Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of Wherever I Left My Glasses

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

One recent morning, I became a grown-up: I attempted to remove glasses from my face that were already in my fist.

For those of you who are lifelong glasses-wearers (it is almost 40 years for me), you know that there are several distinct methods of removing eyeglasses—and, even better, there are several non-verbal messages that can be communicated in the manner of their removal.

Off the top of my head, which is not where I keep my glasses, there is “Two-handed and Thoughtful,” “One-handed and from the Right and Peeved” (I usually accidentally fling my glasses to the floor or across my desk with that one), and “One-handed and from the Left and Trying to (Honestly) Get to the Heart of Things.” There are some others. Putting them on in front of people usually communicates this: “Enough Fun, Everyone. It’s Time to Get Back to Work.”

It can be like semaphore, but not at all and with glasses.
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‘Nobody is sleeping in the sky’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

It is believed that August 19 is the date on which the poet Federico García Lorca (above) was assassinated by Nationalist forces in Spain. The killing was 80 years ago today. The poet was 38.

Lorca was murdered during the Spanish Civil War by soldiers on the Nationalist side, the Francoists. In “Fable and Round of the Three Friends,” he foresaw, in his surrealist fashion, his own end:
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Today in History: August 19

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Eight hard-line members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union declared themselves the “State Committee on the State of Emergency” and pronounced themselves the new government of the USSR twenty-five years ago today. The “Gang of 8” staged a coup d’état in which they ordered the nation’s president, Mikhail Gorbachev, to be prevented from returning to Moscow from his holiday retreat and then took over the country’s airwaves and held a press conference in Moscow.

At the press conference, the members of the self-declared provisional government looked somewhere between fear and tears. The coup lasted two days but appeared near collapse through the entire ordeal. The event was the Soviet Communist party’s last gasping claw for power as it felt power slip away. And it was Boris Yeltsin’s debut on the international stage. (In the photo above, he is the figure on the left with papers in hand.)
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