Michael Parker's Journal

Helen Thomas On the Administration and Press Corp

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 01:37:13 GMT

Salon blogger and former constitutional law litigator Glenn Greenwald posted his exclusive interview with Helen Thomas, the oldest member of the White House Press Corp. The questions are exceptional, as are Thomas’ answers and insights. One of today’s must reads!

Consider this excerpt regarding the secrecy of this Administration:

I did think that tough questions were always very important. With Kennedy, we knew he enjoyed the banter with the press, and he had the first live televised news conferences. And it made a big difference in terms of really capturing the imagination of the public. It was the first time they really saw reporters in action, they saw a witty president that was able to dodge questions as deftly as anyone, and he had great eloquence. That was the first time the American people really became interested in presidential news conferences.

And then Johnson had a love-hate relationship with the press. He couldn't live without us, and yet at the same time, he thought we were hurting him every day. The words "credibility gap" were created in that era.

With Nixon, that is when news management and manipulation really began. Now, every president wants to put his best foot forward, and always be able to manage and manipulate news coverage.

All presidential candidates, especially, vow to run an open administration. But they step foot in the Oval Office and the Iron Curtain slams down. Suddenly, all information that I think belongs in the public domain becomes their private preserve.

The manipulation of the press has become greater and greater. This is the most secretive administration I have ever covered. And they're all secretive.

Read complete interview here.

Introducing Stormbrain

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 01:50:59 GMT

My friend Shawn Hammond has recently launched his editing and writing business, stormbrain. His editing, writing, and proofing services incorporate research and consultation documentation; marketing materials; magazine articles (including features, profiles, how-tos, and reviews); books; online content; user guides; and any other documentation that requires copy.

Having known Shawn for over ten years, I wanted to do something that 1) would acknowledge this important venture; and 2) show my support. (My dad threw a couple of good years of his 40's into trying to get his own company successful, so I know firsthand the tremendous effort one expends.) I figured the best way to do this would be to build him a visually captivating, informative, and practical website.

To do this, I chose the highly-adaptable and fresh UI of SwishMax's template #56 as the shell for the site. I then modified images, helped worked on content, and then threw all of the content in. After three weeks of work (off and on in the evenings), the site went live this morning.

I'm very pleased with it. Besides intriguing, I think it succeeds at introducing Shawn's impressive resume of writing and editing experience and clients. Check out stormbrain here. In fact, hire him to write you an article, review, profile of one of our new hip rock bands; or to proofread your company's user documentation or messaging.

Ta Da

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 03:01:03 GMT

Permalink macro has been fixed!

To fix, I accessed another active Salon Blog, Dave Pollard's fine How To Save the World, right-clicked on his "permalink" image, and selected Save As.... to save it to my desktop. Dave kept the same file name as the macro template so that when I copied the file into my images/salon folder and posted, RadioLand recognized it and displayed it, accordingly.

Note to self: Don't go deletin' system files, even if you think they aren't being used.

Macro Problems

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 02:50:20 GMT

I recently exceeded my maximum amount of free disk space with Salon Blogs (40 mb). So I started eliminating old images that I've used or intended on using. IN the process, I deleted the "permalink" image, which resulted in the unsightly macro error you see in the date/time stamp and comments line at the end of each post. Tonight, I'm troubleshooting and trying to make things right with the blog again.

Have you ever fiddled with something, only to break it? "Me. Me. Pick me."

Foreign Policy Off Track

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 02:56:24 GMT

One of the ministers with whom I met, who had supported the invasion of Iraq and had been an admirer of outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair's, ruefully cited Blair's remark about Iraq at his joint press conference with Bush on May 17 at the White House: "This is a fight we cannot afford to lose." "Cannot? Cannot lose?" mocked the minister. "Should not have lost."

High officials of European governments describe U.S. influence as squandered and swiftly eroding (one minister went down a list of Bush administration officials, rating them according to their stupidity), the country's moral authority nil. Lethal power vacuums are emerging from Lebanon to Pakistan, and Europeans are incapable on their own of quelling the fires that burn far closer to them than to the United States through their growing Muslim populations and proximity to the Middle East. They have no illusions that they will be treated seriously as real allies or that there will be a sudden about-face by the Bush administration. Their faint hope -- and it is only a hope -- is that they have already seen the worst and that it is not yet to come. Even worse than Bush, from their perspective, would be another Republican president who continued Bush policies and also appointed neoconservatives. That would toll, if not the end of days, then the decline and fall of the Western alliance except in name only, and an even more rapid acceleration of chaos in the world order.

--Sydney Blumenthal, "Bush’s European Disaster"
Cover Story, Salon Magazine, 13 June 2007

YouTube's Esmee Denters Gets Recording Contract With JT's New Label

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 02:48:34 GMT

Throw this into the category of guilty pleasures-- POP music, which I have always enjoyed and very recently, as of today, have been teased about. (Thank you, Ace!) And that's perfectly all right. Really. No. Really.

Last week, Justin Timberlake announced he created a new recording label, Tennman Records. Today, he announced his first recording contract is going to the YouTube phenomenon Esmee Denters, from Holland.

Her covers of hit songs, in which she’s been recording in her own home in front of a web cam and then posting on YouTube, have been viewed over by the millions, including the 3 million views for this cover of the Justin Timberlake track "What Comes Around." (I actually think, as this post is dated May 28, that this recording is Esmee’s audition for Tennman Recordings.)

If you are familiar with JT’s version, you’ll appreciate the increased emotional integrity that Esmee adds to the tune. JT mentions at the end of the clip that Esmee’s version is better than his. I like JT’s version for the nice, smooth, groove factor. But Esmee’s vocals, on the other hand, reach further inside, grab me, and refuse to let my attention go.

Esmee’s debut album is expected in stores later in the year. You can learn more about her at her website, www.esmeeworld.com.

Congratulations Esmee on the recording contract. I look forward to your debut.

Enjoy!

On Back Problems and Aging: Unkind Epiphany

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 04:16:31 GMT

My friend Shawn sent a link to Gary Kamiya’s extraordinarily beautiful composition "I'm younger than that now," published by Salon, about that epiphany we all experience that we are over the hill! I was very moved by it. (Thanks again Shawn for sharing it with me.)

I have been facing this very harsh junction in the road of life, because of my health. Tonight, I had an appointment with the neurosurgeon. While I received good news–that indeed the hemangioma on my L2 vertebrae showed benign and had not grown in the past nine months – I was expecting another lecture on living with the cards dealt me by fate and live with my back pain. But the neurosurgeon was highly amiable; knowledgeable; understanding of my frustrations, concerns, and desires to retrieve some of my quality of life back; and helpful.

I learned that I have a unique nerve canal that is more narrow than the average person. This is the reason why my bulging disks at L4 and L5 have been causing me so much pain. (We talked about how this is most likely genetics at work, as all my brothers and dad have bad backs. In fact, just this week, my dad and second-oldest brother had their backs go out on them.)

Since I already had a disc operation on L4 when I was 26, we discussed that my next operation would have to be a fusion. So, before I even consider that harsh procedure, we decided that I would see a pain doctor and undergo a facet joint block. If that works, I will undergo a procedure called a radio frequency lesion. More info on that later, if it comes up on the horizon.

I now pass the torch over to Gary Kamiya. Enjoy!

Lately I've been asking myself: When did I get so damn old?

Will it be on Saturday, when my son graduates from high school? Did it start 10 years ago, when my knees gave out and I had to say goodbye to sports other than bocce ball? Was it last week, when I saw my reflection before I was ready and was shocked by the man with thinning hair and white in his beard who looked back at me? Was it five years ago, when a doorman in Copenhagen stopped me as I was about to walk into a club filled with 20-somethings with the soul-shriveling words, "There's nothing for you here, sir"? Or did it start decades ago, a long defeat measured in fears not overcome, things not said?

It's all of these things, and none of them. Aging is an imperceptible and abstract process -- until it rears up and bites you in your increasingly southward-aiming ass. And then it's still imperceptible and abstract. If life is a long dying, how can you single out one moment when you cross the line into the homestretch? What bifocals can you get that will let you see the enormous changes that are happening to you in slow motion?

Read the whole article here.

Favorite Quotes Regarding Poetry

Thu, 31 May 2007 05:40:36 GMT

Lee Herrick and Pris Campbell inspired me to document "at least 10 quotations pertaining to poetry - from 10 different writers &/or poets which best coincide with your philosophy vis a vis ars poetica. They can be posthumous or otherwise. The order is not important - unless it is to you."

Here are just a sampling of ten that I’m fond of.

Poetry is music written for the human voice. ~ Maya Angelou

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. ~ W.H. Auden

Poetry is the music of the soul, and, above all, of great and feeling souls. ~ Voltaire

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality. ~ Emily Dickinson

A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness. ~ Robert Frost

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. ~ Carl Sandburg

Poetry fishes us to find a world/part by part, as the photograph interrupts the flux/to give us time to see each thing separate and enough./The poem chooses part of our endless flowing forward/to know its merit with attention. ~ Jack Gilbert, Refusing Heaven

Everything one invents is true, you may be perfectly sure of that. Poetry is as precise as geometry. ~Gustave Flaubert

Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn. ~Thomas Gray

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter-bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart.

~ Stephen Crane

Memorial Day

Tue, 29 May 2007 03:18:48 GMT

I've been working on a poem "Because Of These Ill Days" over the weekend and hope to find a home for it. It touches on the emotional effects that my health problems have had on me over the past year. I just underwent a second MRI in nine months. Because of the results -- bilateral narrowing of the nerve canal on L4 and something else I'm not ready to mention right now in case it ends up being nothing at all -- I'm scheduled to see one of the valley's prominent surgeon's nurse practitioners this Friday for consultation.

Here is a snippet of the poem:

Because of These Ill Days
by Michael Parker

Because of these ill days :: faced down :: I'm lost,
losing buoyancy upon once fixed grounding. I used
to rely upon the sky to sustain the sun, out of hope.
But the sky no longer speaks of day, feeling torn,
desolate. So the humane sun, forsaken on the frail
horizon, silently succumbs to night's out-stretched
depression somewhat like Autumn gives up her ghost
capitulates to Winter and its uncompromising blizzards.

Hot 100 Songs Poem Challenge

Thu, 24 May 2007 06:08:26 GMT

I happened to see MSN's spotlight on the band Kings of Leon and their new song "Because of the Times." Finding it highly poetic, I thought it would be fun compiling a poem of the top 50 hits on Billboard this week. The titles of the songs in my poem appear in capitals. The songs come from the vocalists Huey, Gwen Stefani, Gym Class Heroes, Mims, 50 Cent, Plain White T’s, Crime Mob (Featuring Lil Scrappy), Brad Paisley, and Unk.

This challenge is to compose your own poem out of the songs appearing on any of the Billboard music lists: Hot 100, Pop 100, Digital Download, Etc. Have fun!

See a full listing of the Top 50 songs here.

Casanova
by Michael Parker

This Is Why I’m Hot :: cocksure :: Cupid’s Chokehold.
I’ll be your Sweet Escape :: love’s spread wings. Hey
there, Delilah, feel this 1 - 2 Step. Feel the beat’s Ticks
breakin’ open love’s rhythm, a wild, unyielding groove.
Rock Yo Hips like a pro. Straight to the Bank, Pop, Lock &
Drop It.
Cash it.
Cash it.
Cash it.

T.S. Elliot and the 'Impersonal Theory'

Tue, 22 May 2007 04:02:17 GMT

My friend Rex highlighted T.S. Elliot’s essay on poetry criticism, called "Tradition and the Individual Talent" in his comment last week. Reading it this evening, I found myself quite agreeable to his concept of the mature poet writing from a wholly selfless, "impersonal" place. It's probably the hardest skill a poet must develop--to be the conduit for the universal message rather than the personalized one, which can be, more than likely, easily ascertained because it is full of preachings, commands, and artifice. But as I write this, I'm thinking this might be too general of a description. What thoughts do you have on this?

Let's return to the business at hand: let me introduce you to these thoughts by T.S. Elliot:

The other aspect of this Impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the poem to its author. And I hinted, by an analogy, that the mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of "personality," not being necessarily more interesting, or having "more to say," but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations.

The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gases previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.

Read the essay in its entirety here.

As a sidenote: Annie Finch writes about this state of being in her essay "Coherent Decentering," which I will post comments about at a later time.

Short Film: Super Powers

Sat, 19 May 2007 18:09:36 GMT

Came across this delightful new short film "Super Powers" that premiered at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival in New York. The film went on to win the Special Jury Prize for Best Narrative Short. It is directed by J. Mitchell Anderson and Jeremy Kipp Walker.

Enjoy!

Annie Finch on 'Criticism'

Thu, 17 May 2007 05:00:46 GMT

Last night, I finished another wonderful essay by Annie Finch, "How to Create a Poetic Tradition," which is a response to a letter from a member of the WOMPO listserv. Finch’s astute four-page response attempts to answer the reader’s posed question: "why are male poets deemed the major carriers of the poetic lineage?" What transpires is an accurate and intriguing analysis of criticism’s history and how women can help build a new (her)story. I wanted to post an excerpt from the essay; these thoughts regarding critical analysis:

Criticism is like politics: if you don’t make your won you are by default accepting the status quo and are finally yourself responsible for whatever the status quo does to you. And, while criticism’s effect on the individual creative process is open to debate, it is clear that criticism is crucial to the life of poetic traditions – the ways in which we find, appreciate, and pass on poems. In this sense, criticism is to poetry as air is to noise: it allows us to be heard; and even if we can’t see it or feel it, it is there, shaping how we hear. Criticism is to poetry as water is to fish; it allows movement. Criticism is to poetry as sun is to trees; it feeds growth and change. Criticism is to poetry as oxygen is to food; it allows digestion. And criticism is to poetry as traditions are to a family; it creates self-knowledge. (page 57)

Repetition

Wed, 16 May 2007 05:12:50 GMT

I’ve been reading about the art of repetition in poetry, as analyzed by Annie Finch in her collection of essay’s The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self. I’ll write about Finch’s fascinating treatment of this topic at a later time.

Tonight’s brief post has a different purpose. In the essay "Repetition, Repetition," Finch uses Sara Teasdale’s poem "Let It Be Forgotten" as a paradigm of how repetition works in poetry in an aural, visual, and conceptual sense. And Finch is so right! Teasdale’s poem is exceptional because of her repetitive uses of words (forgotten, long), visual images (flower, fire), and concepts (the passing of time). Upon reading this, I realize exactly what Finch realized in her commentary on the poem -- Teasdale's amazing craft. For this reason, I’m posting it here:

Let It Be Forgotten
by Sarah Teasdale

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,
Let it be forgotten forever and ever,
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten
Long and long ago,
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long forgotten snow.

EUROVISION 2007 HIGHLIGHTS

Sun, 13 May 2007 04:13:27 GMT

I was sampling the songs from the winners of this year’s EuroVision song writing contest held in Helsinki, Finland this weekend.

I came across one of Greece’s semi-finalists, Elena Paparizou, who represented Greece last year. While sampling her forgettable entry for the competition, "My Number One," I found her hit song from 2006, "Light in Our Soul." Wow! Elena’s a knock out! I’m very impressed! Hypnotic melody. Meaningful lyrics. Powerful vocals. And thanks to visual effects of sparks of light and images of some of the world’s most recognizable skycrapers lit up behind her, this song suddenly becomes won of my all time favorites. Enjoy!

The winners of EuroVision 2007 are as follows:

The title goes to the hauntingly beautiful ballad/anthem "Molitva (Prayer)" by Serbia's Marija Serifovic. Listen Here.

The third place winner: the hot group Serebro from Russia has an explosively entertaining, rhythm-infused Britney-esque "Song Number 1." Listen Here.

I also greatly enjoyed the fifth place winner: "Water" by Elitsa & Stoyan. Bulgaria’s entry. Listen here.

World Music has never been so good! Congrats to all EuroVision winners!