself into the most potent figure of the patriarchal symbolic order - the phallus. The arrow is clearly a figure Plath associates somewhat resentfully, with masculine power. In The Bell Jar, Buddy Willard's mother tells him that a man is "an arrow into the future" and that a woman needs to be "the place the arrow shoots off from" (79). Esther's response to Buddy's reiteration of Mrs. Willard's platitudes is that she, Esther, wants to be that arrow: "I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself" (92). In "Ariel," Plath demonstrates the consequences for the female artist of such proud and self-affirming desires when these desires are couched in the only symbolic structures available to her.
While the speaker of the poem may call herself the arrow, while she might arrogantly lay claim to that title, she is still female, still the wheat and the water, still naked and exposed and vulnerable. It is important to note that once the speaker begins her flight, she is no longer the arrow; her femaleness has ineluctably reasserted itself. Inescapably female, she is
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning.
And dew must be consumed by the power of the sun. The speaker of the poem is fully aware that her urgent desire for the power she has arrogated for herself is destructive to her as a woman, for she refers quite deliberately to her journey as suicidal. What is perhaps most tragic about both the speaker of this poem and about Sylvia Plath as the creator of that speaker is that the impulse toward self-disclosure, the desire to move toward the eye/I of awareness, is destined to destroy both of them. In Western culture the unclothed female, whether it be the self-disclosing creator or the emblematic and naked female subject, can be a symbol only of vulnerability and victimization, even when the audience to the glorious and hopeful unveiling is the self.
Placing "Ariel" in a feminist context, Sandra Gilbert argues that the "Eye" toward which this poem moves is "the eye of the father, the patriarchal superego which destroys and devours with a single glance" ("Fine, White Flying Myth" 259). But such a reading, by ignoring the play on words of "eye" and "I," leaves unremarked a central ambiguity in the poem and underestimates Plath's commitment to her female subject and her wild and creative commitment to her own art. The speaking subject here is not just moving toward a powerful male entity, the sun; Plath's speaker is moving implosively toward herself as well, toward the eye/i that has become the center of her universe, the focus of her attention. The tragedy of Plath's work, however, is that she has conceived of this overwhelmingly omnipotent figure in the only metaphors available to her - those of the masculine poetic tradition. In this tradition, power is the sun/god, as Gilbert has observed, and to be fully revealed before him, to be naked before this God, is the most transcendently powerful act a human can perform. But when you are female, when you burn with your own sun and expose yourself confidently to that sun, you are consumed. Your body, your self, is still vulnerable. It will be destroyed. The most telling irony of the poem is that the masculine God of patriarchal discourse has been displaced here by the "I" which is the speaker herself. And the female speaker has become the phallic arrow which impels itself toward that sun. But such a journey into knowledge will prove deadly - because the language, the signifiers of that journey dictate that it must be so for the speaking subject who is still "dew," still female. Even when the father is replaced, his words speak for him, his language secures his position: the dew will be dispersed by the sun.
from "The big strip tease: female bodies and male power in the poetry of Sylvia Plath." Contemporary Literature 34.4(Winter 1993)
Christina Britzolakis
In 'Ariel', the experience of riding a horse becomes a metaphor for the process of writing a poem. For many critics, the poem is emblematic of Plath's attainment of poetic mastery, as in Stanley Plumly's words, 'Plath's singular and famous example of the form at one with its substance'. Dave Smith writes:
During those six years Plath had learned to write what would be her poem, the poem which was unlike any other, the poem Ted Hughes and others call the Ariel poem. I like it that this poem takes the name of her horse, the horse she is hell-bent on in a pre-dawn ride that is all fluid feeling . . . Nobody ever rode a horse exactly like that, then she did. She not only rode it, but as the physical meld of the images shows she became it in blood and hoof and stride and foam . . . The Collected Poems is a record of how she learnt to ride that electric horse sitting, then trotting, then galloping, finally becoming the current, the motion itself.
As Smith suggests, 'Ariel' forges its own myth of transcendence through the ecstasy of physical motion, an ecstasy which is seen as transitory and self-immolating. The poem seems to embody the event which it describes, seamlessly merging the separate identities of horse and rider through enjambment, assonance, alliteration, and internal rhyme. The symbolist reading of the poem as the affirmation of pure, androgynous creative energy would place it under the sign of Ariel in The Tempest. Yet the apparently seamless movement of poetic becoming in 'Ariel' is predicated on a darker narrative of violence. Two successive movements or phases can be distinguished in the poem's narrative. The first is earthbound and horizontal; it is associated with images of darkness, blood, orality, and the female body, such as the split furrow of the ploughed earth, and the 'nigger-eye | Berries'. These images suggest an identification with a subjugated animal/racial/sexual otherness (the 'nigger eye'/I) . The second movement, which almost imperceptibly takes over from the first, is phallic, solar, and vertical. It is linked with images of light, transcendence, and disembodiment, and punctuated by the repetition of the first-person pronoun, culminating in the figure of the arrow/dew that 'flies | Suicidal, at one with the drive | Into the red | Eye, the cauldron of morning'. The Apollonian 'red Eye', destination of the poem's journey, is an emblem of specularity and surveillance, while the 'cauldron' of morning/mourning invokes an extreme religious imagery of martyrdom and purification; in Isaiah 29: I, Jerusalem is referred to as Ariel, the city destined to be destroyed by fire. The initial assertion of the 'oneness' of the horse and rider gives way to a movement of individuation which forcibly leaves behind the body and the senses.
'Ariel' is a thoroughly Nietzschean poem, a meditation on Zarathustra's dictum that 'the fleetest beast to bear you to perfection is suffering'. The conjunction of the tropes of arrow, sun, and nakedness recalls Zarathustra's description of his 'desire with rushing wings' which 'tore me forth and up and away . . . and then indeed I flew, an arrow, quivering with sun-intoxicated rapture'. The 'rapture' is, as in 'Fever 103°', simultaneously spiritual and orgasmic. The pleasure of an unleashed, yet controlled movement of language ('at one with the drive') is seen in terms of sexual consummation. Yet this pleasure is also self-immolating, exacting a sacrifice of the 'lower', sensory, or bodily strata of experience to a paternal identification. The passage from the 'nigger-eye' to the 'red Eye' traces the emergence of a power structure within the psyche, a movement into the realm of the ego-ideal, which sublimates the darker, feminine, Dionysian energies of the 'nigger'-'I'. Pegasus, the legendary winged horse of poetry, sprang from the blood of Medusa's severed head, and in commemorating that violent birth, the poem remains ambiguously suspended between celebration and mourning.
from Sylvia Plath and the Theatre of Mourning. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Copyright © 1999 by Christina Britzolakis
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