Appalachian American Ennui: 2026

Friday, March 20, 2026

Sunday, February 15, 2026

Friday, February 6, 2026

Friday, January 16, 2026

John M. Church, Attorney at Law - From Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, Author and Attorney at Law

"I was the attorney for the "Q," and the indemnity company which insured the owners of the mine. I pulled the wires with judge and jury, and the upper courts to beat the claims of the crippled, the widow, the orphan, and made a fortune thereat. The bar association sang my praises in a high-flown resolution, and the floral tributes were many. But the rats devoured my heart, and a snake made a nest inside my skull." Ironically, the heartless lawyers who represent capitalist interests against genuine suits for environmental, financial, and professional harm visited on them, causing real pain, real suffering, real damage, are the ones celebrated by the Bar with their photos memorialized in front of the New buildings on law school campuses, and the Boys and Girls' Clubs, and have their lies printed on the ABA, and TBA websites and their slick publications, having never represented an actual human proletarian being in court.

Friday, January 2, 2026

Re-reading Lolita and Longing for Little Feetnotes

Protagoinist/Pedophile Humbert Humbert ascribes his obsession with Delores "Lolita" Haze to his childhood affection for a little beach girl named Anabel, who would die soon after their clumsy attempts at exlploration of the others body near a cave at some west coast beach. I think that Humbert has rationalized what amounts to a genetic predisposition to pedophilia. (I've concluded after 35 years of criminal court practice that pedophiles are born, not made). In any event, Lolita, age twelve "created a synchronous conflagration that had been raging all night in [Humbert's] veins," and his delight in finding the "question mark of her hair in the tub." "With a childish hand, she tweaked loose the frockfold that had stuck in the peach cleft." I read somewhere that the original version of the book, written in either French or Russian, had her aged 10. The breadth of Vladimir Nabokov's talent is immeasurable. The first time I read the novel was from a book with footnotes, which was very helpful in defining his use of occasional (frequently pedantic) French and rare English words. I think one of my wives threw it away, or perhaps I gave it to my son, Paul. I trust that the latter explains its absence. Incidentally, the eponymous movie version starring James Mason, Sue Lyon, and Shelly Winters, focuses only on a portion of the full story, ignoring altogether Humbert's development, Anabel, and even a wife, Valeria, whom he despised, and who left him for another man, whereupon Humbert mused, "she had vulnerable legs, and I decided to limit myself to huring her horribly when we were alone." Humbert cared only about Humbert, which necessarily included the object of his sexual deviance, Delores Haze, to the exlusion of all else. I'm quite sure that he would be referred to as a "malignant narcissist," such as the one in the White House, or worse, a sociopath; again like that monstrous occupant, who raped a 13 year old girl in the early 90's, then slapped the fuck out of her.