Carole made apple crisp & I made penne ala vodka for dinner tonight & we’re sitting around listening to an old Van Morrison CD with four dogs — our three & a holiday visitor — in front of a roaring fire in the wood stove. The dogs are already snoring & we’re none of us going to be awake at midnight. Happy New Year.
Monthly Archives: December 2006
Improving the Past
One of my favorite bloggers, Fred Clark, who writes Slacktivist, has this to say about the current urge to surge in Iraq:
[I was] searching for the word “past” in these lists of wise clichés, I found many variations of this: “Sanity: What we get when we quit hoping for a better past.” That, I think, pinpoints the insanity driving the current enthusiasm for a “surge” of additional U.S. troops in Iraq. Proponents of this surge are not hoping for a better future, but for a better past. They’re not trying to win the war in Iraq but rather, somehow, to win the war in Vietnam.
That is both ruefully true & funny. And on New Year’s Eve, a time when we look both forward & back, it’s an appropriate, if mordant, sentiment. Sorry not to be filled with cheer & optimism, but the new year looks like more of the same for the country. I am at once profoundly grateful & guilt-laden that I am largely isolated by class, education, & geography from the worst of the horrors.
NewsTrust
I heard about NewsTrust from a mention on Boing Boing, so it’s not like it has been a secret or anything. The site, which uses the “social software” model, categorizes & rates news stories from many sources in an attractive & easy-to-use format. I also like the fact that no one is allowed to register anonymously or under a pseudonym, the site’s philosophy being to encourage as much transparency as possible. In order to be really useful, NT will have to attract many more readers who are willing to sign up & rate stories, but there already seems to be something of a community developing. It helps that, unlike a lot of “social” software, the NewsTrust user interface is intuitive to use & responsive. As a compulsive news reader, I’m sure to find myself returning often to NewsTrust.
Masters of War
Former president Gerald Ford is dead, they say. He was a nice guy, they say. Me, I’m waiting to see the last of Rumsfeld, Kissinger, & Cheney, all of whom the nice guy helped launch into American politics. In the memorable words of Bob Dylan, “I’ll stand over your graves ’til I’m sure that you’re dead.” No better than Pinochet, who they also say is dead. In this obituary mood, let’s ask ourselves, Who did more good for America, Gerald Ford or James Brown? Both will be lying in state at the same time, one in the Capitol rotunda, one in the Apollo Theater in Harlem — which man spoke most directly & passionately to the tradition of American freedom?
E-Ratio
E-Ratio 8, a web magazine that brings the elegance of letterpress printing into a web format is now online. I have begun reading this issue — first one I’ve been aware of — & while the work seems a little on the self-conscious side, I’m going to withhold further judgment until I’ve had a chance to read more. Definitely worth checking out for both the design & the poetry.