Economist.com:

Newspapers have not yet started to shut down in large numbers, but it is only a matter of time. Over the next few decades half the rich world’s general papers may fold. Jobs are already disappearing.

We’ve been expecting this, haven’t we? I think we’re already seeing the last throes of many smaller daily papers. And it makes me sorry, because I’ve always liked newspapers. Since junior high school, when I started reading the paper during the Watergate scandal and the fall of Nixon.

In my mind, a good newspaper — any good news source — is like a large rock in a river, in the flow of events both important and trivial. So my question is this: As journalism dies and gives way to cyber-information, how do we trust the river itself, without its rocks?

The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.

-Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

Oh yes. I’m presently working on a short piece that’s entirely about what a man does in the moments before he falls asleep each night. That little ritual of fresh darkness, you know. Do you have one? Maybe you start out on your back, think about work a while, roll onto your left side and pray — or think about sex — maybe watch TV and let the set turn itself off. Maybe you’re working your way through The Brothers Karamazov, and your wake up at 2am, with the damned massive thing smashing your nose.

I listen to CDs of mountain streams or ocean surf. Maybe I think about toy trains. No no, that’s not it. Maybe I get fetal and imagine ten red-eyed coyotes padding through the orchard, past the playground and the swimming pool, ignoring the mailbox like I do, and resting on their haunches at the bottom of the stairs. Maybe they doze toward dawn, and dream of me, descending with a great bowl of Starbucks frappucino and ten stout straws.

My point is that all the times and places of transition between consciousness and unconsciousness, wake and sleeping, living and dying, sin and redemption, sane and coocoo for cocopuffs, are target rich environments for us mad poets.

I spend a lot of time crouching there in Morley’s doorway, wishing he’d thought to deck the transom with mistletoe.

Scientists have developed a way of ‘executing’ cancer cells.

Healthy cells have a built-in process which means they commit suicide if something is wrong, a process which fails in cancer cells.

The University of Illinois team created a synthetic molecule which caused cancer cells to self-destruct.

Cancer experts said the study, in Nature Chemical Biology, offered ‘exciting possibilities’ for new ways of treating the disease.

BBC NEWS Health Cancer cell ‘executioner’ found

Do yo ever sit there in your house on a afternoon like this, listening as I am to the drone of the fan as it sweeps side to side, sifting cool air through the room, and wonder what seeds were planted in your childhood, to bring your garden to it’s present state of general disarray?

Well, I know a lot of people do, but not me. I once heard a wise person say something like this:

If you’re walking down the road, and a big old rottweiler comes running up and bites you on the backside and won’t let go, you don’t stop and look down and ask him if he had a challenging puppyhood. Whether he had to push and shove and struggle to finally get weaned, because the bitch was indifferent and it was a rough litter anyway. Whether maybe his inner puppy needs a cookie. You get the dog off your ass and move on.

Anyhoo, here’s a poem.

The Wind, One Brilliant Day

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

“In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I’d like all the odor of your roses.”

“I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead.”

“Well then, I’ll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain.”

the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
“What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?”

Antonio Machado
Translated by Robert Bly

Now that I have your attention, I’m wondering about this, from the text of the proclamation announcing the 19th Amendment, which gave woment the right to vote:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

I can’t help wondering if Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, whose proclamation it was, didn’t intend to say gender instead. I mean, if you’re having sex in the room while I’m trying to vote, I’m going to abridge your rights, with a folding chair upside your head.

I’m just sayin …

Today’s Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor proffers an especially beautiful poem by Howard Nemerov, entitled Monet.

Guess what the top news story on all the US networks was last week. Not the wars in the middle east, or the war on terr’r, or the ubiquitous wake of Katrina, or starvation in Africa, or airline insecurity, illegal immigration, stem cell research, global warming, or the economy flopping around like a beached bass. It was the arrest, transport, airline dinner, purple shirt and stupid necktie, and tenuous confession of the purported killer of JonBenet Ramsey, 10 years ago.

This is not journalism, friends. It’s sensationalism. It’s an LA slow speed chase, writ large. I turned on the TV one evening, and CNN was absolutely engrossed with the taxiing of the airplane bringing Karr to California. The taxiing of the airplane from the runway to the terminal was the big story of the hour, live and in second by second detail. That’s worse than the day they followed Michael Jackson to the courthouse, with helicopters.

I have absolutely no doubt that if CNN and the other networks could do it, they’d show us John Karr having a good fart. Then they’d do half an hour with their intestinal gas legal experts, on what such a fine breeze portends for his chances at trial.

So, there’s a petition online, to send a message to the media asshats. The poor child is as dead as she’s ever going to be, and I hope whoever killed her rots in hell. But enough JonBenet, for crying out loud. This ain’t news. In the enduring words of Bill Murray, It just doesn’t matter … It just doesn’t matter … It just doesn’t matter.

revolting developments:

I can’t go out there and shoot at young children. I just can’t go to Iraq. I don’t care what side they are on. I can’t do it.

literary blog poetry prose blong:

“The political mind is not the same thing as the literary mind. The political mind seeks to solve practical problems. The literary mind is a dangerous mind and can only redeem itself through compassion. To the literary mind what happens in politics is inconsequential; the cleverest manipulators win. Politicians are farts of the populace as Ezra Pound put it. The literary mind needs to race way ahead where nothing has lodged and make a stand. That can be a dangerous place. “

Just something I found, surfin’ around. I’ll ponder it; meanwhile, you can leave a comment.

What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal.

— Albert Pine