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Ten writers who whose holiday poems were published in The New Yorker:
Yes, I'm still working on pulling together material for my Advent project.
anodyna posted in her journal the other day. These come to us by way Barsuk Records, and they're all quite good, so give them a try.Ten programs installed on my computer:
I'm not sure what some of these programs even do.
petzipellepingo comes an essay by Donald Graham about America's greatest President, James K. Polk, and his new biography, A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent. Graham says, "Robert Merry has done the impossible: he has made Polk's presidency fascinating;" I say, if you didn't already know his presidency was fascinating, you have not read my icon.Ten real people who appear as characters in Sunnyside by Glen David Gold:
I finished Sunnyside this afternoon, and while I enjoyed it -- especially the references to the Anti-Life Equation (a key element of Jack Kirby's Fourth World) and the Duchy of Grand Fenwick (from the novel and movie The Mouse That Roared), and a minor character named after comics blogger Chris Sims -- I don't think it was as good as his previous novel, Carter Beats the Devil. (Though possibly it's just that I have a taste for the formalized, quasi-nonfiction style he used for Carter.)
Ten anthologies of Christmas poems and/or stories I recently borrowed from my local library:
The first day of Advent is a mere 13 days away, which means it's almost time for my annual Advent project. This year I'll be posting a seasonal poem or work of prose each day through January 6, a.k.a. the twelfth day of Christmas. I posted poems in 2003 and 2006 as well, but luckily there's no shortage of Christmas literature out there. I'm a little behind schedule this year; normally by this time I would know exactly what poems I would be posting on what day, but this year I'm still choosing the material. I'll be ready by November 29, though.
All the pretty woman thought
The poems I wrote on love
Were meant for them.
And I always felt badly
About having written them
Just for the hell of it.
Orhan Veli Kanık (1914 – 1950)
Ten churches photographed by Camilo José Vergara and currently on display at the National Building Museum as part of their exhibit Storefront Churches:
I had a job interview in Silver Spring this morning, and once it was over I decided I may as well stop in D.C. on the way home and take in a museum. I opted for an exhibit I'd heard mentioned on a radio program I had recently listened to, House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage, currently on view at the National Building Museum. Once at the museum, I saw a sign for another exhibit that sounded interesting, Storefront Churches: Photographs by Camilo José Vergara. And it was fascinating, not least because of the unique and colorful names often given to the kind of churches photographed by Vergara.
Ten movies released between 2000 and 2009 and where they placed on The Times of London's Best of the Decade list:
The full list can be found here. For the record, I've seen 32 of the 100 films on the list. Not too good.
Ten veterans of the United States Armed Forces:
Happy Veterans Day!
Ten Sesame Street segments:
It's the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street! Back in the day, I was a bigger fan of Electric Company than of Sesame Street, but to be fair the Electric Company sketches have not aged as gracefully as those from Sesame Street. Plus, the former would not have existed at all if not for the former, so there you go.
Ten contributors to State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America and the states about which they wrote:
I first ran across this book in trade paperback form at a bookstore. I looked at the list of contributors on the front covers and read the back cover and decided it looked pretty interesting, so I made a note of the title and resolved to look for it at the library. I put a copy on hold at my local branch a few weeks later, and a week or so ago I picked it up, having in the interim forgotten why I had reserved it in the first place. The copy owned by the LCPL was the hardcover edition, which was designed to evoke those old state guides produced by the WPA in the 30s, and my assumption was that it was in fact a sampling of the works from that series, which didn't enthuse me. But it's not that at all. The resemblance is intentional, though; like the Federal Writers' Project before them, the editors of State by State got some of the best writers in America to contribute to the project, and while the result is not on the same epic scale as the WPA American Guide project, it is an amazing collection of essays by an amazing collection of writers. The essay about my home state of Illinois, by Dave Eggers, is hilarious and well worth the price of admission itself, but the other three I've read so far (Dagoberto Gilb on Iowa, Myla Goldberg on Maryland, and Tony Horwitz on Virginia) are as good, and I can't wait to read the rest, even the ones about loser states like South Carolina. If there's a flaw, it's that there's no essay about the District of Columbia, though there is, included as an afterword, an interview with the Washington writer Edward P. Jones about growing up in the city, which was pretty good for what it was.
This is the way that autumn came to the trees:
it stripped them down to the skin,
left their ebony bodies naked.
It shook out their hearts, the yellow leaves,
scattered them over the ground.
Anyone could trample them out of shape
undisturbed by a single moan of protest.
The birds that herald dreams
were exiled from their song,
each voice torn out of its throat.
They dropped into the dust
even before the hunter strung his bow.
Oh, God of May have mercy.
Bless these withered bodies
with the passion of your resurrection;
make their dead veins flow with blood again.
Give some tree the gift of green again.
Let one bird sing.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1911 – 1984)
Translated by Naomi Lazard
Ten countries or territories designated as "Not Free" by Freedom House:
Freedom House is a non-profit organization that promotes democracy and human rights. Every year, they issue a report assessing the state of political rights and civil liberties in every country in the world, as well as certain territories ( Western Sahara, for example, is a territory of Morocco). The 2009 report lists 42 countries and 9 territories as "Not Free," meaning the citizens of those regions are subject to significant restrictions on their political rights and civil liberties.
Another interesting fact about Freedom House: they interviewed me for a job this afternoon. I think it would be a terrific place to work, and I feel like the interview went well. Fingers crossed!