Cassandra Langer

Have been under house arrest for six weeks now trying to meet a labor day deadline. I am so tired of fact checking that I am cross-eyed. These all nighters are really killers. I envy people who just dash off deadlines as if they were taking a walk around the block. Then there are all the permissions, copyrights and tracking down who actually owns what. Seems like a heck of a lot to go through get to open up new paths in Romaine Brooks studies or any studies for that matter. Does anyone out there care about critical thinking any more or the life of the mind. It seems to be that infotainment has taken over the airwaves and you can’t really tell what’s real.

Take the absurdity going on about health care reform. In Italy they send you to a spa when you need a rest, in Mexico you can get health care for a song. WHY is it the US of A is unable to meet the challenge of providing its people with affordable health care? I fail to understand why we are not up to the challenge. Could it be that all of the town hall spin is just to take us off point. The arguments about government controlled “socialist” healthcare are pure dada–congress has it–I wonder if President O took it away–and said now we are all in the same boat-how quickly this could be resolved so that we ALL could have prime healthcare like our so-called “representatives.” Just a thought!

I have been plunged into thinking about Romaine Brooks’s works and how music seems to have influenced her work. I keep wondering how many other artists were as deeply affected by the rhythms, cadences, chromatics and harmonies that one finds in all kinds of music? In her case the closest Match seems to be Debussy, especially his La Mer.

I think music is very much a part of anyone’s life but I think artists and writers are especially attuned to what composers of all sorts of music create. It’s like shaking hands across a communal table during a gourmet meal.

It’s late and I have been writing most of the day and evening so I am knocking off. I skipped the news. It is almost impossible. All of these unethical tactics straight out of Carl Rove’s play book. Do we have any “decent” representation or is democracy dead. I feel campaign reform might be one small step toward being able to get some half-way honest statespeople to run for office that actually are of the people, by the people adn FOR the people. Right now all we see are scum bags whose only concern is making sure they get the whole pie all to themselves with not a crumb left over for anyone who can’t grab a piece for themselves as they climb up the backs of the folks they are “supposedly” representing. A sad day for American and for those of us who still care.