Ars Poetica
by Primus St. John
Recently, Bill Moyers was awarded the Global Environment Citizen Award from Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. His acceptance speech (reprinted at alternet) is a chilling assessment of the state of the environment in the US.
As Moyers and others are reporting, the current government and the Christian Right are essentially apathetic to the plight of the environment or even at war against it because there are those among them who believe they are fulfilling biblical prophecy:
millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed – even hastened – as a sign of the coming apocalypse.
more information:
the godly must be crazy
apocalypse please
I love the sound of a loon on a lake more than just about any other sound. I was devastated to learn that loons in the Adirondack park and elsewhere are dying due to lead poisoning from ingesting fishermen’s lead sinkers. Biologists are tracking the loon migration and have created this very cool maps of loon migrations in the Northeast (also a map of the Nevada loons of Walker Lake online soon).
A few years ago we adopted loons for friends and family in lieu of Christmas gifts. We plan on doing this again this year. You get a certificate and photo of your adopted loon to wrap up as a present.
What It Comes Down To
by Eamon Grennan
I love Bobbie Ann Mason’s short stories but her novel In Country is a special favorite of mine (the film version isn’t bad either). With that said, I was delighted to find this fascinating interview with her in The Missouri Review in which she discusses the importance of her connection to nature, the draw of the girl sleuth and her past of feeling out of place as a young Southerner teaching a bunch of Yankees. The part of the interview I found most interesting, though, was when she was asked about the writer’s role in society and subsequently about her role as writer in society.
On the writer’s role:
It is tempting to say that writing does serve the writers first; I often think many of us are misfits who can’t hold a job and who achieve, at best, some kind of mystique by virtue of our quirks. But I look back to Emerson and Thoreau when I think about why literary writing matters. It’s easier to see the writer’s role in the smaller world of Concord, Massachusetts, in the mid-nineteenth century. Thoreau was certainly a quirky misfit, but Walden comes down to us as an instruction manual for the heart and soul, as well as for getting a crop out. Emerson was famous, a very public figure, but both of them were quite visible in their community. In Concord, a town of two thousand, they could simply go to the Lyceum and give lectures. They engaged their neighbors in their discoveries. As writers, Thoreau and Emerson were lively and curious and demanding. They took on the world and tried to figure it out and then to translate what they found to the public, all in terms of the deepest questions about the nature of reality and morality and aesthetics. They led with their genius, turning their observations of nature into poetry and essays. They were standing on the verge of our time and they could almost see what was going to happen to us. They were leading their readers and listeners into the future. Writers belong on the edge, not in the center of the action. Nowadays we don’t have leaders who are worth much when it comes to the heart and soul, but if writers can make us feel and appreciate and explore the world, then I think that’s an extremely valuable function; it goes far beyond entertainment and steers well clear of politics.
And her (charmingly self-effacing) answer on her role as writer:
I don’t make any claims for myself. I’m sitting on the toe of Thoreau’s boot. I’m not a natural storyteller. I see writing as a way of finding words to fashion a design, to discover a vision, not as a way of chronicling or championing or documenting. In other words, it is to applaud the creative imagination as it acts upon whatever materials are at hand. Creative writing is not to me primarily theme, subject, topic, region, class, or any ideas. It has more to do with feeling, imagination, suggestiveness, subtlety, complexity, richness of perception—all of which are found through fooling around with language and observations.
Who Is to Say
by Michael Palmer
I mentioned this yesterday but wanted to throw it out there again because it’s important. There is an easy way for you to get books into the hands of children who don’t have access to them, simply visit here: the literacy site and click on the button that says “Give Free Books”. In fact, you can bookmark it and visit every day. What could be simpler?
more information:
The Literacy Site was founded to help promote literacy among children from low-income families nationwide. Partnering with First Book, the site makes books available to children around the country, giving many children their very first book. With the generous support of our sponsors, each click provides 1% of a book. Making books a part of a child’s life is the best way to encourage the love of reading.
My father-in-law sent me an email about this case of blantant censorship against the UCC:
The UCC’s first 30-second television advertisement – part of the denomination’s new, broad identity campaign – began airing nationwide on Dec. 1, stating that – like Jesus – the United Church of Christ seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation.
The ad has been accepted and will air on a mix of broadcast and cable networks, including ABC Family, AMC, BET, Discovery, Fox, Hallmark, History, Nick@Nite, TBS, TNT, Travel and TV Land.
On the eve before the campaign’s launch, negotiations with CBS and NBC broke down, after the networks deemed the UCC’s all-inclusive message as “too controversial.”
While I am not a member of the UCC, I believe what the networks are doing is wrong. Since when is inclusion controversial?
Please visit still speaking to learn more and to offer your support.
Fifty Mothers
by Sharon Olds
(note: thanks to carol who turned me on to sharon olds. in fact, I think she even sent me this very poem once.)
A rather telling interview with James Ellroy in The Onion A.V. Club. Most of the interview is focused on sense of place, morality, America’s obsession with murder, etc. But it all kind of unwinds at the end in a rather ugly way with Ellroy espousing his very non-liberal views:
I’ll admit, in some ways, even though I’m 56 years old, and dare I say a great artist and a wonderful human being and all that, and reasonably sensitive, there’s just some part of me that’s immature, that likes fucking over people and pissing them off.
myfanwy collins 