I am dying to write a long, loving and witty account of our trip to Da Moose last week to see F., C. and the C.-rents, but I have Summer Term Paper #2 due next week. I feel that Canadian hospitality deserves my full attention, so that post will have to wait. Teaser!
In the meantime, I have been thinking more and more about Lebanon, sadly. I don't know why I find the situation there worse, somehow, than the situation in Iraq, yet I do. For those who have not read
Anthony Bourdain's brilliant account on Salon of being trapped in Beirut with his production crew, please do so immediately. I always loved his writing but had no idea he could be so eloquent about issues other than food.
Over the last few days, this fragment of a poem by Muriel Rukeyser keeps coming to mind. It was quoted in June in the New York Times in, of all things, an article about the Whitney Biennial. I felt it was bizarrely out of place but saved it for its beauty. Lately it seems just as beautiful but also sort of scary. I'm not at her level of outrage yet, nor do I call my friends about the news every morning. But sometimes recently I feel more and more as though I
should.
I lived in the first century of world wars,
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
