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Stefano MastrociccoHarper's Magazine (also Harper's) is a monthly, general-interest magazine of literature, politics, culture, finance, and the arts
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In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the
All 12,058 lines of the Index are free for searching and browsing
<form class="index" action="http:" /> </form>April 10, 7:05 PM Current issue: April 2009 · Archive Wyatt Mason Weekend Read: Frederick Seidel, “A Poet of Great
Innocence”Scott Horton Obama’s Got a Secret Mr Fish A Cartoon Ken Silverstein Top Secret Plans, Get Yer Top Secret Plans Right
HereGideon Lewis Kraus The Last Book Party:
Publishing drinks to a life after
death![[Image]](/media/image/blogs/misc/seidelbymahane.jpg)
Seidel. Copyright Mark Mahaney.Every day in America, on public radio stations across the land, a short
program airs called “The Writer’s Almanac.” Hosted by the writer, musician and
impresario Garrison Keillor, the show’s five minutes begin and end with a
ceremonious progression of melancholic piano chords. Between these bookending
strains, in his lulling baritone, Keillor catalogues the high-points of the date
in literary history: which writer was born, what book appeared, who passed away.
And then, before bidding us adieu (“Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”),
Keillor reads a poem. Though the authors he includes vary in age and gender,
race and reputation, the poems themselves share a kind of soothing sameness–if
not of subject or style or accomplishment then surely in the tone in which
Keillor delivers them. Warm, winsome, tolerant, reassuring: whether the poem is
one of longing or of losing, of joy or of grief, Keillor’s tone seems aimed at
providing an almost analgesic relief to the listener — at proving that poetry is
the balm that can heal any wound.[MORE . . .]
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treyf 22Highly recommended. Consider a subscription for the print version.
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Jim EubanksHarper Magazine Lifestyle
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Sarah BraxtonSee index - a "statistical snapshot of the world's economic, political and cultural climate." (from Extraordinary Oral Presentations)
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In this light, we can regard the notion of “privatization” as a social phenomenon far broader than a process by which government contracts are granted. Citizens are redefined as consumers. Public participation in electoral politics falters, and with it any sense of collective or individual political power. Public space itself—the site for the First Amendment's “right of the people peaceably to assemble”—withers away. Free association is aptly termed, for there is no profit in it. And since there is no profit in it, we are instead encouraged by our great media and advertising id to fear one another and regard public life as a danger and a nuisance, to live in secured spaces, communicate by electronic means, and acquire our information from that self-same media rather than from one another. The barkers touting our disastrous “ownership society” refuse to acknowledge that it is what we own in common that makes us strong. But disaster makes it clear that our interdependence is not only an inescapable fact but a fact worth celebrating—that the production of civil society is a work of love, indeed the work that many of us desire most.
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he fear of playing God operates exclusively on one side of the medical playground. Thus to help a patient end his or her life “prematurely” is playing God, while extending it in ways and under conditions that no God lacking horns and a cloven hoof could ever have intended is the mandate of “our Judeo-Christian heritage” and the Hippocratic oath. Let someone like Dr. Thompson step out of bounds to honor the spirit of his patient’s advance directives, and we will be told that he is eroding respect for the medical profession. But in cases involving a medical professional who blatantly ignores such directives, we are reminded that doctors don’t always have time to review patient files while making difficult decisions. They’re not God, after all.
When former Attorney General John Ashcroft thrice challenged the Oregon Death with Dignity law, threatening to prosecute participating physicians under DEA regulations (a threat that now stands at the bench of the Supreme Court), nobody mentioned the dangerous course toward theocratic despotism—or rather some did mention it, though their voices were effectively drowned out by larger moral concerns, such as those occasioned by the sight of Janet Jackson’s breast or a gay groom’s boutonniere.
When the Vatican issued its 2004 statement against the removal of feeding tubes from vegetative patients, a development that has even conservative ethicists and devout Catholic physicians slapping their foreheads in disbelief, few commentators spoke about returning to a day, no farther back than the 1970s, when a dying patient who begged not to be intubated would have her wrists tied like those of a condemned witch so that she could not pull the instruments of salvation from her body. Instead we are told that time will be required “to reflect upon the ruling”—time that translates in concrete human terms to a slow and horrible death.
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Frank SchreiberAlways interesting, this "Review" shows the hypocrisy of it all....good information to keep things in proper perspective.......Frank
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WEEKLY REVIEW
A papyrologist at Oxford University announced that new
techniques in spectral imaging, which make it possible to
decipher previously illegible ink on papyrus fragments,
have yielded parts of a lost tragedy by Sophocles, a novel
by Lucian, and an epic poem by Archilochos; researchers
also applied the technique to third- and fourth-century
manuscripts of the Revelation of Saint John and discovered
that the number of the beast, contrary to popular belief,
is 616, the area code of Grand Rapids, Michigan. A
Washington woman found a snake with legs, locusts plagued
Bangladesh, and Zimbabwe was at risk of famine. More than
100,000 Americans were working at home answering
customer-service phone calls. In Iraq, two F/A-18 Hornet
jets collided in mid-air, a suicide bomber killed sixty
people at a police-recruitment center, and at least
forty-seven people were killed in bombings and gun
attacks. Fourteen bodies, clad in white robes, were found
in shallow graves, and Saddam Hussein's nephew was
arrested. President George W. Bush announced the capture
of a "major facilitator and chief planner for the Al Qaeda
network." The captured man turned out to be a mid-level Al
Qaeda operative named Abu Faraj al-Libbi. "He used to make
the coffee and do the photocopying," said a former
associate. Nevada Senator Harry Reid said Bush was a
loser, while Virginia Representative Jim Moran described
Bush as someone who does not read books, who surrounds
himself with sycophants, and who has his ass kissed by
Dick Cheney.
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Rick KrauseHarper Magazine Leisure
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mitt squinterHarper's Magazine
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When the sheer quantity of fully articulated messages of alarm warning Bush of imminent, possibly “calamitous,†domestic terror attacks edges the Commission toward acknowledging its inability to locate Bush’s articulated responses, it presents presidential fits of pique (“tired of swatting at fliesâ€) as “policy directives.â€
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Nina Birnbaumronnie dugger's pre-election investigative piece
![[Image]](http://www.harpers.org/media/image/blogs/misc/hillarybarackfinger.png)
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