March 4

Did you know that today is the only day of the year that is, homophonically, also a command? "March forth!" -- it should be a good day for starting new enterprises, karmically speaking. On this date in 1985, I moved from New Jersey to San Francisco, which was a big deal for me, and I noted the appropriateness of the day.

Although I don't agree with blogger Brooks Peters that sociologically significant pop fiction deserves "greater consideration" than literary fiction -- they both deserve attention, of somewhat different kinds -- I have strong admiration for the sort of consideration, and depth of research, that Peters brings to his subjects, such as Fifties gay pulp novelist Jay Little. (It appears that I misunderstood Peters's placement of the phrase "greater consideration"; see the Comments on this post for details. I kind of enjoy grammatical ambiguities!)

http://www.brookspeters.com/2010/03/a-little-romance/

Brooks Peters does his homework, and in the blogosphere or anywhere, that matters to me. A short while ago I got into a tussle with a well-known film blogger who, although he can vomit verbiage about his reactions to movies like nobody's business, can't be bothered to do one minute of research at Wikipedia to glean the most basic information about a film by one of the world's best known directors. I called him on it, in a rude way -- sometimes in these Internet fights I just send in the attack ferret -- but the point really bothered me. There are way too many writers out there who do not have the faintest idea what they are talking about. I'm trying to steer clear of such disputes by reminding myself, policing stupidity on the Web is not my job. Not my job. Not my job....

However, bringing good material to the attention of others is my (self-chosen) job, and there is plenty such material to keep me busy. I am appreciative, for example, of this careful consideration of the caste system in India, a fraught subject:

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2010/03/the-blight-of-hindustan.html

There was an exciting and significant moment in the legal world the other day, when three prominent judges -- Richard Posner, Frank Easterbrook, and William Bauer -- appeared to testify for the prosecution in the trial of white supremacist blogger and pirate radio jock Hal Turner, who has urged the assassination of the three judges, and other public officials, in highly specific terms, using the words "kill" and "assassinate" in print and posting the proposed victims' home addresses. I have been following this story for a while, and I am terribly glad that the judges testified, because I believe that Hal Turner deserves to be interned in a SuperMax for a long time.

We have to remember that the husband and mother of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow -- Chicago-based, like the three judges who testified -- were killed by a disgruntled litigant, Bart Ross, in 2005. White supremacist Matthew Hale, whom Lefkow made key rulings against in a trademark case in 2002 and 2003, plotted to have Lefkow killed, and was tried and sentenced for that solicitation in 2005; he is currently in the Florence, Colorado SuperMax. Hal Turner championed Hale and was one of several who publicized Judge Lefkow's home address and urged that she be killed after the trademark rulings. Since Bart Ross committed suicide before he could be questioned about the killing of Judge Lefkow's family, a direct line can't be drawn between him and Hale and Turner -- but the poisoned atmosphere that all of these men breathe is the same, and the threat posed by a Hal Turner is real.

http://abovethelaw.com/2010/03/seventh_circuit_judge_testify_against_hal_turner.php

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/nyregion/03hal.html

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202445365806

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/03/03/posner-easterbrook-bauer-take-stand-against-radio-shock-jock/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0503010123mar01,0,4913954.story

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/02/national/02chicago.html?_r=1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Turner

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Lefkow

Let us return to the somewhat happier pasture of culture. The series of "small-scale paintings" by Belgian artist Francis Alys currently on display at the Irish Museum of Modern Art seems quite interesting:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=36399

http://www.imma.ie/en/page_212187.htm

The Museum of Pontevedra in Galicia displays considerable architectural creativity in a tight urban site:

http://www.archdaily.com/49983/museum-of-pontevedra-first-phase-up-arquitectos/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontevedra

Apparently it's getting hard to find a good hotel bar in the great city of Chicago:

The Ambassador East Hotel's famous Pump Room was by far the most disappointing, considering its storied history....On my visit, I was one of just three patrons sitting in the bar and still had to wait five minutes before the bartender on duty, concentrating intently on his handheld device, finally took notice. In reply to my Tom Collins request, he produced a watery vodka-soda, splashed with Rose's lime juice, served in a pint glass. Only after I asked him how he made the drink did he pause, brows furrowed, and ask, "What's in a Tom Collins, anyway?"

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-play-0304-nightcap-20100304,0,5303741.story

Among notables born on this date are poets Thomas Sturge Moore, Josip Murn (Slovenia), Leon-Paul Fargue (France), and Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo (Madagascar), novelists Alan Sillitoe, David Plante, T.S. Stribling, Richard B. Wright (Canada), Wilson Harris (Guyana), Giorgio Bassani (Italy), Takeo Arishima (Japan), and Khaled Hosseini (Afghanistan), crime novelists James Ellroy and Daniel Woodrell, children's writer Meindert DeJong, Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, psychologist Hans Eysenck, animator Ward Kimball, cartoonist Milt Gross, conductor Bernard Haitink, South African singer Miriam Makeba, composers Antonio Vivaldi, Aribert Reimann (Germany), Carlos Surinach (Spain), and Mario Davidovsky (Argentina), Ethiopian film director Haile Gerima, Three Stooges member Shemp Howard, and actors John Garfield, Joan Greenwood, William Alland, Catherine O'Hara, Barbara McNair, Ji-Tu Cumbuka, and Mykelkti Williamson.

I first read a translation from Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo (1901-1937), "the founder of modern Malagasy literature in French," in Martin Seymour-Smith's Guide to Modern World Literature when I was a teen, and later encountered more in anthologies. Here is a nice essay about him at readwritepoem:

http://readwritepoem.org/blog/2010/01/25/obscure-poets-jean-joseph-rabearivelo/