Sweet Lou

My husband just informed me that today is Lou Reed's 67th birthday! (If you don't know why this is notable I feel very, very sorry for you. And I also urge you to consider ingesting some culture, any culture and no, sitting vacuously in front of television-machine does not count. Lazy minds are not inexcusable.)













Lou was the principle songwriter for The Velvet Underground (Andy Warhol helped put this rag-tag ever-evolving team of Nihilists on the map and secured them as the house band at Max's Kansas City) but went on to much success as solo artist. Among his achievements were such classics as Walk on the Wild Side (the 1972 urban anthem chronicling transsexuals, oral sex, narcotics and other "seedy" things that make life so wonderful), Perfect Day (heroin music at its best), Coney Island Baby (every under-achiever's wet dream) and Sweet Jane. Lou also acknowledged the devastation of the 80's AIDS crisis in New York with his song Halloween Parade (a reference the annual parade through Greenwich Village, a fixture of New York's LGBT community).

Lou is a Syracuse University drop-out (although he was later granted an honorary degree in English), however his time there was well-spent, as he forged an important relationship with notable poet Delmore Schwartz (you know... In Dreams Begin Responsibilities... that guy) who undoubtedly influenced Lou's writing sensibilities.

And the list of his accomplishments goes on. Happy Birthday, Mr. Reed - the world wouldn't be nearly the dark and moody place it is without you.

Say what you will about the urban jungle...

New York has it's mystical moments.

Hello again

I’m just recovering from a very busy month and half at work – it’s application season at our fellowship and given the state of journalism and the economy, applications came pouring in, mercilessly. I think the worst of the workload is behind me.

There isn’t too much that’s new and exciting to tell you about. Winter in California goes splendidly along – rain is fine, rain is great. I’ll take it over ice and snow any day. I was biking around campus a week or so ago, enjoying the electric green color that’s sprung up everywhere; February here means that everything flowers and blooms, thanks to the rain. Stanford these days reminds me of Washington, DC in the early springtime when the leaves and cherry blossoms burst onto the scene. It’s something everyone should experience at some point.












Sean and I did our taxes of the weekend and realized that (a.) we’re poor and (b.) given the amount of taxes we owe, the government and California do not think we’re poor. But I’m just complaining because I can (and will). Truthfully I look forward to paying taxes; while parting with money is always painful, I am all for Socialism. People who complain that government “steals” their money irk me. What? You expect your roads and old people to take care of themselves?

Please.

Speaking of poverty, I’ve been writing a great deal of poetry lately. I was walking my dog and realized that an old boyfriend of mine just turned 40 and thus came the idea for a poem. It’s going well. I haven’t written much since I left Alaska. Part of this is due to time and emotional issues: I’m only now, two and half years into my latest stint of employment, dealing well with the fact that 9 hours of my day simply must be eaten by my job. After the empty schedule graduate school afforded me, the plunge back into grown-up-ness was not pleasant. You’d be amazed at what one can accomplish in a day when there is nowhere to go. After a lot of anger and disappointment, I think I’m over it. (It also helps that I reduced my round-trip commute from 2 hours to 40 minutes.) So, I’ve been filling my evenings by writing and washing dishes (energy permitting). I hold no illusions that things will “work out” with my poetry. I don’t expect to ever get published, necessarily, much less paid or recognized and this can be discouraging. But, I can’t really not do it, either.

I’ve been reading a great deal of Rilke, lately, specifically his Letters to a Young Poet. Rilke was my kind of guy. For one thing, he takes his correspondences seriously. He wrote a letter to Kappus (the young poet) about how he would writer a better letter later and went on to explain why he could not at that time write a proper letter. And this helped me understand that Rilke’s modus operandi is to do something right or not at all. By “right,” Rilke means, I think, for the right reasons. Don’t just scribble a letter off to your friend, sit down and write it with good intentions.

He also applies this to sex.

Rilke counsels Kappus to not let dogma and social morays affect his sexuality, but instead to use sex for the (again) right reasons – as a fundamental human experience to enrich one’s life and bond us with the larger cycles of life. How could one err in teaching this kind of lesson to a kid? I would have gained greatly from such a letter in my formative years.

And now, I could use a Rilke simply because no one writes letters anymore. Most people can’t even be bothered to write a full sentence in an email, if they bother to email at all. I still write letters, mostly to old men I know, and when they die I imagine so will the practice for me. I’m not bemoaning technology and advancement, I’m all for a paperless world, but in moving forward we do lose some truly wonderful things. And I’m not just talking about pen pals. I read in the NYTimes recently that Kim’s Video, an NYC fixture, closed. Kim’s was a legendary video store in the Village where you could browse for movies by director and they carried EVERYTHING. It makes sense that their services are no longer necessary with the advent of things like Netflix and digital movie files, but it’s also sad to see them go – they just understood Rilke’s idea of doing things right.

Rachel, Carl - Carl, Rachel

This is the definition of "up my alley" - NBC and Air America host (and all-around whiz-kid who I just adore) Rachel Maddow interviewing journalism legend Carl Bernstein about the Bush-era telephone tapping scandal regarding journalists.

What's best is that Carl actually gives Rachel a verbal scolding - ain't no-one who understands unraveling espionage scandals like our beloved Bernstein (or Woodward).

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Taking care of our veterans

NPR ran a story the other day about Iraq and Afghanistan veterans asking for financial donations from fellow citizens via the internet. The organization the story spotlighted on is USA Together, a non-profit based here in Silicon Valley.

Here is what they say about themselves:

We are a group of people, some with military background, others without, that have come together to help this amazing group of Americans.

We are based in Silicon Valley and think that there is a power that the internet can bring to solving this problem.

We have no political, religious or other affiliation or agenda and represent a variety of backgrounds.

The only problem here is the fact that we need this organization so badly. Our veterans are entitled to quality health care, an education and general assistance when they need it - we can all agree on that. We made good progress last year when the new GI bill passed, giving them more money for education, modeling the benefits our WWII vets received when they returned home, but there are still problems. The last administration preferred to dump money into private companies to fight our conflicts and underpay their own voluntary soldiers - then soldiers returned home to moldy hospital room, debt, broken home lives and inadequate health care, especially mental health care.

A lot of reform lays ahead.

Until the government gets back into the business of caring for its citizens, rather than stealing from them, organizations like USA Together are a good cause to support, if you're lucky enough to have anything to spare right now.

8 Years in 8 Minutes

As always, Keith Olbermann continues to rank among my all-time, very favorite people. The clip below is from his show the other night - a masterful summation of the crimes, lies and mismanagement that we'll spend the next 20 years undoing.

Winter schminter

California? Yeah, the living is good.