Jane Siberry is fifty-seven today. Her music is inextricably woven into my memories of my first years with Earthgirl, the concerts, listening to cassettes in Deale. Yes, there was a Thursday Night Pints, I'll tell you about it tomorrow perhaps, it was nice, lively, one could hear Biden snorting even with the volume of the TVs above the bar on mute. Have a few links, a poem, and two symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams who was born one hundred forty years ago today, the Fifth, written before World War Two, the Sixth, written after. Sorry about the commenting asses, worth suffering through briefly for the music.
- Heart and mind.
- New standard as political contraindicator.
- The anticapitalist transition in Europe.
- Krugman's obamapostasy will never be ready.
- The enemy of my enemy is my president.
- The kill or capture presidency.
- I'm told the debate went as expected, everybody seeing what they wanted to see.
- Some autobiography re: the Stern poem below, found yesterday in his new volume of poems that came out of the library's back room on a new book truck - I was born in McKeesport, I'm a quarter Serbian-American, my folks used to take me and Elric and my cousins to Kennywood, one of my strongest memories as a five or six year old is not being as tall as the cut out cartoon of Henry the bald kid, not being able to drive a car on the park's mock Pennsylvania Turnpike.
- Purple Line!
- I was listening, it thrilled me.
- Niedecker reading.
- He is prepared to read more novels about people fucking.
- Yes, Thursday was Monk's birthday. My jazz playlister is on vacation.
TOO LATE
Gerald Stern
Too late now to look for houses
to give readings, to flirt, to eat blueberries,
to dance the polka - or just be in the
Serbian-American club in Duquesne
near that horrible McKeesport, near
that horrible Kennywood Park, and take
a sip, a bite, and half fall off my
stool, and grab her and whirl for fifteen
straight, or just to feel her breasts
against me and to loosen my tie,
my short and flowered tie, or just to
drive home slowly, sometimes even
on the streetcar tracks themselves.
that 68 trolley I loved so much, the
love seats and the rattling glass windows.
