December | 2014 | ZETEO

Augie March’s Christmas

December 19, 2014 by William Eaton

[print_link][email_link] For an unsentimental take on Christmas, and a view of not-so-loving, cat-and-mouse relationships between adults and children, I went back to Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March. In this scene the young Augie is in the Chicago department store where he has been hired as one of Santa’s helpers for the Christmas season: Painted and rouged with theater greasepaint and dusted with mica snow, Jimmy and I marched around the store with tambourines and curl-tongued noisemakers, turning […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, children, literature, reading

The Janus Culture

December 18, 2014 by William Eaton

“I reflected on why, over the years, I’d come to think of France as imbued with a ‘Janus culture,’ a nation whose world-view, like the ancient god of thresholds, managed at the same time to look back and ahead,” observes David Downie in Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James. Janus lived simultaneously in the past and present. This struck me as absolutely appropriate… Janus was contemporary France. Mr. Downie and his wife walk the […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR • Tags: travel

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Holiday Mix

December 18, 2014 by William Eaton

A sight we have come to dread during the holidays is the invasion of Santas and Mrs. Santas for their annual drinking “pub crawl.” SantaCon 2014 took place this past Saturday, December 9, and, according to news reports, it was supposed to be saner and more sober. It did start out less boisterous in New York City, perhaps because the same day 25,000 people gathered in Washington Square Park to march against Police Violence. These two radically different populations intermixed in […]

Categories: Gayle Rodda Kurtz, ZiLL • Tags: art, civil rights

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Ferguson, Journalism, Twitter

December 17, 2014 by William Eaton

The news media and social media: Together for better and for worse By Sue Ellen Christian and Herbert Lowe {Note: This is the second in Zeteo‘s Fall 2014 series of pieces related to borders.} St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch indicted both traditional news media and social media when he announced the grand jury’s decision to not recommend charges against Darren Wilson, the white police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African American, under […]

Categories: Article, Fall 2014 Issue • Tags: Ferguson, journalism, racism, Twitter

The Known

December 16, 2014 by fritztucker

The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,The Colbert Report on Facebook,Video Archive My curiosity piqued by the newly released Senate report on CIA torture, I just watched Errol Morris’ The Unknown Known. The part where Donald Rumsfeld metaphorically chalks up a victory to himself is a pretty good metaphor for the entire documentary (2:46-3:46 above). Morris asks Rumsfeld about torture memos, but not the testimonies of Guantanamo detainees that have been public for nearly a decade, many of which make torture […]

Categories: Fritz Tucker, ZiLL • Tags: crime, death, Donald Rumsfeld, Errol Morris, film, Guantanamo, History, politics, torture, war

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Proverbial Snow

December 16, 2014 by Ana Maria Caballero

No one like William Carlos Williams to capture the simple transcendence of snowfall. His poem “Blizzard,” below, beautifully captures the private feeling of loneliness that heavy snow can instill. It seemed like a fitting piece to share now that much of the country is immersed in the thick of winter. Blizzard Snow: years of anger following hours that float idly down — the blizzard drifts its weight deeper and deeper for three days or sixty years, eh? Then the sun! […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, lit, literature, poetry, reading, writing

Please come back. . .Next Year!

December 15, 2014 by Alexia Raynal

Alexia Raynal is heading home for the holidays. Her commentary in the fields of children and childhood will return next year. Wish her luck as she tries to keep her hands off the keyboard! From Duncan Tonatiuh’s book Dear Primo: A Letter to My Cousin. Watch him read the stories of two cousins—Carlos and Charlie—about their lives across borders here. — Alexia Raynal, Zeteo Associate Editor To read more posts in the fields of children and childhood by Alexia Raynal, visit her ZiR page here.

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: books, childhood, children, Duncan Tonatiuh, reading

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Cutting a slice of peasant bread (une tranche de pain bis)

Une tranche de pain bis (A slice of brown bread)

December 14, 2014 by William Eaton

Last week’s Dirty Cookies concerned savoring the unpalatable. Since then, in a recent issue of The Brooklyn Rail, I have come across some of Colette’s many encouragements to savor the rather more palatable. From Mary Ann Caws’s translation, “I Love Being a Gourmande”: The real gourmet is the one who takes as much delight in a buttered tartine as in a grilled lobster, if the butter is a fine one, and the bread well kneaded. . . . As […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: Colette, cooking, food, French, savoring

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"At a loss for words" from blog "life is 2 short"

Searching for the Right Words to Stop Rape

December 13, 2014 by William Eaton

The night started, as so many college nights do, with a red cup pressed into a hand. Ubiquitous at tail gates and parties, those bright plastic cups are a harbinger of carnival, of unleashing. The hand around the cup was mine. So begins New York Times writer Susan Dominus’ chronicle of her own experience with an unwanted sexual interaction at a college party, the sort that is so pervasive in the news of late. Her essay, Getting to ‘No’, describes […]

Categories: Caterina Gironda, ZiR • Tags: rape, sexual assault, women

ZETEO

Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

Monthly Archives: December 2014

Augie March’s Christmas

The Janus Culture

Holiday Mix

Ferguson, Journalism, Twitter

The Known

Proverbial Snow

Please come back. . .Next Year!

Une tranche de pain bis (A slice of brown bread)

Searching for the Right Words to Stop Rape