In memory of those who "died suddenly" in the United States and worldwide, October 31-November 2
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News from Underground is based on my belief that, like journalists, academics have a civic obligation to help keep the people well-informed, so that American democracy might finally work.
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In memory of those who "died suddenly" in the United States and worldwide, October 31-November 2
Musicians in the US (3), Canada, Jamaica, Chile, UK, France, Switzerland (2), Finland, Italy (2) & Russia; journalists in the US, Germany, Norway (2), Serbia, South Africa, Russia & Malaysia; & more
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In memory of those who "died suddenly" in the United States and worldwide, October 31-November 2
Mark, we gave you a brief cameo in this...hope you don't mind.
https://icthruit.substack.com/p/sayin-a-lie-audio-track
Musée des Beaux Arts (1940)
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy
life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
W.H. Auden, 1940