Better Living Through Introspection

White House postpones poetry symposium, citing concerns over political statements

The White House’s postponement of a literary symposium it believed would be politicized led two former U.S. poets laureate to characterize the decision as an example of the Bush administration’s hostility to dissenting or creative voices.

“I think there was a general feeling that the current administration is not really a friend of the poetic community and that its program of attacking Iraq is contrary to the humanitarian position that is at the center of the poetic impulse,” Stanley Kunitz, the 2000-2001 poet laureate, said Thursday.

In a statement, Rita Dove, who served as poet laureate from 1993 to ‘95, said the postponement confirmed her suspicion that “this White House does not wish to open its doors to an `American voice’ that does not echo the administration’s misguided policies.”

The Feb. 12 symposium on “Poetry and the American Voice” was to have featured the works of Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. The postponement was announced Wednesday and no future date has been set for the event, to be held by first lady Laura Bush.

Full story via NOLA.com.

Related site: Poets Against the War

Every year (okay, last year and this year so far) my friend Mattie and I have a charity benefit. This year, proceeds from the Second Annual Life in the District Charity Benefit will go to Brave Kids, a non-profit organization providing access to healthcare resources for children with chronic, life-threatening illnesses and disabilities.

Anyone within the sound of my voice who wouldn’t mind spending a few bucks for the kids is invited. Shwanky attire and a friendly demeanor are the order of the day.

Click here for complete details.

“I saw that over in Israel when I was there and it’s for the same reason: people were very afraid because of the bombings and things of that nature,” Ramsey said. “They started doing that to show people that they were out there and it seemed to work, so we’ll try to bring that here.”

It worked?! It worked?! Yeah, clearly the flashing lights have cut down on the bombings. Does he really think it’s going to cut down on crime here, or just make people feel better? Frankly, I think it’s going to annoy the crap out of people. (Oh, and can we please get a comment from an Isreali citizen on this? I’d like a balanced retort. Surely jasonmnovak.com is big over there? No? Let’s continue…)

“People should be aware it’s not the same as the emergency lights,” Ramsey said. “If you see all of the lights on top of the officer’s car lit up, then that means pull over to the side because the officer is trying to get through. But just simply having the flashing lights is what we are doing to try to enhance our visibility.”

Enhance your visibility? Which do you think would be more effective: Driving around saying “Hi, here we are, over here! Look at us!” or hiring and training more police officers?

Full article.

From quillo.com: Making PDFs for free, for real.

I’ve lost count of how many different methods exist for personal publishing on the web — frankly since moving from Blogger to MovableType, I’ve been content to look no further.

But whatsisname of Textism fame seems to be coming out with a PHP/MySQL publishing tool called Textpattern (it’s clever cause it sounds like Testpattern, yes?) that promises some rich contextualization. Interesting.

Have a look.