Month: September 2012

I am speechless upon learning that two undergraduate students who are friends of mine are respectively having problems with their academic institutions because they need accommodations for their disabilities. Owing to the sensitive nature of their stories, and the unresolved problems each is having I will not say more. But their stories prove once again just how far Higher Ed still needs to go even some twenty plus years after the Americans with Disabilities Act. In each case there are sub-altern administrators involved, and in each case they’ve been permitted to occupy bureaucratic positions without any cognizance of the law. Amazing. And trust me, each of these young men is attending a name brand institution. I’m aghast. Flabbergasted I assure you.

 

"Partisan politics, so wrapped up in creating an antagonism between capitalism and government, misses the point. If we are to maintain ourselves as a republic, certain foundational principles of a republic must be upheld regardless of our economic structures.
They are: popular sovereignty (power to the people, not Wall Street or Washington); resistance to corruption (placing special interests ahead of the common good); a sense of the common good (all those things that we own and hold in common); and most of all
civic duty, citizen responsibility, and citizen participation."

Welcome to the American Republic, Mr. Eastwood

Partisan politics, so wrapped up in creating an antagonism between
capitalism and government, misses the point. If we are to maintain ourselves as a republic, certain foundational principles of a republic must be upheld regardless of our economic structures. They are: popular sovereignty (power to the people, not Wall Street
or Washington); resistance to corruption (placing special interests ahead of the common good); a sense of the common good (all those things that we own and hold in common); and most of all civic duty, citizen responsibility, and citizen participation. Mr.
Eastwood, being a dramatist, could have made quite a discussion with that chair concerning these qualities and whether we all, not just the president, live up to them. The convention arena would have been even more dumbfounded, doubtless to the point of silence.

 

I want to be the kind of poet who can change seasons at will,

for whom the houses and trees keep affection.

End of day, swallows darting before the owl,

love revealing its true ambitions, 

I want to give celestial kisses to the animals,

to the horse especially

because he too is a philosopher. 

 

 

I try to think, where is my uninhibited side?  Is it attracted to coloratura snippets and therefore has to do with birds? Is it like a Russian chorale, a hundred fragments singing before a mirror? Damned if I know. My louche, unbuttoned, acerbic, free wheeling side pops up all the time. Says what it wants. Says what it wants. Said once: the enemy stars are the same as ours–said it to a military recruiter and why not? And said once to a government agent who was photographing a protest against Ronald Reagan’s involvement with the suppression of freedom in El Salvador: you know there are honest jobs, ones where you can make humble and lasting discoveries. And he of course photographed me.