"I learn to use #Kalashnikov and prepare to bear arms." —Kira Rudik, young Ukrainian congresswoman, tweeted on February 25, 2022, as Russian troops invaded her country

Greetings from the far left coast. Monday morning I woke to a snow-covered city, the first time in 82 years of record keeping that Portland has had a measurable amount of snow in April. Reports had it at one to three inches delivered by an overnight storm. The day warmed enough to melt much of it away by late morning. I came across quite a bit of fallen debris, tree limbs, etc., on sidewalks and streets during my Monday afternoon walk and on the Tuesday grocery expedition to Fred Meyer.

Thursday of last week was glorious, with temperature soaring to upper 70s, by far warmest it has been since fall, nothing but blue sky and sunshine. I wandered around downtown, took in the Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican modernism exhibition at Portland Art Museum, then strolled down to Park Avenue Cafe on the South Park Blocks at the entrance to the Portland State University campus for an espresso and journal session. Weather went downhill from there, turning overcast, damp, and considerably cooler on Friday and has stayed that way. Throughout the week following the snow we have been treated to multiple torrential downpours and hailstorms. Ah, springtime in Portland.

I continue to rehabilitate myself. Well, the recalcitrant right knee. Back to running three days a week, up from two, with each of last nine runs at least three miles. The knee has some lingering bad attitude but not significant, I think, hope, at this point. Happy I can still run, if only at this low level. Have not yet cracked four miles but close. Maybe tomorrow.

I have not commented on the Will Smith-Chris Rock affair due to lack of interest on my part. The incident came to mind when I read the following passage about some kerfuffle from the early 1920s involving Malcolm Cowley, who three decades later would be Jack Kerouac's editor at Viking, and Ernest Boyd, with whom I am not familiar. The account of thin-skinned intellectuals behaving badly is related by Edmund Wilson in a letter to his friend John Peale Bishop dated January 15, 1924:

Ernest Boyd's article [in the first number of The American Mercury]…"Aesthete: Model 1924," which contained hits at practically everybody except Malcolm Cowley, appeared to Cowley in the light of a direct personal attack upon him above everyone else—as a result of which he called Boyd up on the phone, called him foul and abusive names, and threatened him with physical violence—thereby terrifying Boyd very much. It was all very funny…Cowley (on the strength of the passage about Proust, which was obviously perfectly innocent in intention) went around telling everybody that Boyd (who didn't know who Cowley was) had "called him a fairy," that he had offered to fight Boyd about it, that Boyd had refused and was therefore a coward; and Boyd went around, much agitated, telling people that if Cowley laid a finger on him, he would hand him over to the police, "like any common hooligan." (Edmund Wilson Letters on Literature and Politics 1912–1972)

Elsewhere in the same letter, on a different note, Wilson remarks on a mutual friend who

has heroically left his wife and family and is living in sin with Louise Bogan—a third lady poet [Elinor Wylie and Edna St. Vincent Millay having been previously mentioned] of remarkable achievement who will merit your attention…Raymond is trying to get a divorce and marry her. If he succeeds in doing so, all the remarkable women of the kind in New York will be married to amiable mediocrities.

I am not familiar enough with Wilson and not at all with the friend to have a sense as to whether this "heroically" is sarcasm or if he really considered desertion of wife and family heroic. Be that as it may, I get a kick out of stuff like this. The letters are a delight, provocative, gossipy, with much fine commentary on books and ideas. Wilson appears to have known and corresponded with everyone who was of note and many who were not, or are no longer, at any rate. The breadth of his learning and interests is daunting. I feel like a dullard by comparison. 

Recommended reading: Cathy Young pushes back on misinformation about recent Ukrainian history and the roots of the current war in What Really Happened in Ukraine in 2014—and Since Then: A close look at the lies and distortions from Russia apologists and propagandists about the roots of the Ukraine war (The Bulwark, April 13, 2022). Her account reaches back to the "Orange Revolution" of 2004–2005, up through the Maidan protests in 2014, pro-Moscow separatism in the Donbas region, and on to the Russian invasion in February. Lengthy but worth the effort.

Two new blog posts.

• Notes from the journal Monday evening 11 pm. April 6, 2022. Maybe it is time again to take up the pen in the night's dark hours as I once did, a young fellow home from the night shift at Tall Tales Book Shop, desk at the window looking out onto the MARTA parking lot across from the rail yard and piggyback facility. Bottle of wine at my elbow in tradition of Byron…read more>>
• Republican Shenanigans. April 9, 2022. The unerring sense of decorum, proper conduct, gravitas for which Republicans are known was on display again Thursday in the Senate chambers when the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson for a position on the Supreme Court came up for a vote. The estimable Lindsey Graham exhibited his disdain …read more>>

Keep the faith.

Stand with Ukraine.

yr obdt svt

Pictured below: I did not see this coming. Monday morning,  April 11, 2022.