CHRISTOPHER SCHULLER’s. live from Berlin. thefearlesseurotraveller.netmy last.fm cps at christopherschuller dot com"Papa was a rodeo."Tumblr (3.0; @ch-sch)http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/Your Zen lesson for the day. Becky Benson, 56, traveled from Orlando, Fla., because, she said, “we believe in Jesus Christ, and...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/1028093219http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/1028093219Sun, 29 Aug 2010 03:13:40 +0200 On 18 August, 1920, the Tennessee state legislature met to consider the amendment, with local... On 18 August, 1920, the Tennessee state legislature met to consider the amendment, with local...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/977500763http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/977500763Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:18:00 +0200"As I see it, it probably really is good for the soul to be a tourist, even if it’s only once in a while. Not good for the soul in a refreshing or enlivening way, though, but rather in a grim, steely-eyed, let’s-look-honestly-at-the-facts-and-find-some-way-to-deal-with-them way. My personal experience has not been that traveling around the country is broadening or relaxing, or that radical changes in place and context have a salutary effect, but rather that intranational tourism is radically constricting, and humbling in the hardest way—hostile to my fantasy of being a real individual, of living somehow outside and above it all. (Coming up is the part that my companions find especially unhappy and repellent, a sure way to spoil the fun of vacation travel:) To be a mass tourist, for me, is to become a pure late-date American: alien, ignorant, greedy for something you cannot ever have, disappointed in a way you can never admit. It is to spoil, by way of sheer ontology, the very unspoiledness you are there to experience. It is to impose yourself on places that in all noneconomic ways would be better, realer, without you. It is, in lines and gridlock and transaction after transaction, to confront a dimension of yourself that is as inescapable as it is painful: As a tourist, you become economically significant but existentially loathsome, an insect on a dead thing.""As I see it, it probably really is good for the soul to be a tourist, even if it’s only once in a...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/959932570http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/959932570Mon, 16 Aug 2010 02:54:22 +0200"Als unser erster Sohn geboren wird, wundern sich die Hausbewohner, dass man in unserem Alter noch Kinder kriegen kann. Unsere Nachbarin war gerade mit Anfang vierzig Oma geworden. Mit Kind ändert sich mein Blick auf die Schillerpromenade. Auf einmal stört mich der Dreck, ich will es schön haben. Die Veränderungen hier reichen mir nicht. Mir fehlen große Bio-Läden und Cafés mit Krabbelecken. Ich habe die Nase voll von Lidl, Aldi und Dönerbuden. Früher war ich tagsüber in Mitte, an der Uni, und abends zum Tanzen in Kreuzberg. Jetzt verbringe ich den ganzen Tag in meinem Kiez, plötzlich ist die soziale Realität hier auch meine.""Als unser erster Sohn geboren wird, wundern sich die Hausbewohner, dass man in unserem Alter noch...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/909784052http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/909784052Fri, 06 Aug 2010 01:29:22 +0200nybooks: Last Words Charles Simic Why the enormous interest in...<img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l579fgnN0T1qa67hoo1_500.jpg"/><br/><br/><p><a href="http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/781823517/last-words-charles-simic-why-the-enormous">nybooks</a>:</p> <blockquote> <h2>Last Words</h2> <p><strong>Charles Simic</strong></p> <p>Why the enormous interest in the final thoughts of men and women who were often guilty of committing horrific crimes? It must be the same morbid curiosity that brought huge crowds of Americans to public executions in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Many considered these grim occasions so much fun they brought their families along. The spectators didn’t mind if the hanging they were watching was botched and the condemned struggled choking for a long while at the end of the rope, or if his body dropped headless to the ground, and greeted such horrors with “rude jests” and “rabid laughter.” They expected, as part of the program, to hear a public admission of guilt, expression of remorse, appeal for forgiveness from God and the assembled, and a warning about the evils of booze and company of loose women. They were rarely disappointed.</p> <p>Photo: Spectators at a public execution in Kentucky, circa 1936 (FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)</p> </blockquote>http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/787303064http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/787303064Fri, 09 Jul 2010 02:55:43 +0200"all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed""all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable,...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/769306832http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/769306832Sun, 04 Jul 2010 16:19:27 +0200nybooks: Apartheid’s Twisted Dream: David Goldblatt’s South...<img src="http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4xuhfnE2M1qa67hoo1_500.jpg"/><br/><br/><p><a href="http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/761992688/apartheids-twisted-dream-david-goldblatts-south">nybooks</a>:</p> <blockquote> <h2>Apartheid’s Twisted Dream: David Goldblatt’s South Africa</h2> <p><strong>Joseph Lelyveld</strong></p> <p>“Goldbatt’s way was always to go deeper, to find an oblique angle that went right to the heart of the matter: an image bespeaking loneliness, stunted aspiration, fragile pride on both sides of the racial divide, not infrequently with an intimation of imminent violence, or its result.”</p> <p><em>Picnic on New Year’s Day, Hartebeespoort Dam, 1965</em><br/> Courtesy of David Goldblatt and the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg</p> </blockquote>http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/769299915http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/769299915Sun, 04 Jul 2010 16:16:29 +0200"Wir lernen aus unserer eigenen Geschichte, wozu der Mensch fähig ist. Deshalb dürfen wir uns nicht einbilden, wir seien nun als Menschen anders und besser geworden.""Wir lernen aus unserer eigenen Geschichte, wozu der Mensch fähig ist. Deshalb dürfen wir uns nicht...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/757837470http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/757837470Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:57:08 +0200An original, crossposted to dissentispatriotic.net<img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l4s86nrSjJ1qzn077o1_500.png"/><br/><br/><p>An original, crossposted to <a href="http://dissentispatriotic.net/serendipity/uploads/summer_travel.png">dissentispatriotic.net</a></p>http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/749946095http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/749946095Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:25:34 +0200"Under this law, when President Jimmy Carter monitored the June 2009 elections in Lebanon, and met with all of the parties to advise them on fair election practices, he could have been prosecuted for providing “material support,” in the form of “expert advice” to a designated group, because he advised Hezbollah. It means that when the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post published op-eds by Hamas leaders in recent years, they were engaging in the crime of providing “material support” to a designated terrorist group, because doing so provided Hamas a “service.” And it means that my clients, a retired judge and a human rights group, cannot continue to work for peace and human rights on behalf of the Kurds in Turkey, as they had been doing before the law took effect, without risking long prison terms.""Under this law, when President Jimmy Carter monitored the June 2009 elections in Lebanon, and met...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/747398600http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/747398600Tue, 29 Jun 2010 01:51:00 +0200"There is no capital more useful than intellect and wisdom, and there is no indigence more injurious..."“There is no capital more useful than intellect and wisdom, and there is no indigence more...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/685280477http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/685280477Fri, 11 Jun 2010 02:39:01 +0200IT’S A TERRIBLE LOVE AND I’M WALKING WITH SPIDERSIT’S A TERRIBLE LOVE AND I’M WALKING WITH SPIDERShttp://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/595993614http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/595993614Thu, 13 May 2010 22:20:12 +0200If you have a vote in Britain, use it to vote Labour today.“Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/574433811http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/574433811Thu, 06 May 2010 00:07:00 +0200Moments at which my wit is wasted IRL, No. 65,554Me: Hey, nice to meet you, Christopher Schuller. This guy: Hey, I'm Paul Denton. Me: (in sly glee)...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/543832194http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/543832194Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:43:24 +0200Has anyone heard The National’s new album? Is it any good?Has anyone heard The National’s new album? Is it any good?http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/543586183http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/543586183Fri, 23 Apr 2010 20:18:50 +0200"The Hansens have yet to announce their intentions. Sheriff Randall Boyce of Bedford County, who on Monday acknowledged that the boy probably had dual American and Russian citizenship, said he had been told by the Hansens’ lawyer that they would speak only if they were charged with a crime. Whether that will happen is an open question, and Sheriff Boyce appeared reticent. He said he told the State Department, “Do you not feel that this is over the sheriff department’s head?""The Hansens have yet to announce their intentions. Sheriff Randall Boyce of Bedford County, who on...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/518489321http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/518489321Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:39:49 +0200"I demand to be excommunicated because I do not believe women are second-class citizens. I demand to be excommunicated because your missionaries are informing impoverished citizens of third-world countries that birth control is a sin when it is in fact the single most important thing they could do to gain some small amount of control over their economic situation and health. I demand to be excommunicated because your church has become a hate group as virulent as any this world has ever seen, one that is unnaturally obsessed with the sex lives of good men and women across the planet. I demand to be excommunicated because I do not condone child rape or the concealment of child rape.""I demand to be excommunicated because I do not believe women are second-class citizens. I demand to...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/505762633http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/505762633Thu, 08 Apr 2010 16:12:44 +0200Not live from the show, but this was the best of the many songs...<object width="400" height="336"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/E7G0_647eIc&rel=0&egm=0&showinfo=0&fs=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/E7G0_647eIc&rel=0&egm=0&showinfo=0&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400" height="336" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent"></embed></object><br/><br/><p>Not live from the show, but this was the best of the many songs the Magnetic Fields played in Berlin last night.</p>http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/479373788http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/479373788Sun, 28 Mar 2010 17:30:06 +0200"And so we arrive at the present moment, in which the people are not asked to do anything. The fine words and able presentation of Obama, whether delivered at West Point or on Wall Street or in the well of the House of Representatives, obscure the fact that they are subtle parodies of a century of liberal argument. Whereas the Populists’ soapbox lecturers or the Progressives’ magazine exposés or FDR in his radio “fireside chats” explained the way of the world to the people and argued for why and how that way must change, Obama—like most Democratic leaders—concedes that the way of the world is wrong but tells us why it must stay that way because, some time in the past, powerful interests decreed it so.""And so we arrive at the present moment, in which the people are not asked to do anything. The fine...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/461475747http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/461475747Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:04:02 +0100This is a world of terrible hardship, everywhere. And I search for words to put you at ease. But...This is a world of terrible hardship, everywhere. And I search for words to put you at ease. But...http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/422829406http://ch-sch.christopherschuller.com/post/422829406Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:11:58 +0100