On the Nightstand

The New Being by Paul Tillich. April, 2005

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we are here

“This,” cried the mayor, “is your town’s darkest hour! The time for all Whos who have blood that is red to come to the aid of their country,” he said.  “We’ve got to make noises in greater amounts, so open your mouth lad, for every voice counts!”

– from “Horton Hears a Who!” by Dr. Seuss, 1954

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An app’s an app for a’ that

 

The Painting of Robert Burns and his Mary - Charles Lucy, 1844

There’s a free iPhone app that offers the complete works of the Bard in a searchable database – over 550 poems and love songs – a handy guide to how to host an authentic haggis (barf) Burns Supper, biographical information about the 18th century poet/lady’s man and a useful glossary of terms to help interpret the Scots words. To get the free app, visit the scotland.org website, or download it directly from the iTunes store.

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Penguin art director Paul Buckley shares how he chose the 75 best covers to celebrate the publisher’s anniversary in this weeks Salon.com article: Judging the Cover of a Book.

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Rick Santorum “Not a Big Poetry Guy”

AMERICAN LUNATICS.

AMERICAN HERO.

Because literally EVERYTHING the GOP does, without fail, when left to its own devices, is insane and reads like parodic villainy were it in a fictional context, it’s not surprising that presidential candidate, Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum, would disown his own campaign slogan when told by a student that a gay liberal poet came up with it.

His campaign website features the slogan, “Fighting to Make America America Again” (by which I think he means that America is not America when there’s a black guy in charge). Because the freak who cuddles with a dead fetus he stores alongside the Nutty Buddies in his freezer is not a very good politician, he was “tripped up” by a student who asked him about about his campaign slogan. It seems the eloquent turn of phrase was borrowed from a poem by from the great Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes – black, pro-union, pro-immigrant and avowed leftist – who was probably gay. The title of poem is ‘Let America Be America Again.’” The freak immediately distanced himself from it.

“No I had nothing to do with that, I didn’t know that. And the folks who worked on that slogan for me didn’t inform me that it came from that, if it in fact came from that.”

Oh, Rick. You have barely gotten over your little google problem, now you immediately disown your own campaign slogan, and deny it’s even your slogan, because the guy who originally penned it was gay? Asked for clarification, the former senator laughed and added that his campaign staff “didn’t inform” him about the origin of the phrase. However, Santorum said he has read “some” poems by Hughes. “I’ve read some of his poems. I’m not a big poetry guy so I can’t say I have a favorite poet, sorry”.

When asked what the campaign slogan meant to him, Santorum said, “well, I’m not too sure that is my campaign slogan, I think it’s on a web site.” It was also printed on the campaign literature handed out before the speech and plastered all over the room under the official Santorum campaign posters.

Rick Santorum doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Langston Hughes. He should not be able to even think about Langston Hughes in his filthy, feeble, fetid little mind. Hughes’ poem reads as a sort of prebuttal to Santorum and his kind’s fantasy of restoring America to its mythical former glory. American was not that glorious for plenty of Americans, America was never America for plenty of Americans. (“There’s never been equality for me, / Nor freedom in this ‘homeland of the free.'”) I guess you can believe that he actually had no role in crafting his own campaign motto. But even more psychotic is how he— who has made a career demonizing the gay community — recoils in horror when learning that anything associated with him has roots in the gay community. It’s always hilarious watching a self-righteous moral coward trying to disassociate himself from the truth, or from consequences of his choices.

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Rock the Drop

Visit the Young Adult Library Services Association Website

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On the Nightstand.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Publication Date: October 2008

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Great Snacks in Literature.

Sugar Mouse Cake.

“When morning came, Tom’s cake was decorated from top to bottom with white sugar mice. They had pink sugar eyes and pink sugar noses and all of them looked as real as could be. Some were musicians and others were dancers and high in the middle, on two little thrones, sat a sugar mouse King and a sugar mouse Queen.” – from The Sugar Mouse Cake by Gene Zion

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Manning Marable RIP

 

The highly anticipated: “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” is published today and available to purchase at all your fine and digital retailers. The 594-page biography –  allegedly full of new and shocking revelations and insights – was Columbia University professor Manning Marable’s focus for the past two decades. He considered it his life’s work, reevaluating the legacy of black nationalist leader Malcolm X. According to Viking Press, his publisher, Marable’s book “unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America”. The book challenges both popular and scholarly portrayals of Malcolm X, describing a man often conflicted by matters including theology and politics, and not the unwavering figure of moral certitude that has become an enduring symbol of African-American pride.

Over the course of a prolific 35- year academic career,  Marable was the Founding Director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University and the author of 16 books including “Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America’s Racial Future”. He is also one of the world’s leading Marxist historian. But it is this biography that is likely to be regarded as his magnum opus. He obtained about 6,000 pages of F.B.I. files on Malcolm X through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as records from the Central Intelligence Agency, State Department and New York district attorney’s office, and interviewed members of Malcolm X’s inner circle and security team, and witnesses to the Malcolm X murder. Mr. Marable had been looking forward to leading a vigorous public discussion of his ideas upon the book’s publication.

But on Friday, 3 days away from the publication date, Mr. Marable died in a hospital in New York as a result of medical problems he thought he had overcome. He had been hospitalized with pneumonia, and last summer had a double lung transplant to relieve him of sarcoidosis, a lung disease from which had suffered for 25 years. He was only 60.

Amy Goodman did a good interview with Manning Marable in 2007. You can read or listen to it here.

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Great Snacks in Literature

Turkish Delight.

“The Queen let another drop fall from her bottle on to the snow and instantly there appeared a round box, tied with green silk ribbon, which, when opened turned out to contain several pounds of the best Turkish Delight. Each piece was sweet and light to the very center and Edmond and never tasted anything more delicious”. – – from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

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