HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, PETE!!!

"Fahrenheit 9/11 wins the Palme D'Or!!!

Last night, the jury here at the 57th Cannes Film Festival awarded the Palme D'Or, one of the highest honors in filmmaking, to Fahrenheit 9/11. Michael and everyone who worked on the film were completely blown away. Four of the nine festival jury members were American, and only one of the jurors was French. Fahrenheit 9/11 is the first documentary to win the Palme since Jacques Cousteau's 'The Silent World' in 1956.

HEY, PETE, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

"Is It Rolling, Bob? A Reggae Tribute to Bob Dylan," in stores Aug. 10, marries Dylanâ_™s music with the heirs of another famous Bob.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PETE!!!

at this moment i pause from handing out actual diplomas to my homeroom crowd... and saying goodbye... to say that... at this moment i pause from handing out actual diplomas to my homeroom crowd... and saying goodbye

Matthew Rothschild: A progressive media honcho answers readers' questions

Who, in your opinion, is the top progressive writer in the U.S. today? How about your favorite in history? -- Blaine Egen, Knoxville, Tenn.

Wow, I can't narrow it down that far. But here are some of my current favorites: Molly Ivins, Barbara Ehrenreich, Katha Pollitt, Ruth Conniff, Alexander Cockburn, John Nichols, Laura Flanders, Adolph Reed, Naomi Klein, Michael Albert, David Barsamian, Barbara Kingsolver, Edwidge Danticat, Dan Savage, Salim Muwakkil, Thomas Frank, Wendell Berry, Adrienne Rich, Sherman Alexie, and Julia Alvarez.

Favorites in history? Oh, my! W. H. Auden, Fighting Bob La Follette, Milton Mayer, June Jordan, Mark Twain, Tom Paine, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Ida Tarbell, James Baldwin, Thoreau, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rachel Carson.

The word warrior: Bill Nevins says his antiwar views cost him a teaching job in Rio Rancho. Now teaching in the South Valley, he says he wants to continue to encourage students to speak their minds.

High School Teachers Punished in New Mexico

Hard lessons from poetry class

A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being 'un-American' because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its 'No child left behind' education policy.

The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job.

(via dumbfoundry)

on the other hand... just my conjecture... these animals in rousseau's work may have no literal real-world counterpart... such pure spirits... just pop up... here's another cat from Tropical Storm with Tiger (Surprise!) 1891...

bad lightning kept me offline last night so i couldn't post in honor of henri rousseau's 160th birthday... here's what may have been pierre loti's cat... painted by 'le douanier':

Conference to bring together environmental writers from around the country

In an era when natural resources are being threatened and awareness of the environment and mankind's place in it are resting in the public's thought, environmental writing has become an important way to express concern and thought, said a professor of the craft from the University of Montana.

'The connection to the natural world and other forms of life has always been vital to humans,' said Phil Condon. 'People have also become dissatisfied with writing that gives the illusion that that relationship isn't important.'

'Even if you never went to school but listened to Bob Dylan you'd be pretty sorted on the street. We can all learn from Dylan'

something of a nonexistent day so far... morning at the senior honors assembly with a loud storm outside... finished when we were... drove to the restaurant for senior brunch... my first and perhaps only... it was... brunch... back home to no classes... this open space that looks for the moment like an accident... too sudden... but accommodated in time

In a Dark Time has been listening to jackson browne:

I've been waiting for something to happen
For a week or a month or a year
With the blood in the ink of the headlines
And the sound of the crowd in my ear
You might ask what it takes to remember
When you know that you've seen it before
Where a government lies to a people
And a country is drifting to war

and reading robert lax... such good stuff:

the angel came to him & said

Iâ_™m sorry, mac, but
we talked it over
in heaven
& youâ_™re going

to have to live
a thousand years

The Henry Holt Brick Collection (via the spiral-bound list)

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Daily Reason to Dispatch Bush (via eeksy-peeksy)

now... what...

yesterday i pushed hard... a marathon of final exam essay reading... a marathon of message board post counting... a marathon of aplit and worldlit grade figuring... and even had time to pause for the (vague) west wing season closer... had time to encourage the cat to eat this most excellent food from a can (met with disdain)...

but now... having punched all grades into the school program... having sent grade reports to our online program (out to students and parents)... what...

sit back and wait for the complaints... listen to this fine bach by the emerson quartet... type a pome or two... type a this or that... beccause and but... i feel kinda done in... like i've been through it.. something...

now i'm at the start of time unstructured... and yet i need to come here every day in my shirt and tie and professional pants... and do... what... something... pack up the classroom... tidy up the guts of file cabinets... type a few pomes...

tomorrow is senior honors assembly followed by senior brunch out at a nice place... so tomorrow i'll have something to do... and then i can come home without going back to school... the weekend... but now... books can be read... what first? song of solomon... the iceman cometh...

Empire Burlesque

In a sense, the near simultaneous appearance of the Victoria's Secret ad and the new Dylan record â_" the magnificent "Bob Dylan Live 1964," the sixth volume in Columbia's "Bootleg Series" â_" is a pretty fair case study of the relationship between popular art and commerce, and the way that relationship has evolved over the last four decades.

well... i'm ready for tomorrow... but not the day after

Arvo Pärt's Credo (1968) came today... holy cow... Pärt speaks from the liner notes:

In the 1960's I became so fascinated by the central idea of Christianity 'Love your enemies' that it gave birth to my composition Credo. The work comprises two musically opposing, colliding worlds: one serial and aleatoric, the other an arrangement of a prelude by Bach.

What I wanted to show through the work's unfoldingâ_"inexorable like a chain reactionâ_"is the postulate 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth', harmless as it may seem in its initial stage, only gradually displays the full destructive dimensions of its true face: an escalation of power that, like an avalanche, eventually comes up against its own limits. What at first we perceive as human justice finally turns into its opposite. 'Do not resist one who is evil'... 'Love your enemiesâ_"there is nothing more radical and enigmatic than these words of Christ, which nearly burst the bounds of our reason. And yet..."

Bob Dylan fan wins Oxford poetry post

The Oxford establishment candidate, Christopher Ricks, a man sometimes accused of loving the lyrics of Bob Dylan as fervently as he does the epics of John Milton, has become one of the few academics in the last half century to win the university's poetry professorship. He took the post, the most cherished of its kind after the poet laureateship, by 39 votes in a result declared on Saturday.

great old (i mean... young) kodachrome from a gone world... (via foreword: a design blog)

i'd list my fears... but it's too creepy... and i am not a brave person

been sitting in my lonely classroom counting them posts... which is hard on the brain and that part of the back of the neck that covers the brain stem... out the window full of sun a breeze... many miles to go... but soon as the bell rings i'm gonna sleep...

first exam taken and half-read... a big stretch of open time to get things done... too much mint in the garden... bloody barbarian hordes... counting posts posts posts...