Fiction: The Use of Poetry
After watching the film “Atonement”, the name “Ian McEwan” is burned into my mind. His recent story in the New Yorker starts out very strong and was a pleasure to read.
It surprised no one to learn that Michael Beard had been an only child, and he would have been the first to concede that he’d never quite got the hang of brotherly feeling. His mother, Angela, was an angular beauty who doted on him, and the medium of her love was food. She bottle-fed him with passion, surplus to demand. Some four decades before he won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he came top in the Cold Norton and District Baby Competition, birth-to-six-months class.
Continue ReadingGetting Obama Right
DAVID BROOKS (NY Times) responds the last week’s column by Frank Rich and explains why it is so difficult for Obama to create on overarching narrative. The poltical odds seem to have changed. Right now the money is on health care passing.
Who is Barack Obama?
If you ask a conservative Republican, you are likely to hear that Obama is a skilled politician who campaigned as a centrist but is governing as a big-government liberal. He plays by ruthless, Chicago politics rules. He is arrogant toward foes, condescending toward allies and runs a partisan political machine.
The Up-or-Down Vote on Obama’s Presidency
The money in Washington is on Health Care legislation not passing this year. FRANK RICH is hedging his bets on this issue. But he articulates forcefully that Obama needs to create an overarching narrative before it is too late for his presidency.
WEDNESDAY’S health care rally was one of President Obama’s finest hours. It was so fine it couldn’t be blighted even by his preposterous backdrop, a cohort of white-jacketed medical workers large enough to staff a hospital in one of the daytime soaps that refused to be pre-empted by the White House show.
Obama’s urgent script didn’t need such cheesy theatrics. At last he took ownership of what he called “my proposal,” stating concisely three concrete ways the bill would improve America’s broken health care system. At last he pushed for a majority-rule, up-or-down vote in Congress. At last he conceded that bipartisan agreement between two parties with “honest and substantial differences” on fundamental principles wasn’t happening. At last he mobilized his rhetoric against a villain everyone could hiss—insurance companies. In a brief address, he mentioned these malefactors of great greed 13 times.
An Amazing Nordic Tale
David Brooks reports an amazing Nordic Tale that I want to see made into a movie.
The Hard and the Soft (NY Times)
The United States, a nation of 300 million, won nine gold medals this year in the Winter Olympics. Norway, a nation of 4.7 million, also won nine. This was no anomaly. Over the years, Norwegians have won more gold medals in Winter Games, and more Winter Olympics medals over all, than people from any other nation.
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Somebody’s Mother
by The woman was old and ragged and gray
And bent with the chill of the Winter’s day.
The street was wet with a recent snow
And the woman’s feet were aged and slow.
She stood at the crossing and waited long,
Alone, uncared for, amid the throng
Of human beings who passed her by
Nor heeded the glance of her anxious eye.
Tiger Woods 15-minute Apology
Parts of the 15-minute “mea culpa” are cheesy. But other parts are remarkable. Tiger claims that he never took performance enhancing drugs and that his wife never hit him.
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Candy
The first half of the film was so painful to watch that I considered turning off the DVD player. Strangely enough when words on the screen announce that we are now entering HELL (this is after the two lovers Dan (Heath Ledger) and Candy (Abbie Cornish), according to earlier words of the screen, were in HEAVEN and then came down to EARTH), moments of poetry give us reprieve from the self-destructive ways of two beautiful junkies. For the most part, it is simply depressing to see two young people throw away their lives because of drugs. Now that Heath Ledger is dead after too many drugs found their way into his blood, the film is even more painful. Candy is worse than bitter sweet. Don’t try it.
Romance in the Age of Facebook
Here is a great story by Joe Flint in the LA Times about the challenges about starting and ending a romance with facebook.
More than just Facebook friended
Two longtime acquaintances connect on the website, and it’s like a whirlwind—it sweeps them up together and then hurls them apart.
It was my first romance of the Facebook era. With it came the promise of contact, the ecstasy of connection, the neurosis of being able to peer into her world when she wasn’t looking and the torment of trying to figure out what she was thinking through her status updates and posts.
Continue ReadingThe First Solid Data on what drove Voters in the MA Senate Race
I definitely did not see it coming that the Democrats would lose Kennedy’s senate seat in Massachusetts. Here is the first solid information why the Republican candidate, Scott Brown, won the election. Click on More to find out who the man behind the stunning political upset is.
Brown’s Massachusetts victory fueled by frustration with Washington, poll shows
By Dan Balz and Jon Cohen (Washington Post Staff Writer)
Dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, antipathy toward federal government activism and opposition to the Democrats’ health-care proposals drove the upset election of Republican Senator-elect Scott Brown of Massachusetts, according to a new post-election survey of Massachusetts voters.
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