Broke that heat wave with two short rains

Karl Umlauf sculpture, FAC, West Mall, UT-Austin


It's been so long since we've seen the underside of 100 degrees, the two evenings of rain was like nectar from the gods and godettes. Think of Lawrence of Arabia. Think Plano Estacado. That monster high pressure system would just not let up.

It was a tough summer, and won't really cool down for a couple of months. If we're lucky, we'll get some late Fall early Winter rains, for the bluebonnets and Indian Blankets they always grow together--lovely contrast. Been without my camera for a week, it'll come home soon.

Autumn in Austin is full of all the studentsfacultystaff returning for one more academic year. Makes me doubly pouty that summer is groovy when the population drops by a cool 75,000 or so. But who could groove for more than a minute or two in 105 plus...

OMG freshpeople get younger every year. And they are the ones who need a little help and guidance, because they are such lost lambs and we rather do have a stern, mega-phallic chunk of land, hardly a mile north of the river. Very Lonesome Dovey.

All of which is to introduce you to War, Battering, and Other Sports by James McBride, Humanities Press, 1995. From the back cover...

In the United States, conservative figures estimate that 1.8 million women are brutalized each year by men who take pleasure in exercizing power over them both emotionally and physically.

And about McBride...

McBride teaches religion and social ethics at Fordham University. Trained in the interdisciplinary study of social ethics, he specializes in the intersection of religious studies with feminist, psychoanalytic, and legal theory.

I would draw your attention to the final following comma, one of my faves.

Those are my kind of interstices, my dendrionic dwelling places. My head has been full of Wittgenstein lately, because for some reason, The Fluent Self reminds me of his philosophies of language and meaning and the naming, of course.

Well, McBride names it. As someone put it, the "Dark Shadow" of the human mind. And this book got named in 1995, so by now, that 1.8 million women will certainly grow in proportion to the return of our service men and women with injured brains. I am more concerned about this than I am H1N1.

For a gripping drama that spanned several years, the movie "Heavy Metal in Baghdad" is all about the music. They are fantastic. What is even more incomprehensible is what life in Baghdad is really like. Stunning.

Coming up: Section 9 and other epiphanies.