fieldus

Andrew Gimson writing in The Telegraph yesterday:
One of the Prime Minister’s weaknesses as a debater is that he so seldom dares to think on his feet. Tony Blair liked to seize some novel thought or suggestion and send it winging back in modified form towards his interlocutor: Mr Brown just treats whatever anyone else says [...]

Not a great deal of insight in this report from The Star Ledger - a local paper in Camden, NJ. Former world champion Super Featherweight, Rocky Lockridge tells his story.

Former boxing champ Rocky Lockridge is homeless in Camden

Lockridge took a job working for William Jones & Son, Inc. in Camden, a drum and barrel [...]

Interesting to see facsimilies of letters to Judge Denny Chinn. The human suffering and rage which the Madoff’s book-cooking is something to behold.
Have a look at the pdf available at Nextbook.
The one from Phylis Lerner on page 41 is particularly striking.

From The Daily Mail:
Lord Mandelson discusses the difficulties in making Mr Brown more popular. ‘You need to understand just how complex Gordon is. We are all complex but Gordon has developed fewer ways of masking and managing his insecurities.
‘You have to be careful you don’t make it worse/more difficult for him to change his public [...]

An exclusive interview with J M Coetzee - DN.se
On influence
There are works of literature whose influence is strong but indirect because it is mediated through the whole of the culture rather than immediately through imitation. Wordsworth is the case that comes to mind. I see no marks of Wordsworths style of writing or style of [...]

New Statesman - Eternal vigilance
He was not, as Lionel Trilling once pointed out, a genius; he was not mysterious; he had served in Burma, washed dishes in a Parisian hotel, and fought for a few months in Spain, but this hardly added up to a life of adventure; for the most part he lived in [...]

The Dark Continent: Hitler’s European Holocaust Helpers - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International
… on June 27, 1941, a colonel in the staff of the Germany’s Northern Army Group in the Lithuanian city of Kaunas passed a petrol station surrounded by a crowd of people. There were shouts of bravo and clapping, mothers raised their [...]

Interesting for sceptics:
Nirpal Dhaliwal reports
and devoted a chapter to the strange history of chiropractic treatments. One Daniel David Palmer invented the therapy in Davenport, Iowa, in 1895, when he convinced himself that he had cured a janitor’s deafness by “racking” his back.
Inspired by this miracle, Palmer developed the theory that “95% of all diseases are [...]

FROM the collection by Edgar Lee Masters - all poems from Bartleby.com
Dissolute son, REUBEN PANTIER:
WELL, Emily Sparks, your prayers were not wasted,
Your love was not all in vain.
I owe whatever I was in life
To your hope that would not give me up,
To your love that saw me still as good.
Dear Emily Sparks, let me tell [...]

Bob Dylan | Bob Dylan Talks About His New Record with Bill Flanagan - Page 11
What struck you about him [Barack Obama]?Well, a number of things. He’s got an interesting background. He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep [...]