The Postmodern Bench

Remember the collapsed bench outside the telephone exchange on Finchley Road? Well, it's still there, three months later, along with its orange conical sentries standing at attention.

Someone stuck a sticker to the back that says "The Museum of Postmodernism." I don't think there is any such museum in London, so that's a pretty deliberate (and funny) comment about its longtime presence as a street sculpture.

I've just been outside refilling all the bird feeders. Those birds can really plow through food. I do feed them less in the summer, recognizing that they need to learn to forage for themselves (among the bolognaise discarded at the back of the garden) and probably also need to know when to migrate as food dwindles. But on weekends I like to watch them on the feeders. It occurred to me that 7 a.m. may be a bit early for the squabbling starlings, but hopefully the neighbors will forgive me.

It's starting to feel quite autumnal out there. Our low temperature is 54º F at night (that's 13º C) and the highs are 72º F during the day (an ideal 23º C). But more than that, there's something about the air -- a crisp edge that suggests the coming of fall. Or maybe it just feels that way to me because I'm back at school.

I spent much of yesterday in the Lower School re-shelving books and putting things in order. I think both libraries are in pretty good shape and ready for the onslaught of kiddies come Tuesday. (Monday is a bank holiday, thank God.)

I have a couple of goals this weekend: I want to go take some pictures; I want to finish this book about ABBA that I've been reading for two weeks (it's mostly just been sitting on my end table next to the couch, but it's not bad and I'd like to finish it); I want to plan some trips for our break periods in the autumn. Plus I need to do the routine weekend stuff like laundry and watering all the houseplants. Our rubber trees have been sitting outside all summer and I suppose I need to think about bringing them inside again, though we won't have any really cold temperatures for another couple of months.

This column in The New York Times really annoyed me, in which David Brooks blames liberals and progressives for the right wing's nihilistic, destructive tendencies. Apparently we overconfident, domineering liberals have beaten the poor conservatives into silent, seething submission, leaving them physically hunched over and unable to express their God-fearing perspectives, to such a degree that they have now decided to simply destroy everything. He holds up Curtis Yarvin and Christopher Rufo as examples of this trend, both of them right-wing extremists of the highest order. So it's my fault that Curtis Yarvin thinks the way he does? Talk about shifting responsibility!

I get so tired of this assertion that conservatives can't express themselves. Rush Limbaugh? Newt Gingrich? Jerry Falwell? Jon Voight? Ted Nugent? I've been hearing conservative voices for decades. I certainly didn't feel predominant in the culture during the terms of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.

And I loved this sentence: "For reasons I don’t fully understand, educated elites are more socially progressive than non-elites." Well, gee, could it be education?!

At least he ultimately comes out against nihilism, but his source of reassurance is statistics that show more young men going to church. Given the growth and persistence of Christian nationalism, I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing -- but I suppose we shall see.