OK, I'm not a poetry kind of guy...but last night, on Bill Moyers, he had on Martín Espada. I have no idea who is, or what he means to the world of poetry and literature at large, but he read a poem of his last night that was amazing. It blew me away.

I tried to format the poem below, somewhat as he read it:

245 Whitman Avenue, east New York, Brooklyn. Forty years ago, I bled in this hallway. Half-light dimmed the brick like the angel of public housing.

That night, I called and listened at every door: In 1966, there was a war on television.

Blood leaked on the floor like oil from the engine of me.

Blood rushed through a crack in my scalp;

blood foamed in both hands;

blood ruined my shoes.

The boy who fired the can off my head in the street pumped what blood he could into his fleeing legs. I banged on every door for help, spreading a plague of bloody fingerprints all the way home to Apartment 14F.

Forty years later, I stand in the hallway.

The dim angel of public housing is too exhausted to welcome me. My hand presses against the door at Apartment 14F like an octopus stuck to aquarium glass;

blood drums behind my ears.

Listen to every door.

There is a war on television.

I need to find out more about him...

Food and Wine magazine has noticed a new trend: an increasing number of vegetarians are eating...meat:

...eating sustainable meat purchased from small farmers is a new form of activism—a way of striking a blow against the factory farming of livestock...which cram thousands of cows, pigs or chickens into rows of cages in warehouses, feed them drugs to plump up their meat and fight off the illnesses caused by these inhumane conditions, and produce innumerable tons of environmentally destructive animal waste.

The article profiles a small scale rancher and farmer, who is working to raise awareness in his local market about the sustainability and health benefits of pasture-raised beef and pork:

...Nauta loads his truck full of coolers stocked with cattleman's steaks and handmade pork sausages and drives to the Los Angeles–area farmers' markets. Selling his vegetables and meat directly to conscientious eaters, people to whom he talks weekly about rainfall averages and organic produce, Nauta says, is "the best way small guys like me can compete." In the past several months, Nauta has noticed a handful of curious vegetarians, like Andrew, wandering over to his booth to ask questions. And they're satisfied enough with the answers to give his meat a try—and come back for more.

Of course, anyone who doesn't eat meat because they think it's wrong to eat animals won't be persuaded.

But for people looking for an alternative to factory-produced food, local farmers are a terrific (and humane and healthy and environmentally-conscious) alternative, and are increasingly raising more than just veggies.

Nothing to see, folks.

Natural ebb and flow of nature's cycles. Definitely not related to global warming.

Move along...

There's a brief remembrance of Hunter S. Thompson in the Times; he would have turned 70 today.

My memories of HST fall under "college years," having been bitten by his sordid Vegas tale of drugs, debauchery, troublemaking, and ever more drugs. It was the initial rush, I'll admit, of the drug-taking that drew me in, a sort of overwhelming celebration of rebellion through mood-altering substance intake.

But, when you step back, the novel's brilliance is in that last gasp of 60's idealism, when the death of the hippie smacked into the birth of the spectacle. And maybe the spectacle was always there, riding low, underneath...

But today, everything's Las Vegas, flash and style, substance-free. Harry Reid and his cots, Peter Pace and his Ramadi Walking Tour. Pretty much anything Bush does. It's all for the cameras.

Anyway, the Times mentions HST running for sheriff in Aspen:

Thompson’s platform included legalizing drugs and renaming Aspen “Fat City” to scare away “greedheads, land-rapers and other human jackals.” Clearly, he lost.

Clearly, brilliant isn't too strong a word.

Irony:

2 a : the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning b : a usually humorous or sardonic literary style or form characterized by irony c : an ironic expression or utterance

(I feel like when you're in college, and you leave notes on the fridge for people to clean up their dishes.)

And to think, I paid him/her a nice complement this morning. I knew I would end up regretting it.

My bad...

CNN's Barbara Starr today followed General Pace on his Ramadi Walking Tour:

We are absolutely walking through the marketplace as we speak. General Pace just stopped and brought some fruits and vegetables from a dealer here in the market. He is stopping to say hello to every little kid he can find and take pictures with them. What's really extraordinary here is, of course, Ramadi was the real heartland of al Qaeda, if you will, just a few months ago...Now, today, the streets are quiet.

Extraordinary, indeed. And how about security?

Well, let's be clear. There is very significant security here, of course.

Oh, please...do go on...

But, there are Iraqis walking right up to General Pace, shaking his hand, through the translator having conversations. It's a bit of an unusual day here in Ramadi because there is a sandstorm which is why we got grounded...

So, the weather is pretty tough out here so there actually aren't a lot of people out on the streets. Make no mistake, there is security. The marketplace, as always, has security barriers because of concern about suicide car bombs. That sort of thing. But there are no helicopters overhead. There is the general's personal security and our drivers. But it's pretty standard stuff, I would say.

Oh, OK.

Well, you know, Iraqi "pretty standard stuff" is kind of like the famer's markets in the Mid-West anyway. And funny thing about those sandstorms, how they keep people away.

In any case, standard operating procedure for these kinds of things is to find out in a day or two how much security there really was. So we'll see.

Extraordinary? I guess.

Previously, I complained about the "Critics Assert" headline from the Times. Today, they do it right:

The mixed progress report on Iraq that the White House submitted to Congress this week included several grim assessments of the Iraqi government that contrasted with the more upbeat public statements of President Bush, his top aides and public White House briefing materials in the past few weeks.

It's not "Bush Is Full Of Sh*t," but it's pretty damn close.