Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas dies at age 93.

Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas, regarded as one of Latin America's greatest modern writers, has died in Santiago at the age of 93, his family has announced.

He won numerous literary prizes, including the 2003 Cervantes Prize, the top award for Spanish-language literature. Rojas was forced into exile for some years after the 1973 military coup led by Gen Augusto Pinochet.

Rojas had been in a serious condition since suffering a stroke in February.
His death was a "great loss for Chilean literature", Education Minister Joaquin Lavin was quoted as saying.

Rojas produced a huge body of work, with his poems translated into several languages. His works included The Misery of Man, Against Death, Dark and On Lightning.

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Well-deserved recognition to...

Reporters from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, just down I-95, who just won a Pulitzer for their incisive story on genetic sequencing and a young boy fighting for his life.

More than 2,400 entries are submitted each year in all categories in the Pulitzer competition... and only 21 awards are normally made. This, then, the culmination of a year-long process beginning w/the appointment of 102 distinguished judges who serve on 20 separate juries and are asked to make three nominations in each of the 21 categories.

In the major literary and book Pulitzer awards (a few a bit surprising)...

FICTION - "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan (Alfred A. Knopf)

DRAMA - "Clybourne Park" by Bruce Norris

HISTORY - "The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery" by Eric Foner (W. W. Norton & Company)

BIOGRAPHY - "Washington: A Life" by Ron Chernow (The Penguin Press)

POETRY - "The Best of It: New and Selected Poems" by Kay Ryan (Grove Press)

GENERAL NONFICTION - "The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer" by Siddhartha Mukherjee (Scribner).

Caroline Kennedy opens up with new book of poems

CAROLINE KENNEDY READS FROM SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY

◆ 7:30 tonight

◆ Barnes and Noble, 55 Old Orchard Center, Skokie, IL.

Caroline Kennedy’s She Walks in Beauty: A Woman’s Journey Through Poems (Voice, $24.99) has been compared to a vase filled with flowers. With poems carefully picked by Kennedy and arranged into sections that go through the phases of a woman’s life, the book is a lyrical exploration of love and life, friendship, marriage, motherhood, work, joy, grief, middle age and growing old. Indeed, images of flowers grace the cover, end papers and pages. Each section is eloquently introduced by Kennedy, providing rare insights into the heart and mind of one of the most private members of the famous family.

The range of poets and styles is richly varied, and includes Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christopher Marlowe, Rudyard Kipling, Queen Elizabeth I, W.H. Auden, Dorothy Parker, W. B. Yeats, Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Bishop and Gwendolyn Brooks.

“In a funny way, poems are suited to modern life,” Kennedy was quoted as saying in an interview Tuesday at the Ritz-Carlton hotel. “They’re short, they’re intense. The biggest problem is people are afraid of poetry, think they can’t understand it or that it will be boring. So I tried to pick poems that I responded to, and hopefully others will, too.”

Poetry has been important in the Kennedy family, the finding and sharing of poems with family members. Kennedy traces the tradition to her mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and notes “obviously my father cared a lot about words and language and ideas and how to express them, and invited Robert Frost to the inauguration, which we just celebrated the 50th anniversary of."

The process of gathering poems for this book began when Kennedy turned 50 in 2007, and this collection is an outgrowth of prior works that contained poems from her childhood and family.

Thought for the day...

"What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers." - Logan Pearsall Smith

NO... not international boundry changing news but maybe a welcome respite... on this day...

In the retail sector in the U.S., J.C. Penney introduced a new logo on Tuesday in an effort to update the department store's image. This is the first logo redesign for J.C. Penney in its 40-year history.

Apparently these logo changes are not without deep thought and fraught with subtleties and symbolism, or say would intimate the department store chain's corporate spokespeople.

"We've made significant progress transforming our company over the last several years by infusing great style into our assortments, delivering world-class customer service, and introducing new and innovative retail technologies that have made J.C. Penney a retail leader in the digital age," Myron E. Ullman, III, chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement. "Our new logo reflects the modern retailer we've become while continuing to honor our rich legacy."

The new logo puts greater visual emphasis on a new, lowercase "jcp" by positioning it slightly off-centered in a red box while still featuring the company's signature red color and Helvetica font. The logo was designed to evoke a sense of movement and discovery as the letters appear to break out of the box, symbolizing an emergence into an exciting, new future, the company said.

"Have you no sense of decency, sir at long last?"

         TODAY marks the anniversary of the dark day in 1954 following U.S. Senator (Republican, WI) Joseph McCarthy's infamous speech to the Senate.  The speech that lasted until 14 minutes before midnight.  The one with the Senator waving a briefcase of purported evidence of an infiltration of "communist" subversion through the ranks of American society (specifically, that night, as represented by 81 State Dept. employees).  The day (Feb. 21) the Senate myopically voted for an immediate investigation into the Senator's charges.  The one, the vote, which lead, of course, to televised hearings beginning April 22.

June 9 the hearings'd reached their watershed dramatic moment.

McCarthy'd attacked the character of a young legal aide of Joseph Nye Welch (Army Chief Counsel), Fred Fisher, who'd once worked for the National Lawyers Guild (an organization with communist ties).  In Fisher's absence, Welch’s reply became famous: “Until this moment, senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or recklessness .... Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

         The point?  Perhaps this is a question well asked of ourselves from time to time.  Asked, at long last, what we are made of? To reflect on, as MLK wrote, that "the ultimate measure [of oneself] is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."  And so another question:  How?   How we measure. 

What we are made of and how we measure?

At long last...

What and how, indeed?

For those that've forgotten and the many who've asked...

Adopted by the Legislature of 1999 the state soil of Maine is indeed still Chesuncook.

A soil type that was first identified in Maine and is one of its most widely distributed soil types -- its name comes from the Native American word for converging bodies of water. A lake written about in Henry David Thoreau's "The Maine Woods" also shares the name.

The Chesuncook soils formed in dense glacial till derived mainly from slate and are made up of deep, well-drained soils from hills, mountains, and ridges. The soils scientific name is "coarse-loamy, mixed, frigid Aquic Haplorthods" or, for short "Bob."

Stayed tuned; for this is more to this story indeed.

In what could be the ultimate

foodie gift for someone - a six volume, 2,400-page book set called "Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking" that teaches science-based techniques for preparing food. Weighing in at a mere 48 pounds its author, Nathan Myhrvold, has said he has absolutely no idea how the public will receive epic book.

Or the discoveries along the way by the former Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft.

"Galileo proved that heavier objects don't fall faster. And prior to Galileo, everyone sort of assumed that heavy object fell faster. Well, Galileo tried it and turns out they don't fall faster. By the same token, plunging food into cold water doesn't make it cool, well it does make the thing cool faster, but if you expect this wave of cold — the core of the food will maintain the same temperature to a tiny fraction of a degree."

"Modernist Cuisine" comes out on Mar. 14 and can be pre-ordered through Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

[M]any of the world’s great movements...

[...] of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. “Give me a place to stand,” said Archimedes, “and I will move the world.” These men moved the world, and so can we all. Few will have the greatness to bend history; but each of us can work to change a small portion of the events, and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation. Thousands of Peace Corps volunteers are making a difference in the isolated villages and the city slums of dozens of countries. Thousands of unknown men and women in Europe resisted the occupation of the Nazis and many died, but all added to the ultimate strength and freedom of their countries. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage such as these that the belief that human history is thus shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

–Robert F. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation Address, University of Capetown, June 6, 1966.

          April 4, 2011, will mark the 43 years since a crowd gathered in an Indianapolis park at 17th and Broadway streets several years later to hear Robert F. Kennedy speak during a campaign rally. Most of the people, who were both black and white, had no idea that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated earlier that evening in Memphis.  Against the advice of many on his team, Kennedy chose to attend the rally and to deliver the devastating news. The impromptu words Kennedy spoke called for peace.

A life well lived...

Noted on 2/16/11...

Margaret K. McElderry, influential children's book editor, publisher, dies at 98 -- People involved with children's books know the name, Margaret K.McElderry. According to the New York Times, Ms. McElderry, who was an influential editor and publisher in the children's book industry, died in her Manhattan home Monday at the age of 98.

Ms. McElderry was the first children's book editor who had an imprint named after her -- Margaret McElderry Books at Atheneum. Her imprint survived several corporate mergers and is still in use today at Simon & Schuster. Ms. McElderry helped nurture the careers of many of the biggest names in children' literature, both writers and illustrators.  Such names include Susan Cooper, Eleanor Estes, and Helen Oxenbury.

Many of her books won Newbery or Caldecott awards. In 1952, Ms. McElderry had the rare distinction of editing both of that year's winners -- Eleanor Estes's Ginger Pye picked up the Newbery that year, while Nicholas Mordinoff won the Caldecott for his book with Will Lipkind, Finder's Keepers.