This Thanksgiving I learned that there is much more to life than worrying about politics, especially naively believing that you can make a difference by speaking out. The reverie at Potlatch and the wholesomeness of it made everything else seem small and dispensable.<\/p>\n
Since the election I\u2019ve largely shut down, avoiding the news, realizing that what I thought or wrote about politics didn\u2019t make a dent with anyone, least of all my friends who believe they know the truth and voted for Trump. What they wanted is about to happen as the former president puts together his cabinet and makes plans for the next four years. Whatever I think, whatever Trump supporters think really doesn\u2019t matter – no one can say what\u2019s coming, how things will work out for us here or overseas. Given the quality of the recent nominations and the president elect\u2019s intent, the country and our overseas allies are faced with new challenges and uncertainty. It\u2019s way too early to speculate or hyperventilate about the possibilities. Let\u2019s hope for the best.<\/p>\n
During these passing weeks I\u2019ve turned my attention elsewhere, principally to catching up with my reading. Here are a couple books that might interest you. Love In A Time<\/em> of Hate: Art and Passion in the Shadow of War<\/em> by Florian Illies is a fascinating account of getting by during the twenties and thirties during the rise of the Nazi terror. Told through the lives of the cultural elite, Jean-Paul Sarte and Simone de Beauvoir, Marlene Dietrich, Vladimir Nabokov, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald and others, it captivates as a social history how they coped with the changing politics and their unsettled personal lives.<\/p>\n For a real page turner, pick up David Grann\u2019s latest work (Author of Killers of the Flower Moon), The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder<\/em>. Grann weaves a compelling story about a 1740 British naval expedition sent to harass the Spanish in the Americas that ended in disaster and intrigue. The voyage of the HMS Wager <\/em>rivals the much later ill-fated Antarctica expedition of Ernest Shackleton which also ended in disaster and unimaginable hardships for all engaged.<\/p>\n In the meantime, let\u2019s sit back and watch as the world moves on under a new American watch, hoping that our worst fears won\u2019t be realized and a new point of view has at least some merit which will prove our preconceived notions wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This Thanksgiving I learned that there is much more to life than worrying about politics, especially naively believing that you can make a difference by speaking out. The reverie at Potlatch and the wholesomeness of it made everything else seem small and dispensable. Since the election I\u2019ve largely shut down, avoiding the news, realizing that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-robert-fischer"],"yoast_head":"\n