A Third Tier College in a Podunk Town Still Will Cost Your $40,000 a Year

Ned Rorem keeps popping up, I know him – I have a volume of his tunes that he autographed for me – popping up like Bonnard’s bathing wife and Icarus plummeting into the sea – summer in Nantucket – never, never been there myself – there are some who think of New England as home, at least for the summer – after that they go back to Manhattan to work. Some (most) have to work – can’t take the summer off – me, I can go anywhere I want, I'm retired. Some go to the Poconos. There are even some real  Down Easterners. I am not one. Spengler keeps popping up too. What to you mean popping up? Well while reading there is a repetition of obscure (at least to you) names that you find recurring across lots of texts – and you want to know what is their significance, and maybe there is none, but coincidences like these are hard to accept, much harder than  to just make up a story. And who is Spengler? Spengler? Oswald Spengler – you don’t know him? And Schnitzler too as long as we are talking about Viennese intellectuals. He was a regular at the Café Griensteidl (Lenin went to the Café Centra, Hitler to the Café Sperl and Mozart to the Franunhuber – me I frequented the Royal Ground on Fillmore and right now I'm at a cafe next to a third tier college in a mediocre city)

I’m never not working. Even as I sit chattering of Kafka or cranberries, sodomy or softball, my mind is simultaneously glued to the piece I’m currently creating; the physical act of inserting the notes on a staff is merely a necessary afterthought – Ned Rorem

57% of Colombians and 23% of Chinese say that they intend to start a business within the next three years. Only 7% of Americans say they have such plans

The more a person becomes emotionally involved in rewards from higher authority, the more ‘dependent’ he becomes on someone else who is not a comrade for the things that give him self-respect – Richard Sennett – The Hidden Injuries of Class, 1972 p197

The value of US businesses acquired by foreign interest since 2001: $1,480,000,000

I’d be doing something, reading a book or something, or maybe I’d be with her. And all of a sudden it would come over me that I was going to kill her, and the idea seemed so crazy that I’d almost laugh out loud. Then I’d start thinking and I’d see it, see that it had to be done, and… Jim Thompson – The Killer Inside Me, 1991 p154

Since the 1970s the number of American in areas of concentrated urban poverty has doubled. Worldwide slum dwellers constitute 30% of urban populations

Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s the day-to-day living that wears you out – Chekhov

My street is a river
My mind is a sewer
Your libido is a prison
This atmosphere is uninhabitable
Cars creep about
        Ready to pounce
I’m the dog sniffing at her crotch
       She smiles and lets me
       Have my pleasure
It not my fault - I was minding
      My own business

And it keeps coming down
The creeks will be flooding with
        Cars stalling and washing
Away. Women and children screaming
Boom! Immediately proceeded by a flash
        The dog is hiding under the bed
Cover your head with the pillow
         Cry a river away
         Drive through it anyway


But for me it’s a love affair
       This effusive union
       Of sky and earth
When everything turns to liquid


Are you prepared to meet the Lord?
Be sure to put on clean underwear before
       You leave home today - You may
Get swept away in a flood

56% of the French think they may likely become homeless although the homeless rate in France is less than half of the homeless rate of the United States.

If it is familiar, it has not eaten you yet – Robert Zagnoc

South Carolina charges a $5 fee for registering as a ‘subversive agent’. One filer paid in Confederate currency

I believe in the compound fracture / served with a sauce of dirty regret – Tony Hoagland – Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty

Ratio of water to product required to produce it :
         Beer 300:1 (it takes 300 gallons of water to produce
                     1 gallon of beer)
         Wine 950:1
         Milk 1,000:1
         Coffee 1,120:1

The trees say good day and wait while the sun knots its tie and puts on its hat / So life is fine / Life with its terrifying speed – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p179

The Census is reporting that non-white minorities accounted for 48.6% of the children born in the US between July 2008 and July 2009. Next year, 2011, may will mark a demographic milestone when minority births eclipse birth of whites of European ancestry.

Future-dwelling pen pal: my own era repels me, / Where as other places, times, and climes beckon, / Is there not some way we can, by Christ’s grace // trade places? Even if only for a day – Amy Grestler – Dearest Creatures, 2009 p14

US domestic water usage – average usage – 168 liters per person  
            per day
        Washing clothes and dishes 24%
        Showering and bathing      30%
        Toilets                    34%
        Taps                       12%

So life is fine / And life applauds life / Smiles applaud the wind / Songs applaud the birds / Birds applaud the light / Light applauds the tree / Trees applaud the sky / The sky applauds the sun / The sun applauds the waves // And all of life is a theater of applause / So life is fine and can dance like the flowers – Vicente Huidobro – The Selected Poetry of, 1981 p185