Read about Christine's case here. A CIA contractor, she was fired because her top secret, intelligence-community-only blog commented positively on the CIA's decision to join the rest of the US government in according Geneva Convention rights to its prisoners.
It'll be interesting to see what level of support she garners in the blogosphere. I blogged about this on tommandel.com as well.
I am playing a bit with Slide - it's nice. Wish I could compose in html here, and include a slide show, but Vox doesn't let you do that -- why?
Take a look at it at http://www.tommandel.com/blog and tell me what you think.
In Search of Memory is the autobiography of a Nobel Prize winning scientist, one of the creators of neuro science. It tells the story of his life but also, and especially, of his life-long work as scientist exploring the brain's mechanisms of memory.
I was first drawn to the book because of Kandel's background as a Viennese Jew lucky enough to get out of Nazi-controlled Austria. A blurb I read indicated that his choices as a scientist were influenced by his family history.
My family has a similar Viennese Jewish history, and my work as a poet also proceeds from my family history in ways that seem important to me, hence Kandel seemed a rhyme (in more ways than one).
Even more than this background, however, I found myself simply fascinated by the history of the scientific inquiry into the brain and its functioning. Really great stuff, and Kandel seems a wonderful man.
Via Howard Greenstein:
In case you were wondering how bloggers in India responded to the
Terror
attacks there.
Spent yesterday in DC where I hung out with my friend Doug Lang, a wonderful and alas mostly unknown (because he doesn't publish much - but here is a wonderful sestina by Doug) Welsh/American poet, and with my old friend George Lakoff, who was in town to promote his fabulous new book, Whose Freedom, which you should click on and buy now.
Deep talk with old friends. That's good.
Elsewhere in the neighborhood, Shannon Clark writes about moving into his new place in SF's Noe Valley.
I lived in SF from '73-92. The poetry scene (my scene) was pretty active in Noe Valley in the early years, as it was then a cheap place to live with great weather. The Mission was even cheaper, and the Haight was cooler, so those were even more active places in the scene. North Beach was way out of date of course.
I just found a wonderful cache of 35mm slides from the '60s (!!) and some from the early '80s. gotta drag out that film scanner and get 'em in here!
the '60s slides are of a world that really doesn't exist at all any more - mostly on the street in Chicago. I was in my early twenties. I was already a writer, but I was wondering whether I could also be a photographer.
I knew a guy at the University of Chicago, Danny Lyon, who was taking great pix and obviously went on to a lifetime of photography and film. When I see his pictures from that era now, I know I would never have been the photographic artist he was! Good thing I kept writing.
there's one
I don't know whether
I still can make
words go together
as what I've seen
and come out clean
like a knife from a cake
that's done - there's one.
(a little poem I wrote when I was wondering...)
I've got a new book coming out this Fall from Atelos. It's my first book in a number of years (all in all, 11 books of my poetry have been published - and I've been in numerous anthologies, magazines, been translated, etc.), so I'm pretty excited to see it.
Maybe I'll use this blog to post some work from the new book? Hmmmmmm....
