Posts

What Epic Fury Stimulated: Part Two

[ Read all my Iran stuff. ] Since late last year, I’ve been enjoying David Stahel’s outstanding series of books on the German operations against Soviet Russia in 1941. I hope to review his body of work in the future. Back in May I quoted Stahel and it bears repeating: “It is important to remember that battlefield victories are not ends in themselves. Their worth is calculated from the strategic possibilities, military or political, that these stimulate.” Although the quote is universally applicable, Stahel was writing about Barbarossa, one of the most extraordinary military campaigns ever. The Germans captured millions Soviet troops, destroyed multiple armies while advancing hundreds of miles into the Soviet Union. They were winning everywhere. Yet, Stahel argues that somewhere in the middle of all that success Germany was already losing the war strategically. The victories stimulated things Germany could not control. Soviet mobilization. Longer supply lines. Constant German losses. Br...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reading Faulkner: Intruder in the Dust

Image
The novel begins... I first started reading Faulkner in the 1980's. There was a long stretch of about 25 years or so where I didn't touch him at all. But, beginning with The Unvanquished , the past several summers I've returned to his remarkable works. I've written multiple essays out of that return, mostly pertaining to Absalom! Absalom! and  As I Lay Dying . Somehow, I never read Intruder in the Dust . I knew its reputation. They made a movie out of it which I’ve never seen. It has been quoted or referenced here and there in my wanderings. So this summer I finally fixed that little omission. Summertime is the best time to read Faulkner. For me, katydids sounding lazily in my woods sets the proper tone. It is a book I wrestled with, like I often wrestle with Faulkner. Not as complicated as attempting The Sound and Fury for the first time, but it took some focus to get into the stream of consciousness style. I was wrestling with it too much to enjoy it at first, tryi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The IRGC Takes Charge

[ Read all my Iran Stuff ] As long-time readers know, I have spent the last five months trying to figure out what Operation Epic Fury stimulated inside Iran. Some of that necessarily involved speculation. Still, the trajectory has turned out to be fairly clear. I wrote in April that Epic Fury had shattered the governing structure and that "the IRGC arose out of the smoldering remains, probably with more weight than it had before." Later I wrote that "the hardliners assaulted the vacuum." By May my conclusion was simpler. "The IRGC has been bombed into greater importance." Epic Fury stimulated that. Today I don't have to speculate as much. Things are clearer now and not in a good way. Iran has announced a sweeping reorganization of its senior military and security leadership. Six major military appointments were issued together. They followed immediately after the appointment of Mohsen Rezaei, one of the most important figures in the history of t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Trump Is Winning a War in His Head

[ See all my Iran stuff. ] Donald Trump announced yesterday that the people leaking information about depleted American munitions are "being hunted down." Treasonous statements, he called them. Long prison sentences for whoever is responsible. This would be more impressive if the depletion of American munitions had been a secret. It wasn't. The Washington Post reported on March 4, less than a week after Operation Epic Fury began, that the Pentagon was already burning through thousands of expensive precision weapons and air-defense interceptors at an alarming rate. Two days of fighting cost an estimated $5.6 billion in munitions. By April, the Center for Strategic and International Studies was publicly estimating huge reductions in Patriot, THAAD, Tomahawk, and other inventories. I wrote about the depleted American magazine on June 1. Now it's August, and Trump is hunting the leakers. Apparently somebody just told him. I blogged about this June 1. So everybody knew...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Kudo Knows

This morning Kudo and I did our walk around my ten acres, checking everything out. The sun wasn't up yet, everything bluish and distinct, the kind of light that gets a little orange on top if there are clouds to catch it. She paused in the upper field to take a dump. She did, and I praised her for it, positively reinforcing a healthy dump like the proud parent I apparently am. My voice startled a fawn neither of us had seen, tucked in the privet hedge twenty feet away. It bolted deeper into the hedge. Its mother made herself known fast, moving along the hedge line, and Kudo took off after her. "Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait." I said it maybe a dozen times, firm the first half dozen, quieter after that. Kudo gave up the chase almost immediately. I didn't move until the doe stopped and looked at the two of us. Kudo turned when I turned, and we walked back through the wet grass, heavy with dew, to go do my laundry. The fawn stayed put the whole time, a tiny silhouette in the mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listening to Lutoslawski: Part Two

Image
Lutoslawski looks admiringly toward his orchestra before he enthusiastically begins conducting. [ Read Part One ] In 1964, Witold Lutoslawski completed a string quartet commissioned by Swedish Radio for the LaSalle Quartet. He had the music. But there was no score. Not in any form the LaSalle Quartet could read, anyway. A conventional score — four staves aligned vertically, showing what each player does at each moment — would have been, in his own words, false. Misleading. It would have represented a different work entirely. So what had he given them? The notes each player was to play. The figures, the gestures, the precise melodic content for each instrument. What he could not give them was a document showing how those parts aligned in time, because the alignment was the piece. The four players were to operate independently of each other — their own tempos, their own rhythmic streams — converging at points the conductor would cue and diverging again freely in between. Write that down ...
Post a Comment
Read more