Tag: current events Page 9 of 11
News service Plastic reports:
“First Lady Laura Bush has postponed an upcoming White House poetry symposium. A former librarian and schoolteacher, she has become something of a matron of letters and has sponsored a number of literary symposia since becoming First Lady. This latest symposium was intended to celebrate the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, and Langston Hughes. Mrs. Bush decided to scuttle February event after she got wind that a number of poets planned to use the event to deliver thousands of poems protesting her husband’s proposed (and probably forthcoming) war with Iraq,” Gorvernaut writes. “The poetic protest was the brainchild of Sam Hamill. When he received his invitation to the symposium, he decided not to attend. Instead, he asked his friends to submit poems protesting the war. Within days, he received nearly two thousands poems. Now that the symposium has effectively been scuttled, he has set up a website, http://www.PoetsAgainstTheWar.org, which publishes some of the poems and requests submission of more.
( http://www.plastic.com/article.html?sid=03/02/03/22173170;cmt=45 )
Sometimes, someone says something you want to say so clearly that you don’t need to say it yourself. Thanks to baldanders for doing just that.
http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=baldanders&itemid=79528&nc=18
The Phoenix
by Julia Ecklar
In a tower of flame on Test Pad Two, I was there
I know not where they laid my bones, they could be anywhere
But when fire and smoke had faded, the darkness left my sight
And I found my soul in a spaceships soul, riding home on a trail of light
And my wings are made of tungsten, my flesh of glass and steel
I am the joy of Terra for the power that I wield
Once upon a lifetime I died a pioneer
Now I sing within a spaceships heart. Does anybody hear?
Before each morning’s launch, they know that I am there
To the soul that warms this vessel’s hull they say a silent prayer
I am father, ship and spirit of the dream for which they strive
For I am man at the hands of man; See us rocket for the sky
And my wings are made of tungsten, my flesh of glass and steel
I am the joy of Terra for the power that I wield
Once upon a lifetime I died a pioneer
Now I sing within a spaceships heart. Does anybody hear?
My thunder rends the morning sky. Yes, I am here!
Though lost to flame when I was man, now I ride her without fear
For I am more than man now, and man built me with pride
Oh, I led the way, and I lead the way, of man’s future in the sky
And my wings are made of tungsten, my flesh of glass and steel
I am the joy of Terra for the power that I wield
Once upon a lifetime I died a pioneer
Now I sing within a spaceships heart. Does anybody hear?
Ok, this is entirely too funny:
Every now and then, a story comes along that gives me hope the human race might one day evolve to the next level. Here’s the latest:
The US wants to have a war! Who’s coming along?
http://www.defectiveyeti.com/iraqevite/
The Bush administration wants to recruit citizens to keep a watch on one another. It might go something like this:
An interesting, alternative perspective on the whole Pledge of Allegiance flap.
” NEW YORK, July 15 (UPI) — When I say “one nation under God,” I can take or leave the “under God” part, but I’m a fanatic about the “one nation” part. Has anyone ever considered that we’re possibly arguing over the wrong words?
The screwy thing about the self-righteous posturing of the past two weeks — and, by the way, you can stop sending me e-mail with Red Skelton’s interpretation of the Pledge of Allegiance, I already have 39,000 copies — is that “under God” is at best just a throwaway line, which is why it wasn’t in the pledge to begin with.
It just expresses a vague desire to acknowledge that, yes, the Big Guy is watching what we do. It was actually added to slam communist Russia.
But the “one nation” thing is the meat of the Hungry Man dinner, considered so important that the pledge hammers it home with the word “indivisible.” I’ll bet there are lots more people who disagree with THAT part of the pledge than there are people who bridle at the words “under God.””
Read the whole article at:
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20020715-014325-5149r
Great column by Mark Morford in the San Francisco Gate:
“So it has come to this. It has come to an orphan HIV-positive female Muppet on “Sesame Street” in Africa. Let there be quiet and tragic applause.
It has come to the point where we can no longer avoid intermingling the worlds of sunny happy sing-songin’ innocent Cookie-Monster days and brutal ravaging epidemic disease and deathly nights, and man is Big Bird ever confused and sad and lost.
But this is a good thing, this new character. Everyone says so, everyone with any sort of conscience or even mild awareness of the horrors of the AIDS epidemic senses this is probably the right kind of thing to do, even if it feels like it’s not. ”
Read the whole article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2002/07/17/notes071702.DTL&type=printable