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October 07, 2023
7 Rue de Castiglione
Hôtel Costes
“All things in excess”
Posted by JD Hull at 12:42 AM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2023
Doing Rome.
The comparisons between Rome and the U.S. are exciting and instructive. --What About Clients?
When in Rome, do as many Romans as you possibly can. --Hugh Grant
Rome. I don't like working here--charitably put, work-life balance is totally out of balance in some regions of Italy--but I love being in Rome. You can walk in this city. You can frolic in it. You can play all day long in and paround the The Forum and Palatine Hill, where antiquities are still being found. There's a guy with a shop at the Piazza Navona--2000 years ago the Piazza was a Roman circus (i.e., track) you can still see if you try--who sells me these unique old prints, beautifully framed, that I bought for my father in Cincinnati. I go to that shop on every trip. The Tiber River is still gorgeous and, like the Seine in Paris, steeped in history, and a bit melancholy and mysterious. Lots happened here--maybe too much--and it's as if the river can remember it all.
Pannini (1743): Ruins, Chiostre, Statue of Marc-Aurèle
In the West, our strongest ideas and institutions, including what became English law, were conceived or preserved by Rome. The increasingly-made comparisons between Rome and the U.S.--no, they are certainly not new--are still exciting and instructive. The Romans were competent if grandiose empire builders who borrowed their best ideas and forms from a previously dominant Greece, while America's cultural debt is chiefly to western Europe. Like Rome, America tended to overextend itself in all spheres. Like Rome, America was globally aggressive. (Other peoples resented it.) You get the idea.
But you can't see, experience and "do" Rome on one trip--same thing with New York, London or Paris--and you shouldn't try. Our advice: do several trips, and "live in it" each and every visit, taking small bites. And spend your trip with anyone but those from the same nation and culture as your own. If you go there with Americans, break out of that bubble. Politely say goodbye--and disappear into the streets on your own.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2023
Proud Boys: Coleman and Hull nail J6 again. Alert the media, please...
Posted by JD Hull at 08:45 AM | Comments (0)
2121 Massachusetts Avenue, Northwest, Washington, D.C.
Cosmos Club. Since 1878.
Posted by JD Hull at 07:46 AM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2023
Manchester, England
Flag waving
Lowry-loving
Boundry shoving
Cottonmilled...
Bomb-rocked
Unbroken...--from Carole Houlston's 2004 poem "Manchester"
Manchester, Britain's Second City, is feistier and rawer than London. Imagine another second city, Chicago, only smaller (in population, Manchester's center city is roughly 510,000, and its urban area is 2.6 million). But also a bit tougher. Proud blue collar towns like Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Baltimore also come to mind. No nonsense and shamelessly tough and gritty, Manchester's history in the last 200 years is one of tireless industrial expansion and a hardworking populace. The city was at the center of the Industrial Revolution that started in England in 19th century. Manchester became a major manufacturer worldwide, particularly in textiles, expanding steadily for decades. Manchester even had a school of thought based on free trade and laissez faire economic principles named after it ("Manchester School"), coined by England Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. In recent years, Manchester became primarily services-based. This new economy emerged as the fastest growing one in England, as well as one of the fastest growing economies in Europe. Maybe that's why no one in Manchester ever seems to yearn to move to London. Or to any other town. The City has everything--including a tradition of prospering on its own. Gritty Manchester. It's a "mean old town to live in by yourself".
Johnny Winter: Mean Town Blues
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)
Columbus at the Gates of Santa Maria de la Rabida with His Son Diego, Benito Mercade y Fabregas, 1858
Posted by JD Hull at 06:29 AM | Comments (0)
October 02, 2023
Michigan Links, Golf and Eddie Guest, the People’s Poet, 1919.
Guest in Detroit, 1935
Enormously popular for the first half of the 20th century, Detroit’s Edgar A. Guest (1881-1959) charmed America with simple and often funny upbeat poems celebrating Midwestern common sense and optimism. No. He’s not my favorite poet. But I’ve a special connection to Guest. He owned a house in a small but storied Michigan summer community where I spent Junes and Julys of the 1960s growing up in Michigan, Illinois and Ohio. He died just before my family’s first visit there. His house on Lake Huron was purchased by parents of one of my Detroit classmates. So I often played near and sometimes in that huge dark house made of large dark logs with the largest porch I’d ever seen at the top of Cliff Road. Guest was always closely connected to the place. It seems odd we never met. He was greatly loved and always somehow still alive in that place. At least it seemed that way to me.There was old golf course—one of Michigan’s first courses—nearby that my brother and I learned on. Guest played the game and wrote several fairly schmaltzy but fun poems about golf. This one appeared in 1919 as part of his highly popular “A Path Toward Home”.
“A Lesson From Golf”
He couldn't use his driver any better on the tee
Than the chap that he was licking, who just happened to be me;
I could hit them with a brassie just as straight and just as far,
But I piled up several sevens while he made a few in par;
And he trimmed me to a finish, and I know the reason why:
He could keep his temper better when he dubbed a shot than I.
His mashie stroke is choppy, without any follow through;
I doubt if he will ever, on a short hole, cop a two,
But his putts are straight and deadly, and he doesn't even frown
When he's tried to hole a long one and just fails to get it down.
On the fourteenth green I faded; there he put me on the shelf,
And it's not to his discredit when I say I licked myself.
He never whined or whimpered when a shot of his went wrong;
Never kicked about his troubles, but just plodded right along.
When he flubbed an easy iron, though I knew that he was vexed,
He merely shrugged his shoulders, and then coolly played the next,
While I flew into a frenzy over every dub I made
And was loud in my complaining at the dismal game I played.
Golf is like the game of living; it will show up what you are;
If you take your troubles badly you will never play to par.
You may be a fine performer when your skies are bright and blue
But disaster is the acid that shall prove the worth of you;
So just meet your disappointments with a cheery sort of grin,
For the man who keeps his temper is the man that's sure to win.
Posted by JD Hull at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2023
William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Return from the Harvest, 1878
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905), Return from the Harvest, 1878. Cummer Art Museum, Jacksonville
Posted by JD Hull at 11:47 PM | Comments (0)
Recent photo of friend of mine
Posted by JD Hull at 07:29 PM | Comments (0)
“Hi! how are u?”
Classic from 2016. When men were men and women were merely crazy....
NOTE and WARNING: So a youngish attractive person (by normal people standards) between 18 and 25 from her photo recently "friended" me on Facebook. I apparently accepted thinking she had some personal connection to me; she does not. Today she privately messaged me to chat via Facebook Messenger. We chatted while I was still at my office--I'm a youngish energetic Boomer lawyer; we're all like this, even on Friday nights--in my last half-hour at work. I unfriended her at 7:26 PM. Look, there is nothing more dangerous/ unsexy than this kind of human you meet on the Net. Okay, a bit funny to me maybe. However, if you're a regular homely and/or sexually-frustrated married guy unskilled in philandering, or a part-time or novice cad, this is NOT fun, funny or safe. Do not try this at home; you'll just screw it up, end up on a Chris Hansen NBC show. Am correcting typos/punctuation of her English prose for clarity in this post. Otherwise verbatim:
(Chat Conversation Begin 6:56PM)
HER: Hi
ME: Hi, what's up? Can I help you?
[longish pause]
HER: How are you doing?
ME: Fine. And you?
HER: I am doing well. I am looking for a good man.
ME: That would not be me. I have had 2 or maybe 3 wives and scores of girlfriends and cheated on every one of them. Besides you are way too young for me. Way.
[moderate pause]
HER: You mean you cheated on your wives and GFs?
ME: Yes. Every one of them. I think there's something wrong with me.
[No pause at all but then this non-sequitur response...]
HER: But I believe with love 2 people can overcome age and distance.
ME: Well, I don't. I'm looking for (1) Smith College, (2) brilliance, (3) wit, (4) Anglo-Gaelic breeding, (5) athleticism, (6) world-class beauty, (7) a flat in London and (8) really big trust funds. And (9) right here in DC. Must have all 9.
[another longish pause]
HER: Really?
ME: Yes. Absolutely. How did we get to be FB friends? I may be the wrong Dan Hull. There are lots of Dan Hulls and most are lazy hillbillies like me. Half of us are in jail.
[short pause]
HER: Uhhh...ok.
[Chat Conversation End 7:25pm]
Posted by JD Hull at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)