Tag Archives: Poetry

The New York Times — Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024

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Trump and Republicans Bet Big on Anti-Trans Ads Across the Country

Republicans have spent tens of millions of dollars on the ads, part of an attempt to help them win over suburban female voters.

Poll Finds Harris Rising as She Challenges Trump on Change

A national Times/Siena poll found Kamala Harris with a slim lead over Donald J. Trump. Voters were more likely to see her, not Mr. Trump, as a break from the status quo.

Washington Worries the Israelis Will Bomb Iran’s Nuclear Sites. But Can They?

For 22 years, Israeli forces have planned for this moment. But it seems unlikely that they will strike Iran’s nuclear facilities in the next round of retaliation, or that they would be successful without American help.

A U.N. Official’s Payments: Zero Interest Loans, a Mercedes and a Tennis Sponsorship

The official secretly took $3 million in gifts from a businessman to whom he steered the organization’s funds, a court ruled. The U.N. got a song about the ocean.

Country Life Magazine – October 9, 2024 Preview

Country Life Magazine (October 8, 2024): The latest issue features

Daffy goes digital

Annie Tempest’s inimitable characters totter gently into the modern age with a new website

Mud, mud, glorious mud

Dogs, birds, pigs and humans alike follow hippopotami down the hollow. Deborah Nicholls-Lee dons her wellies and joins them

A sense of time and place

Ben Pentreath unravels what makes an interior English, that indefinable, yet instantly recog-nisable and beguiling aesthetic

Made in the Marches

The border of England and Wales is proving inspiring for artisanal craftsmen, finds Arabella Youens

Mixing old and new

Country Life’s Interiors Editor Giles Kime opens the doors to his revived 17th-century cottage

New looks for a new season

From bamboo bookshelves to lamps and pots, Amelia Thorpe chooses accessories to covet

Turi King’s favourite painting

The scientist and historian picks a powerful royal portrait   

Growing pains

Minette Batters takes her seat in the House of Lords

The right place to build

The historic streetscapes of our towns and cities reveal lessons we still need to learn about how to build, believes Ptolemy Dean

The legacy

Kate Green salutes Dorothy Brooke and the global equine charity that bears her name

Antlered majesty

Manmade, yet wild, deer parks prove we can create Arcadia, asserts John Lewis-Stempel

Timber of the gods

Jack Watkins admires the huge, ancient and once-exotic cedars that punctuate our landscapes

The good stuff

Hetty Lintell tallies her trinkets

Interiors

An imaginative kitchen extension and tea-tinged fabrics

Building on great bone structure

The good bones that anchor the gardens of Foscote Manor, Buckinghamshire, please the eye of George Plumptre

Foraging

John Wright raises a dram of home-made vodka to the crab apple      

Operation mincemeat

Always comforting, cottage pie satisfies Tom Parker Bowles

Salt of the earth

Pick up a handful or several of salted peanuts when you’re next in the pub, urges Rob Crossan

I have news for ewe

The humble sheep changed the course of British art history, reveals Bendor Grosvenor

The New York Times — Tuesday, October 8, 2024

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In a World Changed by Oct. 7, Hatred Is Winning

Peace in the Middle East seems more elusive than ever, with Oct. 7 setting off a battle over not just land but the narrative itself.

Nowhere to Go: How Gaza Became a Mass Death Trap

Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been prevented from fleeing the narrow strip of land even as bombs have rained down, famine has loomed and disease has spread.

Trump’s Plans Could Increase U.S. Debt While Raising Costs for Most Americans

A new analysis finds that Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump’s plans would both add to the deficit, but Mr. Trump’s proposals could create a fiscal hole twice as big.

The Mideast War Threatens Harris in Michigan as Arab Voters Reject Her

A year after the Oct. 7 attacks, Kamala Harris faces deepening Democratic fractures in a crucial state. Interviews suggest that her support from Muslim and Arab Americans is drying up.

The New York Times — Monday, October 7, 2024

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Trump’s Speeches, Increasingly Angry and Rambling, Reignite the Question of Age

With the passage of time, the 78-year-old former president’s speeches have grown darker, harsher, longer, angrier, less focused, more profane and increasingly fixated on the past, according to a review of his public appearances over the years.

Bruised Supreme Court Returns to Bench With Possible Election Cases Looming

Aside from major disputes on issues like transgender rights and guns, the docket is fairly routine. That could change fast if the presidential race is contested.

The War That Won’t End: How Oct. 7 Sparked a Year of Conflict

As war in the Middle East spreads, the original conflict between Israel and Hamas has persisted. This is why.

A Ghostly Life for Those Trickling Back to Villages Attacked on Oct. 7

Along Israel’s border with Gaza, reminders of the trauma of the Hamas-led assault are inescapable as the few who have returned try to start anew.

The New York Times — Saturday, October 5, 2024

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A Pentagon Debate: Are U.S. Deployments Containing the Fighting, or Inflaming It?

Military officials discuss whether sending more force to the Middle East is helping to prevent a much wider war, or emboldening Israel.

An Exodus of Agents Left the Secret Service Unprepared for 2024

Punishing hours, dilapidated facilities and an ill-conceived retiree program left the agency without the personnel it needed in a year of threats and violence.

As America’s Marijuana Use Grows, So Do the Harms

The drug, legal in much of the country, is widely seen as nonaddictive and safe. For some users, these assumptions are dangerously wrong.

Trump’s Return to Butler Is Sure to Be a Spectacle. Is It Safe?

At a time of increased security risks, the former president has urged thousands of supporters to return with him to the place a gunman tried to take his life.

The New York Times — Friday, October 4, 2024

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After Successes, Israel’s Military Is in a ‘Long Game’ With No Clear Outcome

A year after perhaps the worst military and intelligence debacle in the country’s history, its armed forces have regained the momentum. Some ask: to what end?

3 Former Officers Acquitted of Most Serious Charge in Tyre Nichols’s Death

The former officers were found guilty of witness tampering but not of the charge that would have held them responsible for causing his death.

Trump Promised to Release His Medical Records. He Still Won’t Do It.

If elected again, he would become the oldest president by the end of his term. Yet he is refusing to disclose even basic health information.

Filing in Trump Election Case Fleshes Out Roles of a Sprawling Cast

Donald Trump is the only defendant in the special counsel’s case that charges him with a plot to remain in power after his 2020 loss. But a newly unsealed brief provides fresh details about many other figures.

Books: Literary Review Magazine – October 2024

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Literary Review – October 2, 2024: The latest issue features Richard Vinen on Churchill; @wendymoore99 on Marie Curie; Ritchie Robertson on Augustus the Strong; @robinsimonbaj on British art and @tomlamont on James Salter

Croquet & Conspiracy- “Churchill’s Citadel: Chartwell and the Gatherings Before the Storm” By Katherine Carter

‘It’s not a bad life for the leaders of the British bourgeoisie! There’s plenty for them to protect in their capitalist system!’ So wrote Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador in London, after his first visit to Winston Churchill’s country house at Chartwell in Kent. He described the house thus: ‘A wonderful place! Eighty-four acres of land … all clothed in a truly English dark-blue haze.’

All for the Thrill of the Chase – “Augustus the Strong: A Study in Artistic Greatness and Political Fiasco” By Tim Blanning

Frederick Augustus (1670–1733), elector of Saxony and king of Poland, owed his sobriquet ‘the Strong’ to such feats as crushing a tin plate in his hand (mentioned by Rilke in the ‘Fifth Duino Elegy’) and to his vigorous sex life. Contemporaries credited him with fathering 354 illegitimate children; Tim Blanning soberly reduces the number to eight. This biography is concerned not with court gossip, however, but with Augustus’s political career and cultural achievements. Blanning celebrates Augustus as the virtual creator of the once-magnificent city of Dresden, where the kings of Saxony resided, and hence, surprisingly, as ‘a great artist, arguably the greatest of his age’.

London Review Of Books – October 10, 2024 Preview

London Review of Books (LRB) – October 2 , 2024: The latest issue features Hardy’s Bad Behavior; Fredric Jameson, Byond Balliol…

John Kerrigan

England’s Insular Imagining: The Elizabethan Erasure of Scotland by Lorna Hutson

A.E. Stallings

Poem: ‘The Plum Tree’

Helen Pfeifer

The Genius of Their Age: Ibn Sina, Biruni and the Lost Enlightenment by S. Frederick Starr

Katherine Harloe

The Muse of History: The Ancient Greeks from the Enlightenment to the Present by Oswyn Murray

David Runciman

Short Cuts: Just ask Tony

Terry Eagleton

The Years of Theory: Postwar French Thought to the Present by Fredric Jameson

James Vincent

Horny Robot Baby Voice

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Oct. 4, 2024

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Times Literary Supplement (October 2, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Canon Fire’ – Emma Smith and Brian Vickers on authorship in the golden age of theatre…

The New York Review Of Books – October 17, 2024

The New York Review of Books (September 26, 2024)The latest issue features:

‘The Death of Some Ideal’

The Irish novelist Anne Enright writes with great prowess and wit about women who make a virtue of getting on with things.

The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright

The Fact Man

At the heart of Daniel Defoe’s fictional world is a feeling for change, of the mutability and shiftiness of modern life and the people who thrive in it.

The Oxford Handbook of Daniel Defoe edited by Nicholas Seager and J.A. Downie

The Problems with Polls

Political polling’s greatest achievement is its complete co-opting of our understanding of public opinion, which we can no longer imagine without it.

Strength in Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them by G. Elliott Morris