President Obama is a published author and a man who considers himself a writer. So, expectations were high today when he delivered his inaugural address.
Time Magazine has the speech in its entirety. It’s well worth reading several times over.
Here’s one of the best parts, IMO:
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted — for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
I love how President Obama calls out “the risk takers, the doers, the makers of things” and says they are directly responsible for our nation’s “prosperity and freedom.” What a celebration of American ingenuity and a call to arms for entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes. The nation needs us to risk, to do, to make—now more than ever.
I read the book Ecotopia by Ernest Callenbach many years ago. In the book, the Pacific Northwest secedes from the nation. I’ve been a bioregionalist ever since.
Now I see in “Sunday Styles” that the book—which sold over 400,000 copies in the 1970s—has caught on with new audiences in churches and classrooms around the nation. A fact which has led Bantam to reissue the title this month.
Scott Slovic, a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, said, “You hear people talking about the idea of Ecotopia, or about the Northwest as Ecotopia. But a lot of them don’t know where the term came from.â€
The green movement’s focus on local foods and products, and its emphasis on energy reduction also have roots in “Ecotopia,†he said. In fact, much of Portland, Ore., with its public transport, slow-growth planning and eat-local restaurants, can seem like Ecotopia made reality.
Which must be why the copy editor of this section titled the article, “The Novel That Predicted Portland.”
Laura Oppenheimer of The Oregonian put together a feature article on the efforts being made by Portland’s various creative communities to unite and successfully promote themselves.
salon owner, Kahala Orian, sporting a knitty
Here, Oppenheimer shows the two ends of the local spectrum:
If you picture the creative economy as a continuum from corporate giants to part-time artists, Nike inhabits one end. Oregon’s largest company employs more than 6,000 people at its headquarters, on a college-size campus near Beaverton.
A notch away from Nike is the advertising firm that branded it: Wieden+Kennedy. Columbia Sportswear Co. and Adidas USA round out the huge names. A slew of midsize companies design clothing, sports equipment and buildings, make movies and computer games, and promote it all to the world.
To explore the other end of the continuum, you could’ve walked down Southeast Belmont Street last weekend, past coffee shops and neighborhood bars, across from a retro arcade and a vegetarian diner, into KOiPOD salon. The owner, Kahala Orian, hosted a craft show called Handmade for the Holidays.
More than 20 entrepreneurs covered card tables with knit hats, soy candles and hand-stitched pillows, while a DJ wearing giant silver headphones spun tunes.
The article also explores how Steve Gehlen and Tad Lukasik are launching Oregon Creative Industries “to connect people online and in person, lobby for resources to help business grow, and to make creativity the state’s economic signature.”
OCI is a startup in the non-profit sector. They’re looking for volunteers to help grow the business, if you’re interested.
“I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.” – R. Buckminster Fuller
I feel fortunate that we were able to see Portland Center Stage’s production, R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE last night. Going in, I didn’t know much about this man. The fact that I did not seems incredible to me now. Be that as it may, I certainly care to know more.
There was so much density in last night’s finely honed delivery of Fuller’s vision, that I hardly know where to begin. But I can point to a few things that jumped out at me. Fuller’s sense of “design responsibility” grabbed me. So did his admonition to do more with less. I was also impressed with his playful, but serious, use of the English language. For instance, Fuller coined lots of terms in his day. One that stands out for me is “livingry.” Livingry is the opposite of weaponry and killingry, and means that which is in support of all human, plant, and Earth life. It’s an idea that brings to mind Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s call for a Department of Peace. I wonder where Obama is on that idea.
While I ponder that, take a look at this video on Fuller, clearly one of the more enigmatic American thinkers (and doers) in the 20th century:
The Lorax speaks for all trees
I speak for two, Reuben and Cherise.
These towering firs caught the scent of Lewis and Clark
On an updraft from the mighty Columbia.
It was the first whiff of progress,
And it took some getting used to.
The neighborhood was thick then.
Eagles fished from Reuben’s limbs
Bears clawed Cherise’s bark
And many long-needled creatures
With deep Cascadian roots
Stood tall in every direction.
Bye and bye, legions of white men
With sharpened axes came
To thin the forest boreal.
By luck of the draw,
Reuben and Cherise survived.
Today the grind of industry
Contiues to churn
Making the squirels run faster
And the ‘coons climb higher.
Ch-chug, ch-chug
Train whistles blow in the night.
Rueben and Cherise prefer the
Hoot of the owl.
SEVEN DAYS: How was the Times-Picayune perceived before Hurricane Katrina?
CHRIS ROSE: We’ve always been a very vital and vigorous part of the community here . . . What did not happen before the storm that happens now is that, when you get introduced as being from the Times-Picayune at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon, people stand up and clap for you. We’re treated as heroes.
Katrina brought back that very poignant, meaningful mission of journalism — like it really, really mattered every day what came down on people’s doorsteps. Suddenly, high school students to folks 90 years old were reading the paper because we were the only ones people could trust.
The storm brought down a quintessential dichotomy in the community: There were those who cut and run, and there were those who stepped up, at great sacrifice. There’s no question, no question, the Times-Picayune stepped up. And in the vacuum of political and corporate leadership, we carried the fucking day in this town.
There’s also this bit:
The writers and the photographers were in the city and management was relocated to Baton Rouge by virtue of our building flooding. You take management and move them 70 miles away from staff, and we win two Pulitzer prizes. You think that’s a coincidence? That’s not only a paradigm shift to follow in journalism, but in any corporate structure.
Rose’s collection of columns, 1 Dead in Attic is now available from Simon & Schuster. Rose originally sold 65,000 copies of a self-published edition.
Portland poet and essayist, Floyd Skloot, is the unique position of having two books introduced at once. His fourth memoir, The Wink of the Zenith, is out from University of Nebraska Press. And his new book of poems, The Snow’s Music, is out from Louisiana State University Press.
Last night, while reading at Powell’s, Skloot said The Wink of the Zenith is getting good reviews but he fears his new book of poems could be overlooked in the process.
Not by this site.
Here’s a selection from The Snow’s Music, a poem Skloot shared last night during his reading:
The Ensemble
The actor playing Claudius has worn
the same shirt to rehearsal every night,
a faded royal blue polo with torn
sleeves and grayed message: Ophelia Was Right.
The student of divinity who plays
Laertes has stopped seeking his inner
hothead. He’s come to believe the boy stays
calm and affects rage while his voice, thinner
the louder it becomes, gives him away.
That new beard, flecked with white, will have to go.
Meanwhile, the Gertrude whispering her way
through another chest cold still does not know
her speech from Act Three, saying No more sweets,
Hamlet! instead of No more, sweet Hamlet!
Her husband playing her son is two beats
too fast on every line. No surprise. Yet
his quick mouth suggests doubt, a racing mind,
something she has not considered before.
At the bar tonight the Director is kind
in his final notes, knowing little more
to do now, certain it will come together
tomorrow. He orders one more round,
toasts cast, stage crew, opening night weather,
Shakespeare, Denmark. He savors the sound
their laughter makes as it rises and falls.
He’s loved them all since the first casting call.
After Skloot read, I asked him if he’d written a play. He said not yet, but it would be an interesting challenge. He mentioned that he used to act and that the theatre has a big impact on his writing.
Keen cultural observer and wordsmith David Foster Wallace–who passed away at 46 this month–gave the commencement address at Kenyon College in Ohio, on May 21, 2005.
He advised that it’s important to break out of one’s “default settings,” which is his phrase for the state of mind that limits one’s ability to operate at a higher level of consciousness on a day-to-day basis.
…learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed.
That’s damn good advice. There’s way to much going on to “pay attention to.” We need to focus on what matters most to us and go deep there. We need to pick our waves carefully, and ride the ones we’re good on. The ocean, like the day-to-day world, is much to big to comprehend, but there is one thing we know—we have to go into both with utmost awareness and respect.
“Joe Bageant is the Sartre of Appalachia. His white-hot bourbon-fuelled prose shreds through the lies of our times like a weed-whacker in overdrive. Deer Hunting with Jesus is a deliciously vicious and wickedly funny chronicle of a thinking man’s life in God’s own backwoods.” —Jeffrey St. Clair
I picked up a copy of Joe Bageant’s book, Deer Hunting With Jesus, in the Atlanta airport recently. The author attempts to explain how the middle class vanished from American life by looking closely at residents of Winchester, Virginia–his home town.
In the chapter titled, “American Serfs,” Bageant argues that our public education system is a shambles for a reason.
Conservative leaders understand quite well that education has a liberating effect on a society. Presently they are devising methods to smuggle resources to those American madrassas, the Christian fundamentalist schools, a sure way to make the masses even more stupid if there ever was one.
Is it any wonder that Gallup Polls tells us that 48 percent of Americans believe that God spit on his beefy paws and made the universe in seven days? Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution. It is no accident that number corresponds roughly to the percentage of Americans with college degrees.
As you can see from the passage above, Bageant isn’t pulling punches. Nor does he have reason to. Once upon a time in this country, we believed anyone could reach for the stars. Maybe it didn’t work out for all, but it worked for many. Today, the deck seems brutally stacked against those without financial resources. This didn’t just happen, and it’s not a conspiracy.
Class is now the ultimate bifurcating factor in America. Obama is proof of that. That he’s black seems to hardly matter. That he’s Ivy League-educated is what people either reject or embrace.
p.s. See this great illustration inspired by the book on Flickr.
I’m interested in what a writer can do with Twitter, the micro-blogging service that only allows 140 characters per post. I’ve seen a few people use it for posting short poems. Last weekend I decided to see what might be done in prose.
Emerging from the 19th hole, our heroes head straight for their lap dances. “Here’s to Saturday night in America,” says a happy Hassler.
I don’t know that I’ll stick with it. But it seems to me there’s the possibility here for a new literary form. However, there are some issues to think through. One, the posts won’t be read in sequence (in fact, I flipped the order above so they would be in sequence). To me, this means each post has to stand alone; yet add value to the whole. I’m thinking there might be 200 or more narrative bursts in any one story, and that ideally they could all be reshuffled like magnetic poetry.
[UPDATE 6/23/08] I picked up the narrative thread on a Twitter page dedicated to this story.
