The gymnasia are closed, as are the sports centres and swimming pools. People are taking exercise in the parks: they are walking, running, cycling, skipping, lifting weights, boxing, dancing, stretching, and playing football and cricket. It is good to see children and adults – of all ages and sizes – trying to keep healthy, in body and mind, by working their muscles and their lungs. The spring and summer months, even in London, are conducive of outdoor activity most days.
Statues
Lots of dead white men are coming off their pedestals these days, and I can’t say I’m that exercised about it. The thing about statues is, they are almost never good art. There is good sculpture, of course, and very good full body sculpture – but statuary is almost by definition banal.
Kierkegaard Meets God
After a life spent dreading his inevitable death, Soren Kierkegaard — age 42 — finally succumbs. As he exhales his final breath, Soren feels released from his tormented life. At last! He can be with God, before God, as he believes is proper for every human being!
The Empty Plinth
Smashing objects precious to others has a long and illustrious history.
Reparations
It being Sunday in north Georgia, obviously, I was listening earlier to The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright on CBC Radio 1. The well-curated program ranged across what one would expect in a North America ripping itself into pieces, but there was a gem in the middle that tried to explain Modern Monetary Theory or MMT, a recently fashionable idea in economics. It’s not a difficult theory, really, and it is fundamentally correct. The theory is as follows: