We all heard Richard Blanco’s poem for President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, but have you heard Paul Muldoon’s? “First off, hearty congratulationson having the backing of the nationover Romney. It looks like ‘Mitt’ is shortfor intermittent, or something of that sort.Second, ‘inauguration’ is a wordthat conjures up ‘divination by birds,’Romans who tried to break the codeof what hens’ entrails might forebode.As for the forecast I deliver?Don’t be chicken-hearted! Don’t be chicken-livered! I must admit I’m hesitantto bend the ear of a Presidentfor whom I have so much more timethan almost any of the dime-a-dozen politicianswe track by their shifting positionsas targets may be tracked by drones…”
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We all heard Richard Blanco’s poem for President Barack Obama’s second inauguration, but have you heard Paul Muldoon’s?

“First off, hearty congratulations
on having the backing of the nation
over Romney. It looks like ‘Mitt’ is short
for intermittent, or something of that sort.
Second, ‘inauguration’ is a word
that conjures up ‘divination by birds,’
Romans who tried to break the code
of what hens’ entrails might forebode.
As for the forecast I deliver?
Don’t be chicken-hearted! Don’t be chicken-livered!
I must admit I’m hesitant
to bend the ear of a President
for whom I have so much more time
than almost any of the dime-
a-dozen politicians
we track by their shifting positions
as targets may be tracked by drones…”
“At nine o’clock one Saturday morning I made my way to the Diplomatic Reception Room, on the ground floor of the White House. I’d asked to play in the president’s regular basketball game, in part because I wondered how and why a 50-year-old still played a game designed for a 25-year-old body, in part because a good way to get to know someone is to do something with him. I hadn’t the slightest idea what kind of a game it was. The first hint came when a valet passed through bearing, as if they were sacred objects, a pair of slick red-white-and-blue Under Armour high-tops with the president’s number (44) on the side. Then came the president, looking like a boxer before a fight, in sweats and slightly incongruous black rubber shower shoes. As he climbed into the back of a black S.U.V., a worried expression crossed his face. “I forgot my mouth guard,” he said. Your mouth guard? I think. Why would you need a mouth guard?” - The Big Short author Michael Lewis writes a 13,638-word profile of Barack Obama
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“At nine o’clock one Saturday morning I made my way to the Diplomatic Reception Room, on the ground floor of the White House. I’d asked to play in the president’s regular basketball game, in part because I wondered how and why a 50-year-old still played a game designed for a 25-year-old body, in part because a good way to get to know someone is to do something with him. I hadn’t the slightest idea what kind of a game it was. The first hint came when a valet passed through bearing, as if they were sacred objects, a pair of slick red-white-and-blue Under Armour high-tops with the president’s number (44) on the side. Then came the president, looking like a boxer before a fight, in sweats and slightly incongruous black rubber shower shoes. As he climbed into the back of a black S.U.V., a worried expression crossed his face. “I forgot my mouth guard,” he said. Your mouth guard? I think. Why would you need a mouth guard?”

- The Big Short author Michael Lewis writes a 13,638-word profile of Barack Obama

“You could draw a pretty comprehensive map of America from the poetry of place names in Chuck Berry’s songs. Norfolk Virginia, downtown Birmingham, Houston town, Albuquerque, Los Angeles: they’re all there in “The Promised Land,” inventoried with great good humor even when the traveler encounters, as we all do from time to time, “motor trouble that turned into a struggle.” Wouldn’t “The Promised Land” make a better national anthem than that unsingable and bellicose dirge we’re stuck with?”

Stephen Akey on Chuck Berry as neoclassicist.

Source: themillions.com

“This leads me to this one final, and reluctant observation about Domestic Manners: there’s a good reason why it’s generally excluded from the modern canon of classic travel literature. For after her scathing indictments the hypocrisy of American inequality, she reached a conclusion that seems strange to a modern reader: since equality isn’t working, let’s just scrap it. She forcefully argued that the world would be far better off without equality and instead with a class-based system, ruled benevolently by the 1%. ‘How greatly the advantage is on the side of those are governed by the few,’ she wrote, ‘instead of the many.’” - A Travel Guide to American Hypocrisy by Alison Stein Wellner
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“This leads me to this one final, and reluctant observation about Domestic Manners: there’s a good reason why it’s generally excluded from the modern canon of classic travel literature.

For after her scathing indictments the hypocrisy of American inequality, she reached a conclusion that seems strange to a modern reader: since equality isn’t working, let’s just scrap it.

She forcefully argued that the world would be far better off without equality and instead with a class-based system, ruled benevolently by the 1%. ‘How greatly the advantage is on the side of those are governed by the few,’ she wrote, ‘instead of the many.’”

- A Travel Guide to American Hypocrisy by Alison Stein Wellner

Speaking of that story from The Atavist we mentioned a moment ago: my favorite bit of US-USSR Space Race history is the fact that the US devoted upwards of $25 million to its chimpanzee research (that later launched Ham into orbit). That money went to training, research, feed, and veterinary care. On the other side of the world, the USSR’s space dog program — including Laika, Strelka and Belka — consisted exclusively of stray dogs the scientists found on their ways to work.
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Speaking of that story from The Atavist we mentioned a moment ago: my favorite bit of US-USSR Space Race history is the fact that the US devoted upwards of $25 million to its chimpanzee research (that later launched Ham into orbit). That money went to training, research, feed, and veterinary care. On the other side of the world, the USSR’s space dog program — including Laika, Strelka and Belka — consisted exclusively of stray dogs the scientists found on their ways to work.