by Harvey Mudd | Feb 3, 2017 | The Vue From Here
I had thought to take short rest from this. The news cycle had shifted the Supreme Court nomination, an issue that is predictable and so widely covered that I will let it go. But an item in yesterday’s Washington Post, front page, caught my attention. Trump, the Post...
by Harvey Mudd | Jan 29, 2017 | The Vue From Here
Judge Blocks Trump’s Order on Refugees is the lead story in The New York Times of January 28. It is an in depth and on-the-ground look at the consequences of Trump’s January 27 executive order barring people from certain specifically-named Muslim countries from...
by Harvey Mudd | Jan 25, 2017 | The Vue From Here
Democracy has tripped on itself; the people have been fooled; and the American Republic, that great experiment, is at risk. The Trump era begins. What can one do? Oppose, refuse, resist: it is hard to know which word best captures what has now become necessary....
by Harvey Mudd | Dec 10, 2013 | Paris is the World
On my first day back in the city after a spell in the US, I needed to take care of some banking business. French banking is bizarrely awkward. The place is over-banked, a bank on every corner it seems, but one cannot go to just any branch of your bank and, with the...
by Harvey Mudd | Nov 29, 2013 | Paris is the World
AMERICA HEALTH CARE FOLLIES With my finger tip, I could feel something on my back, but I couldn’t see it. Since I had been out in the garden, in an area of New England where Lyme Disease is an issue, I thought that might be a tick. I had no friends around, so went to...
by Harvey Mudd | Sep 3, 2013 | Paris is the World
Forty years ago, when I still lived in the United States, I had a vegetable garden. I lived in the sun. I dug in the dirt and grew squash, sweet corn, tomatoes, lettuce, and peppers. Both the labor and the product gave me great pleasure. Every morning I went out to...
by Harvey Mudd | Aug 29, 2013 | Paris is the World
I am in the process of excavating the social, historical and architectural terrain where I live. I go to a different area of the city once a week, or more often if my other tasks release me. I use Metro stops as my landmarks, much the way a geologist might use an...
by Harvey Mudd | Aug 29, 2013 | Proust et Moi
Marcel lui meme Yes, always Marcel, the central figure. The tyranny of Marcel’s neurosis – his obsessive need to be accepted, to access worlds he imagines more perfect than his own, his fantasies concerning certain idealized people, as Mme Swann, –...
by Harvey Mudd | Aug 29, 2013 | Proust et Moi
(midway through “Within a Budding Grove” as before, overwhelmed by the scope of Proust’s ambition and by how successfully he is accomplishing it. I use the present participle “accomplishing” because the narrative has not yet arrived at the conclusion, the...
by Harvey Mudd | Aug 24, 2013 | Proust et Moi
There are dizzying time-warps. We begin with the author remembering, in extraordinary detail, the world of his childhood, Combray, the house of his grandmother, a lush orchestration of sights and smells, of people, particular incidents, 200 pages of it,...
