Author: Peter Freilinger

I took my son to the art museum yesterday, for the first time in I don’t know how long. It was a free admission day, but you still had to make a reserved time, and having got there a little early, we got a snack and waited outside. As he ate his chocolate cake lollipop, I checked my email on my phone, and saw a note with the subject line”

“The “racist” and “about … implicit racism” word, “character”, is found throughout the Comprehensive Plan.“

Hmmm, I thought, this is new.

Continue reading “Character”

Moving back to Maine with my son has been entertaining on multiple levels. For example: he is not nearly as outdoorsy as I was when I was a kid, and that proves to be the source of endless mutual frustration. He would much prefer staying in his room, reading or playing a video game or playing with his Legos, to ever going outside, no matter how lovely the day. I admit I was pretty bookish and Lego-ish as a kid too (I just barely pre-dated decent video games), but I also liked hanging out in the backyard, or on the beach, or in the woods – but no, he does not. So on any sunny day, we’ll have a good 20 minutes of argument about getting him outdoors. I find those 20 minutes to be supremely enjoyable, as he uses his eight year old rhetorical skills to try to convince me that fresh air is horrible and cold and awful, and that the real point of being a young man is to play “Roller Coaster Tycoon” or read Diary of a Wimpy Kid or watch cooking shows on the Food Network. He never wins – although in his mind I’m sure he never loses, either – but he never fails to make me smile – although usually for fatherly purposes I have to keep the smile internal.

Continue reading “Foreign affairs”

(with apologies to Fyodor)

I watched him walk through the lobby entrance and take a seat at the top of the horseshoe, and as he sat down, he asked if I knew how to make a Corpse Reviver.  I asked him number one or number two, and he said “you passed, barman” and after the briefest of pauses he said “number two, if you please” and I got to work.  

He was clearly of the retired political type: well dressed, in the kind of suit that isn’t quite tailored, but it’s at least been fitted properly.  Someone who had to look good on television, not just a backbencher type glad-handing the farmers on weekends.  I vaguely recognized him but not enough to remember what for; it nagged at me.

Continue reading “Four rusty nails”

On the strength of a book review, I recently bought a copy of David Hinton’s translations of the poetry of Du Fu, a late Tang Dynasty gentleman. “Gentleman” is, really, the best way to describe him – the poet, I mean; like most semi-wealthy Chinese men of the 8th century AD (wow, that’s an inappropriate calendar to use), he was an administrator with the late Tang dynasty imperial court, and as part of that, was expected to have mastered the poetic arts and to have a refined skill and taste in music, painting, and gardening. Interestingly, Chinese poetry was originally meant to be sung, but music was viewed as a differential art; no pop music in that era, I guess. To me, Du Fu – at least in translation – is an exceptional poet, although Chinese poetry, I’ve come to realise, is both written differently than Western poetry, and serves a different purpose in its local society as well.

Continue reading “Bad poetry reading”

I’m not a flag-waving American type; in fact I find nationalism to be an almost purely awful inspiration for anything. It’s tribal, it’s an expression of not even “us”, but of the desire to fear “them”. Inevitably it degrades into irrational hatred. It’s not good.

But it’s March in the United States, and the country – after a Covid break in 2020 – is watching college basketball, and I am enormously happy about it.

Continue reading “Hoops”