Jerry Ward's Blogspot

ABOUT SNOW TREES They improve our world, these fragile trees bringing   small relief to the pain of never-healing wounds. We must not presume to own these gifts shaped by Nature's imperial imagination. Better that we pray in the eternity of music, confess the limits of minds unfit to box with art. Jerry W. Ward, Jr.             January 23, 2020

SOMEWHERE NEAR CHARLOTTESVILLE he tasted the tragedy of his tongue, in the coffin of Monticello for want of imagination in the mortality of his words, he shuddered, he quaked, he cringed thinking no more no less his properties personified in heirs wearing his lurid face should, when God in justice comes, should make him a slave unique in an autobiographical noose no less no more is his story our comedy of belief. Jerry W. Ward, Jr.             1/17/2020 10:54:42 AM

Myth of American Multiethnic Praxis, Part I 2020 is a year for making crucial choices about one's identity and a future for American government. It will be less than a happy year.   How shall people identify themselves as they complete census forms?   How could census figures be rendered useless for the allocation of public funds if 46% of our population checked "OTHER" and wrote "human" on the blank line?   It will not happen, of course, but it is tempting   to consider how a national information crisis would awaken indifferent citizens to the looming dangers of the post-human, the post-racial , the post-true.. We do not have to imagine a crisis. We can cherry-pick from an array of crises. Our fairly dim recognition that politics is linked to polis is one of them.   Voting in November 2020 will ensure that we shall be burdened for many years with a crisis of great magnitude. The woman or man who is declared the new POTUS will be &quo

CARNIVAL AND POLITICS In the Roman Catholic church calendar, January 6 is the Feast of the Epiphany;   in the secular imagination of New Orleans, it is the beginning of carnival.   On Wednesday, February 26, we cease our revels, adorn ourselves with ashes, and repent.   We Catholics are lucky.   We can move seamlessly from sin to salvation.   No doubt, non-Catholics have the option of doing likewise   As the pious among us whisper, "God is good." Like Countee Cullen, "I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind," but I must marvel in 2020 that "His awful hand" punishes us with the juxtaposition of carnival and politics. Carnival is a season of lush excess, satire and malice, bold transgressions, and a few practices best left unnamed to protect the guilty.   It is an opportunity to consider that in the Age of Trump carnival and politics share alacrity in the mismanagement of the rule of law, squandering reason for nonsense in