Morning Fog

Angelou. Trethewey. Say What?

Maya Angelou died yesterday.  An important and venerable American, to be sure, and worthy of the flood of tributes and remembrances that have since ensued.  You need only to read her moving poem "Still I Rise" to realize her greatness and relevance in a day when many people may fool themselves into believing racism was left behind us with the election of Barack Obama.  (It wasn't.)

Not having had much time to see/hear electronic news on Wednesday, I first learned of Angelou's death via an "appreciation" of her written by Natasha Trethewey, published in the Washington Post the next day.  For that, I am grateful to Trethewey.

But not for much else.  She came into the job two years ago, and as far as most Americans are aware, disappeared into the woodwork until today.   It's not her fault.  All poets laureate have tended to suffer the same fate.  And for good reason.  Poetry?  Oh, c'mon. 

I've written before about the concept of a "poet laureate."  It seems a waste, and very unAmerican, that we continue to indulge such frippery on the government budget.  Let's let our British colleagues continue that tradition, if they wish, but why hasn't the tea party tilted at this silly windmill?  Here's a small battle they could win. 

(And after that, it wouldn't hurt their credibility to kill off Daylight Saving Time, either.)

Hey Hey LBJ, How Much Culture Did You Fund Today?

I've always considered Lyndon Johnson was one of our greatest Presidents.  It was always possible to belittle his methods, or his personal style, or even the war in Vietnam (which, lest we forget, he inherited); yet his record of accomplishment, I felt, was huge, especially the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

But that was political achievement to the end of social legislation, based on his well-earned reputation as the wily politician, the shrewd vote-counter, the fellow who knew where the bodies were buried.

So it comes as something of a shock to have it brought home, as Philip Kennicott did in the Washington Post recently, that LBJ had other dimensions, and in particular, that historically he has turned out to be no small friend of culture and the arts.  Some of the key threads of this fabric were the Hirschorn Museum, the Kennedy Center, the National Endowments (for the Arts and for the Humanities), among others.  As Kennicott notes, he [LBJ] "put art, culture, and beauty on the same footing as roads, rights, commerce, and security." 

I suspect this is something few of us had ever much thought about.  Nor, come to think of it, is it something that many biographers would tend to focus on.  (Robert Caro, did you cover this angle? I don't remember it.)   And doesn't it leave us wondering what unexpected sorts of legislative surprises will emerge, fifty years from now, from the records of our recent Presidents?

Some Skin In The Game

I liked a story I saw online today.  Briefly, the owner of a restaurant in West Virginia received a comment online from a customer suggesting that the servers "show more skin."  To show where he stood on this inappropriate request, the owner decided to offer a special on stuffed potato skins, the profits from which, for the first few days, he will donate to a local rape crisis center.

I say, good for him.  If businesses are to be involved in social issues, this is a far more positive example than the efforts of certain other operations like Hobby Lobby, which seek to use a "corporate religion" to dodge legally mandated social responsibilities.