WhimsyLand

The Atlantic:  Jonathan Rauch write (yet another) stirring endorsement of McCain's true conservatism.  Social scientists find that "happiness" declines from 25 to middle age, and then picks up again.  Latino gangs have proliferated throughout the US as the deportation of illegal aliens has increased (they go home, convert more followers, and come back).  Tom Casten believes that 10% of American energy needs can be met by recycling "junk energy" that is regularly "thrown away" by industry in the form of steam output and natural gas blowoff.  A long article on the future of Israel that seems a little more doom and gloom than I am able to believe (e.g., "Will Israel Survive?").  Jello Man Bill Cosby travels the country advising black men on conservative values (but, he's still a Democrat).  Al Franken might just win the Minnesota senatorial seat if he doesn't blow up and stops wrestling hecklers to the ground.  There's also a poem by CDY.

Harper's:  Lapham rants eloquently about how much worse off we are than when US delegates to the 1997 Davos Conference could brag about record surpluses and world-wide economic dominance.  A decent poem by Thomas Lux (The Utopian Wars:  "Amish raiding party attacks a Quaker / settlement at Muddy Crossing").  Another poem by Frederick Seidel ("Boys").  Wendell Berry tells us that our days of unlimited consumption are over (judging from Atlantic and Harper's, they're taking Poetry Month seriously).  A sobering article by Kevin Phillips that details how the government's numbers have been increasingly cooked since the 1950's:  inflation is actually higher than we think, GDP gain is much lower, unemployment is 50% higher than reported, and it's the fault of Democrats as much as Republicans.  From The Index:  2008 will be the first US presidential election between two sitting senators, and the three remaining candidates have co-sponsored 86 bills together since 2005;  Obama is outpacing McCain in donations from military personnel 10 to 9;  since 2002, 62,000 people in Silicon Valley earning $30K and $80K lost their jobs and 66,000 new jobs have been created at less than $30K;  23% of Britons believe that Winston Churchill was a mythical figure;  70% of all Chinese cancer cases are pollution-related; only 4% of the earth's oceans have been unharmed by human activity;  a Japanese cosmetics company allows 3 days of paid leave for "heartache".

Barrow Street:  Poets I recognize include MJB, Sandra Beasley, Laura Cronk, Denise Duhamel, Annie Finch, Rachel Hadas, David Lehman, Phillis Levin, Campbell McGrath, D. Nurske, Eugene Ostashevsky, Maura Stanton, and Jillian Weise.  Sadly, I have little to report as the volume seemed to lack the usual high-quality spunk and irreverence that I've come to expect from BS.  There were a few good lines, though.  Bergen Hutaff, "poverty":  "I wanted a blow job / you ordered me / a $9 muffin / from room service.";  Cynthia Lowen, "Poultry Department":  "The chickens are stuffed with giblet bags, / but none are paired with their own heart".  Now, we all know it should be "none is", but see what a Poetic License lets you do?  Dayna Kurtz entire poem, "Question #3": " Why would a person / want to write another poem / praising the moon / so full of itself in the sky?"

Actually, I quite like moons in poems.  I put them in all the time.  The chapbook manuscript describing my years with Junie is called Claire de Lune, for example.  I consider using a moon in a poem one of poetry's great challenges, considering that all the easy metaphors have been long used up.

Still packing.  The speakers fit OK, as does the subwoofer.  My suitcase is in the trunk, the iPod-to-FM thingy is plugged into what used to be a cigarette lighter.  It probably has a new name now.  I'm used to that, as I owned a succession of British cars and slowly adapted to calling their parts and pieces boots and bonnets and I used spanners to change tires.  Der will be ready to leave at 6 AM and we will have breakfast in the restaurant just over the Nebraska line, where I will have 3 eggs and bacon and hash browns or maybe ham and perhaps tomato slices, breaking all the dietary rules like a good poet.  Once Chicago is in the rear-view mirror, I'll be heading to see Junie, who you can just see waving to you from the small dot in the upper right-hand corner marked "Eau Claire".

Talk to you in a bit.