Hustler of Culture
The Stranger, Seattle’s alternative weekly newspaper, plans to throw an Indictment Party tonight celebrating whomever gets hauled in over the Valerie Plame affair. Special drinks include “The Judith Miller”, “The Scooter Libby” and the “George W. Bush.”
Bottoms up. That’s fabulous.
This photo really brings it home.
So Laura Bush invites poet Sharon Olds to present at the National Book Festival in DC. Olds (winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award and professor of creative writing at New York University), thinks about and declines citing that “it would feel to me as if I were condoning what I see to be the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush Administration.” The Nation runs her letter under the rather bombastic headline “No Place for a Poet at a Banquet of Shame.”
I’m a few minds about this. First, good for Olds for sticking up for her convictions. Book festivals of that size mean mucho exposure particularly for poets whose work is not featured at festivals to nearly the same extent as novelists. By saying no, she’s turning down at the very least some good bookselling opportunities. Second, while I don’t think the First Lady nor the book festival represents the administration itself, nothing wrong with making your statement in the way you can, long as it doesn’t step on innocent bystanders in the process.
Third, and this bothers me some, did she have to go ahead and publish it in The Nation? Nothing wrong with saying no but if it’s such a personal decision, which it sounds like it was, did it need to be published in a national magazine?
What do you think?
In related news, right here in Da Bay, Book Passage is holding a benefit for the victims and survivors of Hurricane Katrina. I quote from their blog…
The event is set for this Friday, Sept. 9, at 7:00 pm. The suggested donation is $20 (but the organizers will gladly take more).
As of this writing, Amy Tan, Robert Olen Butler, Elizabeth Dewberry, Paul Loeb, Isabel Allende, Lalita Tademy, Ayelet Waldman, Jane Ganahl, Armistead Maupin, and Susanne Pari are all confirmed participants. More are certain to be added to the list, since Amy says that she will be seeing some other important authors later in the day (It is not easy to say no Amy Tan!). Each author will be asked to read a brief piece about New Orleans, about the disaster, or just about the state of the world. It promises to be a memorable evening.
Book Passage, Corde Madera location. Get your lit on for a good cause.
Although the small acts of kindness and heroism in the face of Hurricane Katrina are too numerous to count, this week’s episode of On The Media brought one to my attention I hadn’t considered. The program interviewed New Orleans Times-Picayune editor Jim Amoss who discussed how, emotionally but mostly physically, the paper is still publishing despite its facilities, staff and their families being buried under the flooding. Although the TP couldn’t produce a print issue during the first terrible days of the hurricane, it contintued publishing through its web site and via a PDF download. The editorial staff had left New Orleans crammed into a single news van and set up a ersatz office in Baton Rouge. In the meantine, reporters fanned out across the state to bring news of the disaster and its city’s attempts at survival back to the citizenry. Most of them reported at great personal sacrifice to themselves, short of food and water, not knowing whether their families were alive or dead. The TP reporter covering the Gulf Coast has not been heard from and is presumed missing.
I know these men and women are just doing their job but with these obstacles, their job and their unwavering belief in their fellow citizens right to know have taken on a heroism I couldn’t have imagined in my brief tenure working at a major daily newspaper. Now I can.
Listen to the program (mp3 file).
Well if this doesn’t make things interesting? Eager to see the President “lead” his way out of this one.
Today is Israeli Independence Day, #57. The official anniversary date is May 14 but because Israel goes by the Jewish calendar instead of the Gregorian one, the date bounces around every year.
A Wikipedia article on Israel.
Salon is reporting that Al Franken is thinking about running for Senator in his home state of Minnesota. He’s bought an apartment in Minneapolis and is moving his Air America show staff back to the midwest.
Now I know nothing about freshman Republican Senator Norm Coleman, whom Franken would be attempting to unseat, but doesn’t this sound like a giant stinkin’ load of ammunition for the GOP? Will the cries of “celeb worship” and “out of touch with Joe Six-Pack” be leveled at the Dems starting, oh, now, even though Franken won’t be gunning for election until 2008?
Doesn’t mean he shouldn’t do it. Or that it couldn’t happen. Hell this is the state that elected Jesse Ventura as Governor seven short years ago. I’m just saying I can hear the scoffing already.
On the 20th of April…
*1775: The British Army begins their seige of the colony city of Boston after the historic “Shot heard round the world” the morning before at the intersections of Lexington and Concord. The American Revolution had begun.
*1832: Congress establishes Hot Springs Arkansas as the nation’s first National Park.
*1841: Edgar Allen Poe publishes The Murders in the Rue Morgue, now considered the first detective story.
*1912 and 1916: Fenway Park opens in Boston. 4 years later, Wrigley Field follows in Chicago. Along with Yankee Stadium in New York, the two comprise the last of the old time baseball stadiums still in operation.
*1943: In honor of Hitler’s birthday, Nazi SS soilders begin a campaign of total destruction against the ZOB, a Jewish defense organization that has rebelled within the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto. They hold off the Nazis for 28 days but in the end, all are either killed or sent to the death camps at Treblinka.
*1999: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold enter their high school in Littleton, Colorado and begin shooting. By afternoon, 13 people will be dead, 23 injured and Harris and Dylan will have killed themselves (archive). They supposedly chose April 20th because it was Hitler’s birthday.
*2002: In an event of only personal historical significance, Midwestern transplant Kevin Smokler purchases a home in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco. Each year, on April 20th, he takes a moment to reflect on how much has happened since that day. He then listens to the song “20th of April” by Oysterband, because he feels this day is a little haunted.
So there’s a new pope in town. His name is Joseph Ratzinger, he’s German, 78, former Dean of the College of Cardinals and has chosen the name Pope Benedict XVI. Far as I can tell, his favorite color is white.
Some hoped that whomever they elected as the 256th pope would be a more progressive pontiff as now most of the world’s Catholics are poor, of color and living in developing countries. Elsewhere in the world, interest in Catholicism is declining. So what to do about this 21st century thing, ya know?
Elect a pope that CNN calls a “Guardian of Orthodoxy”? Another white-European guy? Eh wouldn’t be my first choice but A) I’m not Catholic (or even Christian) and B) This new pope is 78 years old. Unless he is in superb health, he’s not going to be reigning for 26 years as his predeccesor did. I have a feeling we’ll be right back here in 5 years or so waiting for the revealing of Mr. 257.