The Inauguration. At Last. By Maira Kalman

This is great--my kind of word/image combo. -walt

The Inauguration. At Last. by Maira Kalman (from The New York Times, 1/29/2009)

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John Updike (1932 - 2009)

John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire, died Tuesday at age 76.

I saw John Updike give a reading at the University of Richmond in 1985 or '86. The auditorium was so packed that I had to sit in the aisle, as I recall. It seemed like a momentous occasion in my young life at the time. All I really remember specifically from that day is that he read a poem about a waterbed ("To A Waterbed"), which was pretty funny. And he seemed like a reasonably self-effacing guy. His short story "A&P" is one of my all-time favorites. First we lose David Foster Wallace, and now John Updike!

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President Barack H. Obama!!

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Peaches or Plums by Alan Michael Parker

(I heard this poem on NPR this morning, read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer's Almanac. I particularly love the first stanza--the idea of memories inventing their own memories. That's about right... -w)

PEACHES OR PLUMS

by Alan Michael Parker

Oh, how I hate my mind,
all those memories
that have invented their own memories.

Take my first love, for instance,
how after Mass we'd kneel
underneath the back stairs

and kiss and kiss and kiss and.
Were her lips like peaches or plums?
She was Catholic and she wanted

to be bad, and I loved her
more than baseball,
but all the other days

divided us, carry the one,
nothing left over. So strange,
only to kiss on a Sunday,

to hold my own breath again
for a week, another 10,022
minutes of wretched puberty,

until she moved to Iowa
or Ohio or the moon.
Oh, I can still remember

nothing about her,
only kissing, and the impossible
geometry of the descending stairs

that rose to the church kitchen,
her breath like hot nutmeg
and a little like the ocean;

and once, oh my god, she bit me,
a first taste of my body,
blood in her smile.

"Peaches or Plums" by Alan Michael Parker, from Elephants and Butterflies. © BOA Editions, 2008.

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The top 25 Bushisms of all time (from Slate.com)

I've always really enjoyed these Bushism compilations (real quotes from George W. Bush) by Jacob Weisberg at Slate.com. Here are his top 25 of all time:

1. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." —Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

2. "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family." —Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000

3. "Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" —Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

4. "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country." —Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004

5. "Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican." —declining to answer reporters' questions at the Summit of the Americas, Quebec City, Canada, April 21, 2001

6. "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." —Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001

7. "I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense." —Washington, D.C., April 18, 2006

8. "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda." —Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

9. "I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle. He's bigger than that." —discussing former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as quoted by the Sun newspaper, June 27, 2007

10. "And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq." —meeting with Army Gen. Ray Odierno, Washington, D.C., March 3, 2008

11. "We ought to make the pie higher." —South Carolina Republican debate, Feb. 15, 2000

12. "There's an old saying in Tennessee—I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can't get fooled again." —Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

13. "And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it." —speaking on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007

14. "We'll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers." —Houston, Sept. 6, 2000

15. "It's important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It's not only life of babies, but it's life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet." —Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000

16. "One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures." —U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 3, 2000

17. "People say, 'How can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil?' You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in's house and say I love you." —Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2002

18. "Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's trustworthiness." —CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000

19. "I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep on the soil of a friend." —on the prospect of visiting Denmark, Washington, D.C., June 29, 2005

20. "I think it's really important for this great state of baseball to reach out to people of all walks of life to make sure that the sport is inclusive. The best way to do it is to convince little kids how to—the beauty of playing baseball." —Washington, D.C., Feb. 13, 2006

21. "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." —LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

22. "You know, when I campaigned here in 2000, I said, I want to be a war president. No president wants to be a war president, but I am one." —Des Moines, Iowa, Oct. 26, 2006

23. "There's a huge trust. I see it all the time when people come up to me and say, 'I don't want you to let me down again.' " —Boston, Oct. 3, 2000

24. "They misunderestimated me." —Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

25. "I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." —Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

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