What the warming world needs now is art, sweet art | By Bill McKibben | Grist Magazine

Shall I compare thee to climate change?

Here's the paradox: if the scientists are right, we're living through the biggest thing that's happened since human civilization emerged. One species, ours, has by itself in the course of a couple of generations managed to powerfully raise the temperature of an entire planet, to knock its most basic systems out of kilter. But oddly, though we know about it, we don't know about it. It hasn't registered in our gut; it isn't part of our culture. Where are the books? The poems? The plays?

just an inexcusable ... interminable ... sloppiness with pronouns

Don't do what he says, kids, and don't do what he does, because you can't. Just stay in school. Really. I mean it.

you'd need a plan ... you'd have to say hey ... i know this dumpster outa sight over there & it'll take a couple few of us ... but hey ... let's get over there and tip that sucker ... let's tip that sucker ... over ...

and then you'd do it ... but if you were too drunk you might hurt yrself ... because that's a damn heavy dumpster ... and do it quick because it'll be pretty noisy ... dumpster going over like that ... middle of the night ... let's just tip it & go

i was listening to after the gold rush for the first time in at least twenty years ... even if i hated it it would be a key text for my eventual biography ... is this just too boomer of me ... that i don't hate it ... how could i ever ... is ... just fine ... wasn't sure how i'd react ... kinda brought stupid tears to my eyes ... because of ... the usual stuff ... i suppose if you live long enough you get this kind of thing ...

so ... one half of my plan for getting back to petersburg for the big party on sunday is settled ... down with mt & john ... up with who knows ...

old man lying by the side of the road with the daylight in his eyes

Measuring the Blogosphere - New York Times ...
It's natural enough to think of the growth of the blogosphere as a merely technical phenomenon. But it's also a profoundly human phenomenon, a way of expanding and, in some sense, reifying the ephemeral daily conversation that humans engage in. Every day the blogosphere captures a little more of the strange immediacy of the life that is passing before us. Think of it as the global thought bubble of a single voluble species.

key word is "bubble" ... seems a fairly subtle tissue ... ephemeral ... electrical ... on its way ... off ... over yonder

what a handy list of poems ... what one reader has found good and worth re-reading ... helps one expand one's own range of reading ... if one could

from "Sabbaths 2001" in Given

III
Ask the world to reveal its quietude --
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and are nothing else.

Wendell Berry
born 5 August 1934

The Writer's Almanac mentions Wendell Berry today.

Edwin Markham

The Man with the Hoe and Other Poems

seems blogger's updated their thing again ... since my OS 9.1 IE 5.1 just warps it all out ... paypal don't work so hot either (i.e. not at all) ... seems that part of this make-believe world is passing me by ... pass me by ...

had a quick trip with pat down to mom & meg ... tuesday just sort of lay around with my leg up while pat carted mom off to the docs ... then thoughts about the damn cat's needs decided me to get back home yesterday ... so i got gifted and ran ... sorry about that ... gifted with a heap of way early birthday stuff ...

a really beautiful film ... the river by jean renoir ... of india ... strangely devoid of post-colonial comment ... guess j.r. & rumer godden just had other things to say ...

a real pretty cd ... sufjan stevens michigan ... to complement the real pretty illinois ... mom & meg confessed to confusion over what it was exactly ... given stevens' long strange songtitles ... but it's very good ... (sorry i didn't stick around long enough for you to hear some)

a useful book ... addonizio's & laux's the poet's companion ... which will stimulate some thought for poetry projects in the coming school year ...

an unfortunately practical magnifying glass that lights up and a tin of levenger page points ... same as beth got not too long ago ... very handy for old eyes

thanks a bunch, mom & meg ... wasn't that easy ... now it's about time you guys set up a wish list too ... don't ya think ...

Independent Online Edition > The facts about teen fiction
... more or less

kind of spacey from the trip back from petersburg ... catch me tomorrow

quiet here with just me ... and the dog upstairs ... pat is off with mom for two doctor's appointments ... meg's at work ... why does my brain stop working when i get here ... it seems to ... i have culler's book ... and erdrich's ... and a thing called "the vocation of the catholic educator" ... which does not look promising ... i think culler is the best bet ...

Kunst en Gedicten

Painting with Words: An Anthology of Ekphrastic Literature

off to o'hare for pat ... then straight down to mom & meg ... next post will be from sunny petersburg il ...