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To add to the “content” for Jack Kerouac’s birthday, here’s a clip of Jack reading on Steve Allen’s TV show in the late 1950s. Stay with the clip to the end for the impressive ending.

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With St Patrick’s Day less than a week away, here’s a preview of some of the jokes you will hear at the various breakfasts that will be held in the coming days. These are clips from the 1989 Lowell St Patrick’s Day Breakfast, with Ken Harkins as the Master of Ceremonies:

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NYTimes columnist David Brooks tries to set the record straight on what President Obama is doing and why he is doing it. I’m not in Brooks’ camp on most issues, but on the President he is usually a fair and reasonable commentator. I appreciate his thoughtful tone as he writes about complex political and social issues. He doesn’t go nuclear and accuse Democrats, progressives, liberals, or others of being unpatriotic, bad Americans if they hold a view different than his. Read his column here and consider subscribing to the NYT if you appreciate it.

Brooks’ colleague the economist Paul Krugman today walks us through the realities of the health care reform bill in its current version. Where have the voices of the people who really need this bill been for the past year? My sense is that most if not all of the opposition has come from people who are fighting it while on the “health-care plan clock,” so to speak… they’re covered. Read Krugman’s column here.

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Here’s another poem from Tom Sexton’s book of Lowell poems, A Clock With No Hands (Adastra Press, 2007). With Nomar back in the news and in the fold, this seemed like a good day for this poem.—PM

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The Red Sox Tree

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It seemed to take all morning to go around

the massive trunk of that ancient beech.

Almost eight, I kept one eye on the ground

as I climbed as high as I could reach.

A vet who’d fought on Iwo Jima carved

their line-up where the branches thinned,

far above the last initials in their heart,

where the air was always cold on the skin.

Climbing to it was my goal that summer,

and on the Fourth I was almost there

when I was forced back down by thunder

and lightning close enough to singe my hair.

Safe at home behind my bedroom door,

I chanted Williams, Pesky, and Bobby Doerr.

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—Tom Sexton (c) 2007

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The Boston Globe yesterday reported on the unusually large amount of pine cones everywhere this year. I noticed this phenomemon in my family’s back yard and across the street at the South Common. The explanation has to do with regular cycles of production, this one being the culmination of the most recent three-year cycle. Read the article here and consider subscribing to the Globe if you appreciate it.

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Following is the eighth section of the long poem “The War Place.” Section seven was posted March 8.—PM

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8.

Invasion of Grenada, 1983

A Marine jet whines,

Its slant chalk scratch

On an otherwise flawless ceiling.

Even L.A.’s smog blown off

By night desert winds.

Scruffy palms, roasting,

Outnumber the faithful at Capo Beach

This bright autumn noon.

One bather treads,

Light in the heave and slide,

Just beyond the break.

Hissing foam sucks back through the stones.

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—Paul Marion (c) 2010

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The full schedule of activities for Jack Kerouac Day (he was born on March 12), which has become a “Kerouac Weekend,” is available at  www.lowellcelebrateskerouac.org

This Thursday at UMass Lowell, music and movie producer Jim Sampas, who grew up on Wilder Street, will be on campus to offer a master class/listening session at which he’ll tell the behind-the-scenes story of making the soundtrack for the recent documentary film about Kerouac’s novel “Big Sur.” He worked with musicians from Death Cab for Cutie and Son Volt. His talk is at 11 am in Durgin Hall, 114 (note that seating is limited and reservations are required—contact paul_marion@uml.edu to reserve a seat). At 3 pm, Jim will be joined by fellow film producers Curt Worden and Gloria Bailen for a 3 pm showing of their Kerouac film, “One Fast Move or I’m Gone,” in the O’Leary Library auditorium, room 222. Admission is free.

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Yesterday’s mail brought a short note from the U.S. Census Bureau informing me - or RESIDENT AT my address - that I will receive the 2010 Census form by mail in about a week and asking me to promptly fill it out and mail it back. It goes on to say

Your response is important. Results from the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get its fair share of government funds for highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need. Without a complete, accurate census, your community may not receive its fair share.

And as someone who has used past census records for historical research, I would add that we have an obligation to future generations to ensure that life in America in 2010 is fully and accurately documented through the census, a practice that dates back to the founding of our country.

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With St. Patrick’s Day only a week away, Steve O’Connor offers a blueprint for becoming a true Irish romantic, no matter what gene pool you’ve emerged from, in this essay originally written for WUML’s Sunrise radio show and subsequently published in Irish American Magazine:

Somewhere between Valentine’s Day and Saint Patrick’s Day, I cannot help but reflect once again on the terrible burden of being of Irish “distraction.” We are all, to some extent, stereotyped by ethnic group. If you happen to be Chinese, many people just assume you’re good at math and handle a mean ping pong paddle. If you’re Italian, you have to keep listening to the sort of Godfather jokes that once got Ronald Reagan into a little trouble. Now if you happen to be Irish-well I don’t have to remind you of the cruel stereotypes that have haunted the Irish for centuries. Supposedly, we Irish are all passionate romantics, supremely endowed, and spectacular lovers. I realize that men of other ethnic groups are sometimes…what’s the word, jealous of the reputation that we Irishmen have with the ladies, but when you hear this kind of thing day in and day out all your life, you get a little fed up.

And of course it’s not easy to live up to all the hype. Women have high expectations. His name begins with O apostrophe! That means he’s going to be stroking my hand and whispering tender words of passion while I melt into a puddle of feminine bliss. Of course if I were to tell you the sort of things we whisper, I might be giving away secrets that have been guarded for centuries by Irishmen as carefully as the Da Vinci code.

However, the obscene sum of money that Dick Howe has paid me for my observations makes it incumbent on me to reveal something of these secrets to those of you who are handicapped by your own ethnicity in being romantic. (Yes, I’m talking about you Frenchmen, who feel it’s every woman’s dream to sit with you for weeks watching men in tights ride around your country on bicycles. And then your testosterone level always plummets when the damned American wins again!) OK. You have a date. Congratulations, but don’t blow it! First of all, take her to a romantic spot. What do I mean by a romantic spot? Well, let’s say one that serves Guinness.

If you happen to go to The Old Court, the seat under the photo of Michael Collins, resplendent in the uniform of the Irish Free State, has been known to create a certain aura of mystery and romance. Slip the barman a fiver and ask him to put on the Chieftains playing something like: If I had Maggie in the wood, I’d do her all the good I could. As you can see, subtle is the ticket.
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The Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, N.H., is one of the Merrimack Valley’s small cultural treasures. Today’s Globe includes a review of an exhibition of watercolors (”From Homer to Hopper: American Watercolor Masterworks”) that sounds like the show would be a good reason to take a ride north next weekend. Read the article by Cate McQuaid here, and subscribe to the Globe if you appreciate it.

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