David Lammy is the Labour MP for Tottenham. He made the speech and took the stand that many of us hoped that Jeremy Corbyn would lead the party with. Didn’t happen. If you follow British politics in any degree beyond zero then you may well have seen this video of David Lammy addressing the House of Commons on the shame…
Lots of chatter about the fresh faces, diversity and new perspectives of the incoming class in the House of Representatives. Here’s a heartwarming story of the new everyday congress folk via Time magazine. It captures snippets of their hopes, dreams and earnest aspirations. Watch it below. My new congressman Antonio Delgado is in the group and also Max Rose from…
The case against grades and grading has been so clearly made that it is time to turn the tables. Why – in 2019 – with all the evidence available – Why are institutions and individuals still clinging to this pernicious practice? Why do educators persist in wasting time discussing such irrelevancies as grading standards, grading formulas, grade inflation and what…
Rain is no respecter of persons the snow doesn’t give a soft white damn Whom it touches -e.e. cummings, Viva, 27 51 Kinds of Snow 1. Zen-blissed Buddha snow silent, soft, fat flakes. 2. Born-again snow that melts into the baltering mountain torrent to baptize the redeemed of the river plains. 3.Episcopal surplice snow, of choirs and choristers. 4. Modest Methodist…
The Old Year The Old Year’s gone away To nothingness and night: We cannot find him all the day Nor hear him in the night: He left no footstep, mark or place In either shade or sun: The last year he’d a neighbour’s face, In this he’s known by none. All nothing everywhere: Mists we on mornings see Have more…
No snow where I am at the moment but here’s a poem to enjoy now and also tuck away to use on snowy days. And on the topic of words for snow and Eskimos it’s good to read about The Great Eskimo Words for Snow Hoax that’s been perpetrated on several generations of the educated. I was fed it in…
Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today is moving to the Musée d’Orsay in Paris but you can see it now in NYC. It’s at the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University until February 10th 2019. Just go up – or down – on the 1,2 or 3 train to 125th Street and you’re there. It’s free, worth…
I mostly associate the artist Saul Steinberg with the work he did for The New Yorker and the last time I saw an exhibit of his it was the traveling retrospective that came to the Frances Lehman Loeb Gallery at Vassar College in 2007-8. It was a full-scale survey of his work and quite amazing. And the last time I…
It was Clive Bennett who got me traveling down this particular track. He’s a real birder and maintains a wonderful blog – Art in Nature – where he writes of his adventures in the hedgerows and fields and where he celebrates birds and the artists who paint them. In a comment on a post about kennings he listed some wonderful…
Lament In December December’s come and all is dead; Weep, woods, for summer far has sped And leaves rot in the valley bed. Grey-blue and gaunt the oak-boughs spread Mourn through a mist their leafage shed. December, season of the dead! Brown-golden, scarlet, orange-red Autumn’s bright hues are faded, fled. December, season of the dead! Robert Graves For Robert Graves…
“I have too many books but I only have my shelf to blame.” The pun came via Twitter. As does my very limited knowledge of celebrity news. Thanks to Twitter trends I know that this week Kanye and Drake have had some long-standing feud about something or other and now it has taken a turn for the better for some…
I’m early but the staffroom is already blue with smoke and full of strangers who know each other. A row of hard back chairs beneath the window and a long table cluttered with books and papers and ashtrays. This is the old staffroom next door to the head’s office before renovations moved the room up a floor and tripled the…
There’s the fog of war and there’s the poetry of fog. A recent heavy mist in my patch of the mid-Hudson valley brought fog and poetry to mind. Not the yellow fog of an old-time London peasouper particular but rather the mysterious wreathing whiteness of an English mist in a damp December countryside – the unsullied sister of smog. And…
What use is poetry? …. We have poetry So we do not die of history. – Meena Alexander I like poems you can tack all over with a hammer and there are no hollow places. – John Ashbery An Invitation to Poetry Come on in. Jump! You can do it. It belongs to you too. Paddle, splash about, swim, dive,…