Poetry Friday: The scary season

Pumpkin
by Valerie Worth (1933-1994)
After its lid
Is cut, the slick
Seeds and stuck
Wet strings.
Scooped out,
Walls scraped
Dry and white,
Face carved, candle
Fixed and lit,
Light creeps
Into the thick
Rind: giving
That dead orange
Vegetable skull
Warm skin, making
A live head
To hold its
Sharp gold grin.
From Halloween: Stories and Poems, edited by Caroline Feller Bauer and illustrated by Peter Sis (1989), one of my recent treasures [...]

A smarter defense

Nicholas Burns, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2005 until his retirement in April, in Newsweek on why “We Should Talk to Our Enemies”:
One of the sharpest and most telling differences on foreign policy between Barack Obama and John McCain is whether the United States should talk to difficult and disreputable leaders [...]

A political fairytale

Mudflats offers up “The Lyin’, the Witch and the Wardrobe — An Alaskan Tale”

“You want to always strive to define standards up”

I don’t take much comfort from polls and maps and statistics, whether the subject is the World Series or the election. It ain’t over ’til it’s over.  In the meantime, I do take comfort from the following:
* Christopher Hitchens on “Sarah Palin’s War on Science”:
This is what the Republican Party has done [...]

Waylaid by pumpkins

I had every intention to keep blogging through last week but getting ready for our giant pumpkin carving party (the pumpkin was big at 270 pounds, though not as big as last year’s, and the party kept getting bigger as Tom and the kids invited everyone they ran into) derailed my plans, especially when the [...]

Precisely II

Ramesh Ponnuru on “Palin’s Alleged Anti-Intellectualism” in the conservative National Review Online:

Last week I asked what evidence we have that Palin is, as is often said, “anti-intellectual.” …
A friend pointed me to Noam Scheiber’s article on Palin [NB Scheiber's New Republic article well worth reading]. The Palin of Scheiber’s portrayal certainly fits the label: She [...]

Precisely

The latest word from Republican campaign spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt: “With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it’s remarkable that we’re spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses.”
Which is why Gov. Palin should hold her very first press conference now.

Rescue, and a moose

I just received a digital card reader from my father in civilization — thanks, Pop! — so I could salvage the last batch of photographs from my dead or dying Kodak EasyShare; I didn’t even realize such things existed. It’s a little marvel — I put the camera’s card in the reader, the reader in [...]

Countdown to the Election: 13 days to go

The election is in 13 days with 12 days of campaigning left and Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for Vice President, has yet to give a press conference and has not released any of her medical records.
Senators John McCain, Barack Obama, and Joseph Biden have yet to release the remainder of their medical records.

Countdown to the Election: 14 days to go

The election is two weeks from today with 13 days of campaigning left and Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for Vice President, has yet to give a press conference and has not released any of her medical records. According to The Times, “Last week Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for Ms. Palin, said the governor declined [...]

Still twisting in the wind

Here’s a bit of friendly advice to the Canadian Liberal Party: It’s not about more money. You can’t buy vision with more money. More money will not guarantee that the leader listens to advisers, or has the savvy to make hay out of unforeseen circumstances. Money also won’t buy a party united [...]

The view from Europe

Geoffrey Wheatcroft in The Guardian:
Not long ago John McCain was obliged to disown John Hagee, a Texan preacher with a huge following who is not only militantly hostile to Catholicism and Islam but believes that “Hitler was a hunter” who had been sent by God to drive the Jews to Israel. Even assuming that McCain [...]

One does wonder

where William Kristol has been for the last while. In today’s New York Times he writes,
But is the ignorant crowd really our problem today? Are populism and anti-intellectualism rampant in the land? Does the common man too thoroughly dominate our national life? I don’t think so.
I didn’t think he thought so. But who’s [...]

The value of art, even in troubled times

Carol Vogel at The New York Times writes about lean days ahead for museums, but ends on a hopeful note:
And some directors argue that museums are not simply a great escape, but good value compared with a movie that can cost about $12 and end in two hours. At a museum, many said, visitors can [...]

Geography lessons

Just when I was feeling fairly confident about the American geography lessons of my three young dual citizens comes word about the other America.  It’s not enough they’ll have to figure out Canada’s celebrated two solitudes, now they have to deal with Palin’s parallel universe.
But I’ve been heartened today to hear the following this weekend [...]

Vulgarization and failin’ to grow up

The Jane Mayer New Yorker article about Sarah Palin I wrote about in the previous post includes a quote from Republican Peggy Noonan’s latest Wall Street Journal column. As Ms. Mayer writes,
a surprising number of conservative thinkers have declared [Sarah Palin] unfit for the Vice-Presidency. Peggy Noonan, the Wall Street Journal columnist, recently wrote, [...]

Kissing the junior varsity goodbye

Jane Mayer in the October 27 issue of The New Yorker has a detailed article on how Sarah Palin has been less than forthcoming on yet another subject, her “Washington outsider” status, and how she and top Republicans engineered her choice as the vice presidential candidate:
Palin’s sudden rise to prominence, however, owes more to members [...]

Overdoing the small picture

Columnist Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie, writes today in The Detroit Free Press, “Average Joe can’t fix America’s pipes”,
By the time you read this, Joe [the Plumber] may be a member of the Weathermen. None of this surprises me. It is what you get in a country that seems to think everything is [...]

Join the club

CNN reports that “McCain, Palin hint that Obama’s policies are ’socialist’“
Really, we’re all socialists now, aren’t we, after the bailout and bank plan, from George Bush and Sen. McCain who suspended his campaign to fly to Washington to urge passage, to President Sarkozy, PM Brown. Pot, meet kettle.
As The Telegraph reported the other [...]

Semi-radical, unacademic, and too much fun

The New York Times covers “Anti-Schoolers”, a piece on the growth of home education in the Big Apple:
Benny’s parents ["with two PhDs and an MD between them"] aren’t home-schooling in the traditional sense, by hewing to a curriculum, nor are they strictly “unschooling,” that is, following the teachings of John Holt, a progressive educator who [...]