Today at the Editor’s glance: Drug Court convenes today at 10 a.m. before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins at the Flagler County Courthouse, Courtroom 401. L’infame: It was on this day in 1942 that Nazis resolved on the so-called “final solution,” launching the genocide that would result in the murder of 6 million Jews. Mass Appeal,” a two-character play at the Flagler Playhouse, opens at 7:30 p.m. The play was written by Bill Davis in 1980. The comedy-drama is about the popular but conventional and conservative Father Tim Farley who gets challenged by a rabble-rousing seminarian called Mark Dolson, first about the ordination of women, then about other matters. Book tickets here. Flagler Playhouse, 301 E Moody Blvd, Bunnell.
Federico Fellini was born on this day in 1920. And so, this:
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
May 2025
ESL Bible Studies for Intermediate and Advanced Students
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Palm Coast Farmers’ Market at European Village
Gamble Jam at Gamble Rogers Memorial State Recreation Area
Al-Anon Family Groups
RockabillieWillie At City Repertory Theatre
Flagler County Library Board of Trustees
Nar-Anon Family Group
Bunnell City Commission Meeting
For the full calendar, go here.
“For no reason, but the sunrise, the bay of Naples, the sea—you look at them and it makes you sad. What’s most revolting is that one is really sad! No, it’s better at home. Here at least one blames others for everything and excuses oneself.”
–From Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” (1866), tr. Constance Garnette.
Ray W. says
In James Parker’s November 2021 Atlantic article about Dostoyevsky’s mental condition as he wrote Crime and Punishment, he concludes by highlighting a passage from the book’s epilogue:
“Raskolnikov, lying in a Siberian prison hospital, has a fever dream: He sees a great plague coming
‘out of the depths of Asia.’ But wait — it’s a mental plague. ‘People who were affected immediately
became possessed and insane. But never, never did these people consider themselves so intelligent
and so infallible about the truth as when they were infected.’ Individualism has reached its apex; the
atomization is total. ‘Everyone was anxious, no one understood anyone else, each thought that truth
resided in him alone and, regarding all the others, suffered, beat his chest, wept, and wrung his
hands.'”
Pierre Tristam says
You scooped me Ray. I finished reading Crime and Punishment yesterday (third reading, this time in a different translation that proved the most rewarding yet; when I last read it in the 1990s the Constance Garnette translation seemed a bit stilted), and was going to use that passage in the Briefing. Still will.
Ray W. says
Quite the interesting point about the differences in the qualities that translators can bring to readers from a book written in a foreign language. I am reminded of a translation of a Japanese motorcycle manual by a Japanese-speaking American who lacked insights into some of the cultural aspects inhering in any language; his literal translations of the manual included, as one example, an explanation that riders should take care when approaching corners on dirt roads as “mud monsters” lurk at the apex which could cause a crash.
I am also reminded of a very old story about Hunter S. Thompson’s translation into English of a book whose title I no longer remember. As he described his effort at translation, he spoke of his extraordinary use of a variety of mind-bending drugs to speed the effort, as he was under an editor’s deadline and stayed awake for days to complete his contracted task. The translation received international praise for its concise, yet comprehensive, result. Of course, it can be argued that the better educated and more broadly experienced the translator, the better the translation. Thus, even the most strung-out and intoxicated translator can produce a quality translation, if talented and educated enough. Conversely, the most malicious of translators can destroy a work produced in a foreign language.
Is it possible that our nation’s two political parties utilize two separate and distinct languages? If so, are translators needed to allow partisans to actually understand what opposing partisans are actually saying? If so, would reliance on untrustworthy or even malicious partisan translators actually deepen the divide?
This possibility of the use of two distinct partisan languages might help explain how one political party can so completely misunderstand ideas like CRT, stolen votes, communism, socialism, or liberalism, and on and on. When malicious partisan translators purposely garble the opposing party’s message to their partisan followers, is it possible that the unknowingly duped partisan followers really don’t, and can’t, know what they are saying when they regurgitate their difficult to comprehend messages. For example, I have become aware of an internet theory accepted by some anti-vaxxers that manufacturers of the vaccines are purposely infusing graphene particles into their finished product. According to these few anti-vaxxers, these graphene shards supposedly act as microscopic razor blades on the interior surfaces of arteries, which supposedly explains the rise in heart attacks since the beginning of the vaccination effort (I was always taught to believe by medical examiners during murder case depositions that when one’s access to oxygen is compromised, the brain responds by signaling the heart to beat harder, and that a sustained decrease in oxygen saturation levels can lead to a person’s heart actually beating itself into failure after long-term sustained high heartbeat rates. But what do medical examiners know?). I have read about the development of graphene for about a decade. Graphene, a substance derived chemically from graphite, can be manufactured in molecular-thin sheets. A university lab patented the process, which shows great manufacturing promise. Graphene has properties that allows it to be a superconducting material that would allow for more efficient flow of electricity in computer chips, which generates less heat during operation. In its powdered form, its use in paints allows for far greater rust resistance, a quality that greatly interests the Navy. Graphene-infused paints, theoretically, have a lower friction quality that would allow ships to travel faster through water, however slightly so. After I heard about the anti-vaxxer theory, I looked up the chemical properties of graphene. If I understand the article correctly, graphene is manufactured by a process that strips several electrons from graphite molecules; the resulting graphene molecules carry a very slight magnetic quality. Apparently, the anti-vaxxers have grasped onto this fact to explain how their ultralight flat magnets stick to skin at the site of vaccine injections (the earliest anti-vaxxer messages on this subject were that manufacturers were infusing metals into the vaccines). To the anti-vaxxers, this is proof of a sort of maliciousness inhering in the government’s intent behind the distribution of vaccines. How does anyone translate that type of message? Only the faithful understand it. Those out of the loop will never do so.
I miss Pogo’s unique and insightful contributions. Where did he go?