This from the September 18, 2023, issue of The New Yorker Magazine in an article titled, Mother Tongue, by Judith Thurman; an interview with Emily Wilson on her translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Wilson has spent the past decade contemplating her kinship with these warriors. “My childhood self was an Achilles,” she said, “holed up in protest, then emerging later to reveal his power. But I also had a dutiful Hector self, doomed by compliance.” I … [i.e. Judith Thurman] … told her that I thought Hector’s speech to Andromache, with its vision of her degradation, was tinged with sadism, but she disagreed: “Brusqueness is often a mark of fear. You push people away when you worry that you need them too much.”
NEW YORKER Magazine Newsletter April 19, 2025, article by Ocean Vuong about the photography of Cig Harvey in Emerald Drifter [Click on either image to enlarge]
“. . . Emerald Drifter is a rallying cry to exist in our bodies, where all the senses encounter the world. Viewing these images brings to mind an anecdote I once heard and think of often in relation to art: French colonizers, upon arriving in Vietnam in the nineteenth century, were aghast to see gold-clad Buddhas and stupas, porcelain and jade vases and statues, left in the open air, for anyone, even beggars, to touch. How can a people’s finest enaction of craft be left so unguarded, they wondered. Quickly, the conquerors dislodged these treasures and locked them in vaults to be sent back to the empire’s capital and displayed in museums as “relics.” What does it mean to be so frightened by beauty’s power that it must then be plundered and removed, caged? I’ve seen psychological research suggesting that, for some communities in Asia, the touching of religious artifacts has medicinal results that rival the effects of psychotropic drugs. In other words, it reaffirms what artists have known for centuries, and what Harvey so deftly reveals to us here: that beauty, despite being degraded by commerce, or shunned as merely decorous, feminine fussing, heals.”
Elkhorn Crest Trail, Baker County, OR. [Photo Copyright Max Vollmer, Click to Enlarge]“The Master doesn’t seek fulfillment. Not seeking, not expecting, She is present, and can welcome all things.”
I first heard her track, Bad Reputation, that’s playing on the jukebox on a demo record from the early 80’s. Nice leathers. Hard to believe, she still does concerts. Go to Full Screen and play it loud.
The Sheldon NWR sits on the Nevada side of the OR-NV border and is accessed by OR and NV Hwy 140. The Reserve is vast and home to antelope, big horn sheep, elk, deer, mountain lion, wild horses and burros that were set loose years ago. The Refuge Hot Springs was developed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930’s by building a wall on the low side of the hot spring runoff. The CCC built a shower house that is free and open to the public, fed by the hot spring water. There is a great free campground surrounding the pool. [All photos Max Vollmer, Click on any image to enlarge]
Refuge Hot Springs pool and shower room.
The road to the hot springs passes an active opal mine which offers tours in season. There is also an old homestead with a stone barn and a corral with a fence woven with willow branches.
Stone barn and corral.
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly… this is my way. (Anonymous)
