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have found your way to "The Best of Magellan's Log Serious Stuff." |
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Special Issues: Chiliastic Hideon Copyright © "Giving well is the best revenge." All Issues |
9-11 vs. 11-1. Elinor Hoefs tries to figure the long-term effects of 9-11 by looking back at a really bad November day in Lisbon in 1755.
Chaos and Comity. Douglas Milburn speculates fairly wildly in the direction of what he, either far-sighted or myopic, calls a meteorology of consciousness.
The Rape of Chopin. Angus Verspeeten has been fine-tuning his ears, literally. He's here to tell us why your rich uncle's $80,000 Steinway sounds as wrong as your local bar's honky-tonk piano... and what you can do about it. What Happened to Movies (and Books
and Music and Art) That Matter?
The Pooh Profits. Douglas Milburn drafts a dreary little memento mori for the 21st century.
Alleviate despair. We love to get mail from our readers!
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The 17th Hole at Sawgrass. Political Editor Lulu Dilworth, using golf as metaphor, finds surprising hope re the much-abused American electorate in these troubled times.
What Price Empire? Political editor Lulu Dilworth tries for a clear-eyed look at present American (and global) reality. Sadly, she's reminded of the lovely summer of 1914. The Dangers of Hope:
20th Century Propaganda and the Rise of American Theocracy
America the Disjunctive:
The Willed Suspension of BELIEF. Danger! Danger! Ideas ahead! The reader may be required to THINK! Douglas Milburn heads out into the tricky waters of belief and disbelief.
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Cel-a St-ll Sh-ts. Nimo Calardic takes us far below the surface of 9-11, probing for the unpleasant truth behind the trauma. Not for the weak of stomach. Springtime in Weimar. Cassandra, our in-house prophet- without-an-audience is at it again, casting yarrow stalks or whatever. Not a pretty picture. Demonocracy. Cosmography Is Destiny. In another of his wild-blue-yonder speculations Temple Duciel suggests that we pay a high price when we forget we're children of both a violent planet and a violent universe.
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Pseudo-Texans. Editor Doc Cuddy explains how to
tell a real Texan from a fake one. 
Germans
R Us. Temple Duciel casts 
Immerse yourself in a brave new world of hi-tech profit, Ceci Lumley says, and
next thing you know 
Out
of the Mouths of Babes. Editor Doc Cuddy on why he thinks America--and its
leaders--are in total denial and that unacknowledged, 
Cut 'em Again, Cut 'em Again, Harder, Harder!
When parents in America have a baby, and it's a boy, one of the first decisions they have
to make at the hospital is: To cut or not to cut. (The infant at the left was being
circumcised at the moment of the photograph.) Because of recent studies of the spread of
AIDS in Africa, soon parents everywhere may be presented with that terrible choice. 
Brokeback
Mountain: Notes Toward a Review. Scott McComb swims against the tsunami of praise
for the gay cowboy movie. 
Rapunzel Redux. A pianistic shaman
from the Ukraine
The New Musics: Celebratory Field
Notes Toward a New World. 
"Who ate la plume de ma tante?" Jason Twinhaft on
why American deafness to the world's languages has become downright dangerous, and 
The New Frankenstein. Our token metaphysician, Piongo
Pisgah, looks back at Mary Shelley's creature 200 years ago and then looks forward at
digital us. He likes what he sees. It's 
Risins.
Oh no. Has Magellan's Log sunk to slightly unsettling whimsical
nostalgia? Or could 
"Are
They Worth Saving?" We intercept transmission of the minutes from a
high-level meeting on board a UFO stationed on the other side of the sun. The topic? Us,
specifically whether we are worth bothering about any longer. 
At Work, One Writer. Sylvia Sikeston finds what
she thinks is the first masterpiece of the new millennium, Jamie O'Neill's massive,
difficult, brave, inspired At Swim, Two Boys, and is 
Gender
Jack Xamis coins a word to name 
Nothing is what it seems, and what nothing seems is false. --Gore Vidal, Myra Breckinridge. |
| After
three years Magellan’s Log is nearing what seems to be a state of completion, if such
a large, variegated structure can ever be said to be complete. From the beginning, as I’ve said elsewhere, I thought of the undertaking in architectural terms: a place (it is after all a "site") occupied by a large building or a group of buildings, a cyber-compound if you like, of various sizes, styles, and purposes. That metaphor still holds, but lately I’ve also begun to think of it as a tapestry, after the Renaissance model, full of detail and imagery, many smaller stories converging on one larger narrative. Given the stated editorial stance ("culture—counterculture—anti-culture"), the narrative turned out to be quite a bit more complex than I expected at the start. Though I wanted to do both the serious and the silly, I was more than once overtaken by events and wound up with more-—and more cutting—satire than I expected. As the turn-of-the-millennium world became yinner, I found myself becoming yanger, and vice-versa. The serious stuff is quite serious, the silly stuff quite silly, and the satire, well, the satire strove ever more mightily to follow the dark path of wisdom through ridicule where few show the way as directly as Dean Swift. Magellan’s Log, in this state of near-completion, is now yours for the wandering. Whether you see it as architecture or tapestry or just another web site really doesn’t matter. What matters here, as in the world, far more often than we want to admit, is serendipity. Wander, please, explore the nooks, the crannies, the crevices, the hopefully lovely small chambers, the occasional vast hall, and now and then the carefully plotted distant vista that opens through the occasional aural or visual window. I will no doubt make additions (and emendations), which will be duly entered in the "What’s New" page, but no more new issues, I think. Fifty-eight is just enough. Access is easy. Use the categories at the top of the page. Go to the various issues directly to the left. Or immerse yourself in the site search engine at the bottom. May the goddess of serendipity smile on you in your walks through Magellan’s Log as often as she did on me in the making of it. --Douglas Milburn Houston, July 2002. |
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