Dana Gioia, poet and former boss of the National Endowment for the Arts, many years ago wrote a book titled “Does Poetry Matter?” The inside back page essay in yesterday’s NYTimes Book Review by Robyn Cresswell (poetry editor of The Paris Review) had this to say about “Egypt: The Cultural…
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Snowing. It is snowing. It’s snowing. I don’t have to say, “It’s snowing out,” because it snows out, not in. You’d never say, “It’s snowing in.” The snow snows like the rain rains. Snowing means snowflakes falling. Have you ever seen or heard those many words for “snow” that Eskimos are…
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Sarah George Bagley (1806 – 1884) Sarah Bagley – Lowell mill girl, writer, labor activist – was born in New Hampshire on April 19, 1806. Historian Tom Dublin writes of Sarah Bagley – “she was one of the most important labor leaders in New England during the 1840s. An outspoken advocate of shorter…
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When the pee-wee hockey players poured onto the ice after the first period at the Tsongas Center last night, they looked like bees swarming the face-off circle. There must have been 12 on each side, which made it tough to eject the puck from the scrum that shifted from one…
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Salem, Mass., has a new marketing logo and slogan. Read the boston.com article here, and get the Globe if you want more.
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Forbes’s columnist Rick Ungar writes about the Koch brothers and their money in the Wisconsin struggle. Thanks to Nomi Herbstman on Facebook for the link.
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For decades the two political parties have engaged in parallel social contracts with workers and management: Come election time, unions support Democrats and the people who unions work for support Republicans. Legislatively, the two parties advocate the agendas of their respective constituencies. Since the 1980s, the Republican-management axis has been…
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I had coffee with a good friend this morning, and we got around to talking about what the heck we are doing with our waking hours, aside from earning a living doing work that we are fortunate to have the opportunity to do. We all have a certain number of…
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David Corn in Politics Daily skewers Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) for mangling the truth and showing no mercy for those about to lose jobs due to federal budget cuts. Corn has a surprising wrap up to his column that he titled “Naked Lunch.” Here’s the opinion piece, which I picked up…
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Here’s a poem from a warm spell during a February long ago. In addition to being in a couple of my books, this one was included in the anthology “Line Drives: 100 Contemporary Baseball Poems” edited by Brooke Horvath and Tim Wiles and published by Southern Illinois University Press.—PM . Spring Fever .…
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