Wednesday, June 29, 2016

A Random Assortment

~ Rest in peace, Bill.

~ Hotdogs in Zion.

~ The Trump phenomenon: Larger than we expect? Relatedly, I love this Trump 101 syllabus.

~ On family-friendly policies which may benefit men more than women. What to do about this? I'm all for maternal plus paternal leave to encourage father's to share the parenting more equally, and I really do believe it helps (as parenting is both nature and habit). But I'm also for recognizing that pregnancy and childbirth and breastfeeding do not impact both parents equally. It took me a full year to recover physically and psychologically. While Francisco and I both took a long time to adjust to having a child (and his adjustment period is as legitimate as mine), he didn't have the same physical and psychological response. And I didn't even have a c-section, which would have complicated all of this further.

~ For Ilana: Cities and fonts.

~ Fishing on the Susquehanna (via Hopkins)

by Billy Collins

Related Poem Content Details

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure—if it is a pleasure—
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one—
a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table—
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

2 comments:

Julia said...

I also love the Trump 101 syllabus. There's a lot on there I want to read and/or re-read!

Emily Hale said...

Yeah--I don't know Edmund Morgan's Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America, but it sounds fascinating.