Why I love Salman Rushdie

In the current New Yorker magazine, there’s a Salman Rushdie story titled In The South, which opens like this:

“The day that Junior fell down began like any other day: the explosion of heat rippling the air, the trumpeting sunlight, the traffic’s tidal surges, the prayer chants in the distance, the cheap film music rising from the floor below, the loud pelvic thrusts of an “item number” dancing across a neighbor’s TV, a child’s cry, a mother’s rebuke, unexplained laughter, scarlet expectorations, bicycles, the newly plaited hair of schoolgirls, the smell of strong sweet coffee, a green wing flashing in a tree…”

What puts the knife in my heart?  That he ends the list of urban events and sounds with “…a green wing flashing in a tree.“

A new poem from Steve Toth: “Willing to Change”

…Like the rain dropping
everything but its desire
to reach the ground…

— from “Willing to Change” by Steve Toth.
Read the full poem at the warriorpoets forum.

Another way to see: TOI

If you’re an American cousin, check out the Times of India online.   The page layout — what content is selected for the first page, and how it’s organized — expresses India’s innate socio-cultural respect for humanity’s humanity.

I love that respect.  It’s saved my life twice.  And it draws me back to India’s people and arts time and time again.

Better than the movie

Anthony Lane’s New Yorker Mag review (titled “Highly Illogical”) of the new Star Trek movie is dense, running on 24 levels, and funny as hell. There are too many good bits too thickly interwoven to be plucked out as snippets, so please excuse my providing no sample. If you want to laugh and think hard at the same time, give it a read: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2009/05/18/090518crci_cinema_lane

And if you disagree with Lane’s take, try Manohla Dargis’s, in the NY Times: http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/movies/08trek.html

(Comparing the reviews should show you why I think Lane is the best living film reviewer at the moment.)

Gail Collins rocks. Seriously.

Disclaimer, of sorts: I try to resist reading Gail Collin’s columns in the NY Times because I’m a known fan and I don’t like being known for anything. But I always end up reading them anyway. So without further ado…

here’s a link to today’s Gail Collins column — it’s heartbreakingly funny, on a very serious subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/opinion/07collins.html

The World Digital Library (WDL)

The web site:  http://www.wdl.org

A NYTimes Global Edition article about it: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/technology/21library.html?_r=1&ref=globalhome

WDL is a Unesco effort.

Open, orphan: hugs hugs hugs. Links in…

Open, orphan: hugs hugs hugs.
Links in link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/warriorpoets/message/13120