Cordelia's Portion

Cordelia's Portion
by Ford Madox Brown (1821 - 1893)

"Wait until someone finally tells Trump
that he cannot divide the country into three parts
to be ruled by his children after he leaves office." ~ Leonard Orr

Something to think about on Shakespeare's 453rd birthday:
Ivanka Trump as Goneril / Regan
(the malevolent sisters, staring each other down, above left)
not as fair Cordelia (standing to the right, in the green dress)
"When it comes to President Trump, one must either begin from the proposition that he is a mentally ill huckster, unfit to serve . . . The argument amounts to the proposition that having elected a nutball, anyone who performs a braking function on the nutball is by definition a national hero. . . . the whole argument rests on the idea that Trump is more or less mentally and cognitively unfit to serve in office, but oh well, let’s let him do it anyway. It goes on to assert that only the Kushners can help make the best of this bad situation. This goes beyond ordinary lipstick on a pig. This analysis quite literally turns on the proposition that but for their intercession a madman would make even more insane decisions. . . . This is how one manages severely troubled people. It is not how one governs a nation. The underlying working assumption, once again, is that the president is so profoundly dangerous that these small Jared–Ivanka efforts are sufficient to be laudatory. It would be best to drug the commander in chief, but barring that possibility, let’s give him a King Lear–style daughter to ping off. . . . Ivanka isn’t Cordelia, she is Regan or maybe Goneril. And not only are she and her husband complicit in Trump’s actions, they also work for him. They are aiding and abetting."

from the article "Jared and Ivanka Are Not Good People."
by Dahlia Lithwick

My thoughts: With Ivanka on the scene as caretaker and enabler to monitor and offset her father's dementia, repeatedly accompanying him to meetings where she has no business being, shouldn't she be dressed as nurse's aide or hospital orderly, rather than fashion icon (is she even really a handbag designer)? If Trump can't function in anything resembling a normal way without a handler, then all the more reason he should not be president. This is so wrong. Ivanka has no place in our government; even less so than her stupid father. And neither does her husband. And if Kushner is so keen to "run the government like a great American company," why doesn't he run for office instead of flapping in on someone else's tuxedo tales? Deplorable.

Related Political Articles
"Ivanka Trump's White House Gig Is an Insult to Working Women"

And she's writing a book called "Women Who Work" -- as if! Please! I am beyond impatient with some of my friends & relatives telling me that it is "okay" to wear an Ivanka blouse or stay at a Trump resort. It is NOT okay!

"Ivanka Trump’s Terrible Book Helps Explain the Trump-Family Ethos"

In addition to NEPOTISM, "This is the definition of CORRUPTION, but as laundered through Ivanka—who’s been tweeting about banana bread and posting photos of her children—it won’t look so bad."

"Jared Kushner Calls Kim Jong - Un 'Totally Unqualified Person'
Who Got Job Only Through Nepotism"
A challenge to write satire these days
when it could just as well be true!

"The tale of the dictator’s daughter and her prince"

"Ivanka Trump did not choose to be Donald Trump’s daughter, but she chose to participate in this administration, as did her husband. They are accountable. They are complicit. And they should be out."

Related Literary Posts
Wise Fool ~ King Lear ~ Lady Lever

A Little Fun on Shakespeare's Birthday
To Be Or Not To Be ~ Prince Charles
Previously on Shakespeare's Birthday,
or thereabouts:
23 April 2010
18 May 2011
23 April 2012
23 April 2013
25 April 2014
29 April 2015
23 April 2016

Also
A Rose Can Only Smell So Sweet
Crispin Crispian

Wise Fool
Scary Hair
Parallax
Those Who Know
Sighs A Plenty
Commonplace Book
I Changed My Mind

And Later
This Little World, This England
Golden Anniversary
Willow Willow Willow
Gaudy Night
Earth ~ Bard ~ Sun

Who's Afraid? Fear Not!
Advancing & Receding
Lammas ~ Lughnasa
The Painting's The Thing Wherein

The Usual Selves That I Have Known

My Nephews, Having Fun with Their Dad

Ron ~ Jerrod ~ Dan

A Memorial Tribute for Ronald Ben Rosenbluth
31 March 1951 - 20 June 2015
given by his son, Daniel J. Rosenbluth
In 1986, when I was eight years old, my father and I were in a car accident that by all rights should have killed us both. The particulars aren't important; what's important is that Dad's only concern was making sure I was safe.

Twenty - nine years later, on a sunny day in late June, I held Dad's hand as he passed away. I couldn't save him; all I could do was try to reassure him that the rest of us would be okay, and watch as the strongest man I've ever known slipped away in front of me.

I'll never forget what Dad told me the day w e found that his illness was terminal. "It's not your fault," he said. "You were there with me every step of the way, and I will continue to fight with whatever tools they give me." And he did. Even to the very end, he tried to carry on. But it wasn't enough; even two liters of my bone marrow did nothing to stop the cancer, and a week later, he was gone. My hero, the man who gave his family more than I will ever be able to repay, was eaten alive by his own body. Shakespeare once wrote:

"Good Hamlet, cast thy nighted color off . . .
Do not forever with thy vailèd lids
Seek for thy noble father in the dust.
Thou know’st ’tis common. All that lives must die,
Passing through nature to eternity."
That didn't make Hamlet feel any better, and it didn't help me either.

Nothing I can say or do will ever make it okay for any of us. Dad loved us, and we loved him. But we an take comfort in the fact that his legacy will on through us. He gave us humor, wisdom, and most importantly, he gave us unconditional love. My father was many things -- solider, engineer, husband, father, student and teacher -- but the most important thing I can think of is simply this: He was Ronald Ben Rosenbluth. He was everything I want to be, and if I can be even half the man that he was, then I hope he'll be proud, wherever he may be.

I love you, Dad.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dan is right, nothing will ever take away the sadness or make it okay, but thankfully we have many shared memories to look back on and to carry forward as we go. However, when my brother Bruce quoted the following poem at Ron's funeral service . . .

Sing Well! ~ by Joyce Grenfell
If I should die before the rest of you,
Break not a flower, nor inscribe a stone,
Nor, when I’m gone, speak in a Sunday voice,
But be the usual selves that I have known,
Weep if you must:
Parting is hell,
But life goes on
So . . . sing as well!
[emphasis added]

. . . the following songs came to mind:

"Those Were The Days" - Mary Hopkin, 1968
"Light a Light" - Janis Ian, 1974
"Seasons In The Sun" - Terry Jacks, 1974

Read more Eulogies for Ron on my current post

~ "We Had Fun, Didn't We? " ~

@ The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker:
A Fortnightly [every 14th & 28th] Literary Blog of
Connection & Coincidence; Custom & Ceremony

Alas, Poor Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern! We Knew Them!

A couple of weeks ago, my friends Beata and Katie, and I attended a mini - theater festival at Purdue: Hamlet on the first night; Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead on Sunday afternoon. On Saturday, it seemed par for the course that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were dead at the end, along with everyone else in Hamlet. But the next day, I felt so let down by the conclusion of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, even though Stoppard's play is jollier than Shakespeare's. Somehow it seemed that the final result for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, after two hours of consternation and consciousness - raising, should be an awareness that would somehow save their lives, but no. Still dead.

I saw / read this play once years ago and have always remembered it as funny; but this time it made me sad. I was still dwelling on the gloomy after - effects a couple of days later and discussing them with Beata, when my friend Ann posted an article which seemed to totally explain our deflated mood:

Do You Owe The Reader A Happy Ending?
by Celest Ng
Ng points out that it's the sad stories that seem to stay with us not only the next day, but sometimes for years afterward:

Maybe that’s the best argument for allowing yourself to write an “unhappy” ending where justice is not done, for why it’s okay sometimes to leave readers dissatisfied, or yes, even to break their hearts. “Unhappy” endings—that irritate, that rankle, that perturb—keep the reader thinking about them long after the last page. Like a grain of sand against the skin, they rub at the reader’s sense of injustice, asking them to reflect and question. It’s okay to leave the reader satisfied, with a contented sigh, but you don’t have to. It’s okay to leave the reader provoked, too.

Examples from Ng's personal experience include, Bridge to Terabithia, Tuck Everlasting (both of which I read several years ago at the request of my son Ben) and Shabanu, Daughter of the Wind (a new title for me -- just added to my amazon shopping basket,) which Ng says, "upset me so much that . . . More than two decades later, I’m still thinking about that book."

As for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, I'm still thinking about them.

While there is no obvious resurrection
in this play, there are still a lot of
great quotations to think about
over the Easter Weekend:

Favorite Passages

All your life you live so close
to truth, it becomes a permanent
blur in the corner of your eye,
and when something nudges it into
outline it is like being ambushed
by a grotesque.

"Doubt thou, the stars are fire."
"Doubt that the sun doth move,
but never doubt I love."

Happy in that we are not overhappy.

On Fortune's cap we are
not the very button.
Nor the soles of her shoes?
Neither, my lord.
Then you live about her waist,
or in the middIe of her favours?
Faith, her privates we.
In the secret parts of fortune?
O, most true!
She is a strumpet.

Half of what he said meant
something else, and the other
half didn't mean anything at all.

You understand,
we are tied down to a language
which makes up in obscurity
what it lacks in style.
There's a design at work in all
art surely you know that?

Events must play themselves
out to an aesthetic, moral
and logical conclusion.
And what's that in this case?
It never varies.

We aim for
the point where everyone
who is marked for death dies.
Marked?

Generally speaking things have
gone about as far as
they can possibly go
when things have got about as
bad as they can reasonably get.

Who decides?
Decides? It is written.
We're tragedians, you see.
We follow direction there
is no choice involved.
The bad end unhappily,
the good unluckily.
That is what tragedy means.

Dark, isn't it?
Not for night.
No, not for night.
It's dark for day.
Oh, yes, it's dark for day.

Do you think death
could possibly be a boat?

I don't believe in it anyway.
In what?
England.
Just a conspiracy of
cartographers, you mean?
I mean I don't believe it.
England.
England! I don't believe it!
Just a conspiracy
of cartographers you mean.
I mean I don't believe it and even
if it's true what do we say?

Was it all for this? Who are we
that so much should converge
on our little deaths?

You are Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern. That is enough.
No, it is not enough.

To be told so little to
such an end and still, finally,
to be denied an explanation.
In our experience,
almost everything ends in death.
Your experience! Actors!
You die a thousand casual deaths
and come back in a different hat.

But nobody gets up after death...
there's no applause only silence
and some secondhand
clothes, that's death!

If we have a destiny, then so
had he and this is ours,
then that was his
and if there are no explanations
for us, then let there
be none for him.

Oh, come, come gentlemen,
no flattery it was merely competent.
You see, it is the kind
you do believe in,
it's what is expected.
Deaths for all ages and occasions!
Deaths of king and princes
and nobodies...
That's it then, is it?

We've done nothing wrong.
We didn't harm anyone, did we?
I can't remember.
All right, then, I don't care.
I've had enough.
To tell you the truth,
I'm relieved.

There must have been
a moment at the beginning,
where we could have said no.
But somehow we missed it.
Well, we'll know better next time.

Till then.
The sight is dismal.
And our affairs from
England come too late.

The ears are senseless that should
give us hearing. To tell him his
commandment is fulfilled...
that Rosencratz
and Guildenstern are dead.

**************************

Additional Favorites from my friend Kathie:

“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered. “

“[Y]ou can't act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen—it's not gasps and blood and falling about—that isn't what makes it death. It's just a man failing to reappear, that's all—now you see him, now you don't, that’s the only thing that's real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back—an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.”

One Who Knows

Happy Birthday, Victoria!
I don't always wear a shirt featuring a painting by Van Gogh,
but when I do, I like to visit the Chicago Art Insitute
with my friend Vickie Amador!
“I talk to you in my mind because
I know you understand the things I want to mean.

There are those who know and those who don't know.
And for every ten thousand who don't know
there's only one who knows. That's the miracle of all time --
the fact that these millions know so much but don't know this.
It's like in the fifteenth century when everybody believed the world was flat . . . But it's different in that it took talent to figure that the earth is round. While the truth is so obvious it's a miracle of all history that people don't know.

For you see, when us people who know run into each other that's an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. That's a bad thing. It's happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us.

Why has this miracle of ignorance endured? Obscurantism.”

Carson McCullers
from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
[emphasis added]

and
"We divided people into two groups: those who knew, and those who didn't know. Aldous Huxley [b. 26 July 1894] and Carson McCullers knew. Roy Rogers and Doris Day didn't. [Joan Baez and a] crazy singer called Bob Dylan knew."
Sara Davidson
from Loose Change: Three Women of the Sixties
(also a movie)
For more on "Those Who Know"
see my new post
on The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker

Rosemary for Remembrance

"I had not thought death had undone so many."
from The Waste Land
Part I: "The Burial of the Dead"
by T. S. Eliot
As Ophelia says,
"There's rosemary, that's for remembrance . . . "
Hamlet, IV, v
Wise words from my sister Diane, describing a life - changing sadness "that was hard to see, even a deeper or different sadness than losing [your mate] /other half of so many years. Life is hard, we were never told any different. But when those times come it sorta takes the breath away."