but before i can get out the door to buy below mentioned book, i see this:

Idiocy alert

from cnn

Georgia considers banning 'evolution'

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- The state's school superintendent has proposed striking the word evolution from Georgia's science curriculum and replacing it with the phrase "biological changes over time."

The superintendent repeatedly noted that evolution was a loaded "buzzword." While I don't even know where to begin on this one, I can't wait til they come up with a new one for creationism. My suggestion.

More word stealing today -- this time from Seamus Heaney, an Irish poet whose work I should know better. I found this poem ages ago at the beginning of Doubletake, a fantastic magazine on photography and writing. As it turns out, I was only reading a tiny fragment of the poem, which i just learned "is an adaptation of Sophocles' play, Philoctetes, written in the 5th century B.C. " Well, then.

I just reread it now after a little cut-paste, and though I'd planned on writing a bit about it have now decided I need to go down the street and buy the whole book immediately.

Is it timely now? Of course. But then, most remarkable things always are.


From "The Cure at Troy"

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols
Beat on their bars together.
A hunger-striker’s father
Stands in the graveyard dumb.
The police widow in veils
Faints at the funeral home.

History says, Don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
Of new life at its term.


word.

more money from whom for what?!?!

from today's Times:

Bush Is Said to Seek More Money for Arts
By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 — President Bush will seek a big increase in the budget of the National Endowment for the Arts, the largest single source of support for the arts in the United States, administration officials said on Wednesday.

The proposal is part of a turnaround for the agency, which was once fighting for its life, attacked by some Republicans as a threat to the nation's moral standards.

Laura Bush plans to announce the request on Thursday, in remarks intended to show the administration's commitment to the arts, aides said.

Administration officials, including White House budget experts, said that Mr. Bush would propose an increase of $15 million to $20 million for the coming fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. That would be the largest rise in two decades and far more than the most recent increases, about $500,000 for 2003 and $5 million for this year.

Wow. Hooray for the NEA. Laura must be behind this one. The proposed increase would bring the budget to about $140 million, a welcome increase, but still a far cry from the Endowment's heydey in 1992, when they topped $170 million.

Even Clinton had a rough go at it during his administration, with people like Jesse Helms calling for drastic cuts and even the elimination of the Endowment. As the article points out, the budget was slashed, and remained at, roughly $100 million after the Republicans took controld of Congress in 1995.

But Helms is likely in hell now, I hope he's gotten the chance to chat with Mappelthorpe, and if he's in heaven, I hope the photographer's there, too. Either way, they will probably mix it up a little.

[Hold your horses, Tim -- Helms isn't dead yet!! In my hasty efforts to be snarky, I have confused him with that other pillar of public service from the Carolinas, Strom Thurmond, who is quite dead. My apologies. As they would say, though, don't they all look alike? Perhaps he can save a seat for the Senator. ]

I googled him just to make sure, and found this:

primaries, primaries, primaries.

i had forgotten how simultaneously fascinating and frustrating this whole process is-- how it gives people both so much and so little to think about at the same time. i should talk about the policy/electability stuff that matters, but this'll really be more queer eye than charlie rose today. because i'm sleepy:

style vs. substance -- sadly, traces of all that nonsense about gore switching to earth tones last time around is still evident in almost everyone running. dressing up the candidates has gotten some play on most of the sites and papers i've read already, but i still can't get over how goofy most of them still look, despite their best efforts.

clark is extremely handsome, well dressed, etc. i want badly for him to win, for reasons i haven't figured out yet. but he puts on a patriots sweatshirt and looks like, well, someone who shouldn't be wearing a patriots sweatshirt.

dean does this rolled up sleeves thing with a tie. i have visions of my algebra teacher in high school.

and kerry's got this silly barn jacket that's supposed to distract me from the fact that he [and his ketchup-heiress wife] are worth many many many millions. i had one of those in high school, and they don't make looke plausible on anyone except the people in the l.l. bean catalog. and they are not running for office.

of course, sharpton's just flat out stylin', but that's always the case. how he borrowed all those suits from cedric the entertainer is beyond me.

beyond the clothes, though, it's the silly things these poor guys have to do on the trail that almost makes me feel sorry for them.

i will harp on kerry, because he seems to be doing them most often. as i told my friend john, at least dukakis only got in a tank once. the senator from massachusetts [are they all prone to this] seems determined to create as many goofy photo ops as possible.

motorcycle kerry: http://gallery.johnkerry.com/gallery/album108/aaa

ice hocky kerry: http://gallery.johnkerry.com/gallery/album63/aab

i'm almost waiting for the sewing bee picture.

next time, more substance. really.

how cold is it? cold enough to foil my-well intentioned plans of trying to take in more of this city than i'm able to during the week, when i am stuck writing letters to donors and trying to find new ones so the children can keep listening to the music. poor, little children.

walking around new york is one of the few always free and largely interesting things one can do when mostly broke and bored on a sunday, but where do i end up?

101 fifth avenue. 9th floor. my chair. this blog.

i don't have much to say, but i don't really want to be outside right now. granted, in 20 hours, i won't want to be here, either, but that's the way monday's work.

then, suddenly, it dawned on me. if tim can't come up with his own content for blog on a regular basis, but is fortunate enough to have some good friends check said blog more often than he is moved to write, he will partially fill the void with stuff they probably haven't read by people of some serious talent.

i know, it's like putting a band-aid on a gaping head wound of inactivity, but it's a start.

here goes, though the line breaks are fucked up by the person who put this online:

A HUNDRED BOLTS OF SATIN


All you

have to lose

is one

connection

and the mind

uncouples

all the way back.

It seems

to have been

a train.

There seems

to have been

a track.

The things

that you

unpack

from the

abandoned cars

cannot sustain

life: a crate of

tractor axles,

for example,

a dozen dozen

clasp knives,

a hundred

bolts of satin­—

perhaps you

specialized

more than

you imagined.


‑KAY RYAN

Next week: Psalms. maybe.

i'm reading a fairly interesting, if not surprising, article in the new yorker about g. w. bush's lockdown white house, which has shown a prodigious ability to manage the press and largely dictate the terms on which it deals with them. ken auletta is a good writer.

i'm midway through this piece, and have already had two boy wonder moments. bush's press secretary, scott mcclellan, is 35. wow, that's young, but, go scott - very impressive. i still have 8 years to get my act together if i want to be a press secretary. 8 years is a long time, right?

but wait. dan bartlett, the communications director who replaced that horrid karen hughes woman, is 32. thirty-fucking-two. now i only have five years if i want bartlett's job, which is really the bettter one and would keep me from having to stare down sam donaldson for chewing gum during press briefings.

these boy wonder moments are slightly troubling, and are happening with increasing regularity. nyc's city council speaker is 33, i think. again, wow.

it's kind of like when i had the realization [not an especially profound one, mind you] when i graduated college, that all college football players from that point forward would be younger than me. giant and permanently 20 years old.

suddenly, 28 looms.