About The Name
Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard is a hilarious and bitter play about a magnificent house filled with foolish people. During the last years of Tsarist rule, this noble family is facing poverty and ruin due to a financial downturn, but nobody in the house knows how to begin to deal with the problem (save a friendly former servant, who is utterly ignored). Chekhov’s brilliant satire ends with the noise of cutting crews destroying the famous cherry orchard that surrounds the estate.
I created TheCherryOrchard.org because I need to speak about the foolishness I see around me in the Middle East, in Africa, in the Americas, Asia, in Europe — even in Australia, even in Antarctica the people must be fools, because in every corner of the world it seems that moderate, humane and peace-loving voices speak only in timid whispers about the violence, injustice and militant propaganda that dominates our world. I intend to use this website to talk about politics, news and history, but I won’t toe any party lines. I stand against stupidity, complacency and conformity, and other than that the only thing I’m sure of is that ice cream tastes good on a summer day.
I run a literary website, LitKicks.com, and I guess I created this new blog to allow me to write about a wider array of topics while keeping that site focused on books and literature. So this is my place where I can talk about whatever the hell I want to talk about, and I plan to talk a lot. I plan to do some listening too. Have a seat, my friend, and join me as we begin this expedition into the heart of human ignominy.
July 23rd, 2006 at 9:59 pm
I just had to be first to dive into the heart of human ignominy. Come on in, the water’s fine.
July 24th, 2006 at 7:40 am
Love the name! How appropos…
July 24th, 2006 at 10:37 am
I’ve been accused of apathy, but apathy is the wrong term. I believe I suffer from political parallysis. That is not caused by not caring; in fact, it may be caused by caring too much and not knowing what to do. I feel that war, poverty, and other social problems are manipulated at such a high level that I am powerless.
My philosophy used to be something I picked up from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road:
JACK: You mean we’ll end up old bums?
NEAL: Why not man? Of course we will if we want to, and all that. There’s no harm ending that way. You spend a whole life of non-interference with the wishes of others, including politicians and the rich, and no body bothers you and you cut along and make it your own way.”
I tried to think of myself an old Zen artist; it didn’t matter what regime was in power as long as they let me chop wood and draw water and draw my little haikus or whatever.
But I’m not that. For one thing, I drive a car. Are people dying so I can have gasoline? For another thing, I have health insurance and a retirement plan. Are these financial corporations investing in weapons and products made by slaves?
I don’t know. I’ll stick around this blog and see if I can both learn and contribute. I’ve got to start somewhere.
July 24th, 2006 at 12:17 pm
Don’t know why my comment didn’t come up the first time, but I simply said that I loved the name Cherry Orchard, very appropos… I look forward to this extension of Litkicks, though I’m not a very political person myself.