“But even that side of Kitt obscured the Kitt who was passionately devoted to and supported peace and civil rights causes. The clash with Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson at the celebrity women’s luncheon in January 1968 gave the first public hint of that.”

*

William Calvin, author of Global Fever, attempting to answer John Brockman’s question, “What will change everything?”:

Climate will change our worldview. That each of us will die someday ranks up there with 2+2=4 as one of the great certainties of all time. But we are accustomed to think of our civilization as perpetual, despite all of the history and prehistory that tells us that societies are fragile. The junior-sized slices of society such as the church or the corporation, also assumed to outlive the participant, provide us with everyday reminders of bankruptcy. Climate change is starting to provide daily reminders, challenging us to devise ways to build in resiliency, an ability to bounce back when hit hard.

*

In That Shakespeherian Rag, Steven W Beattie posts about the results of a survey which concludes that, “Almost half of Canadians could not name a single Canadian author unprompted.”
But I seriously wonder if the results would differ significantly in any other country. What do you think? Do you live in a stimulating literary culture?

*

The top 100 books of all time, alphabetically by author, as determined from a vote by 100 noted writers from 54 countries as released by the Norwegian Book Clubs. Don Quixote was named as the top book in history but otherwise no ranking was provided.

*

The Telegraph reports on a man whose home was full of rubbish which he navigated through an intricate network of tunnels. He died after losing his way in the labyrinth. Police called in a specialist team – equipped with breathing apparatus – to search the two-storey house. They discovered a confusing system of tunnels networking around the interior of the building, with Mr Stewart lying dead inside.

I could not face the idea of breaking bread with you. . . I thought of the clean linens at your table, the shining knives and the flames of the candles, and I could not stomach it.

A couple of years earlier the cartoonist, Jules Feiffer regretted he could not join them for breakfast at The White House:

. . . it seems necessary on the occasion of a celebration of reading to press the point that words, at their finest, don’t set out to confuse or obscure. Their aim is to clarify.
But clarity is not what we’re getting from your husband’s White House. It seems that clarity would deny him a war.
. . . as for your breakfast, may I convey my regrets and best wishes to you and your guests.

The five characters approached me, a little diffidently to be sure but also with a certain purpose. The wild child, naked, seated himself at my table, the chair opposite, while the others kicked their heels a little way off, one or two looking our way, the others taking in the protesters and pretending not to be interested in me at all.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked the wild child. ‘I don’t want to be bothered with it just now.’

‘You may not, but I need to have this out with you.’

‘You can’t speak,’ I told him. ‘You don’t have language.’ He’d been adopted by a set of badgers when he was a baby and raised on a dell near Scotch Corner, a couple of miles from the A1. He was ten years old, thereabouts, maybe as much as twelve, but to all intents and purposes still a child. Large hands and a short neck and fully developed genitalia were his allotted features. Had we been in Tehrān or Kabul he would have been arrested and stoned or whipped for his nakedness. But we were in York, England, an outpost of liberty and sexual enlightenment and it was more likely that it would be me who was arrested for my association with a ten year old naked child in the centre of the city.
‘Language?’ he said. ‘This is one of the problems. I’m not happy with the way I’m being drawn. None of us are. The colonel’s wife wants to be more than a sex object.’

‘Your happiness is not part of the equation.’

‘That is obvious.’

‘And why should it be? I need you to illustrate something in other, major characters. You are a cipher.’

‘With no potential?’

‘None.’

‘You arrogant bastard.’

‘Listen. I’m in charge. It’s my novel. I draw characters how I like. I think about what is needed and I add a character here or there, whenever needed. It’s up to me. I’m concerned with a developing narrative, if every character had a say the thing would spiral out of control. It’d be like real life.’

‘I’m not every character and in any case I’m undervalued more than many of the others. A wild child, indeed. I don’t even have a proper name.’

‘I’ll give you a name. But please go away now. I want to enjoy my coffee.’

‘I’m not going away. I just got here. I want answers.’

I tried to ignore him but he was not about to give up.

‘I’m not leaving.’

‘I’ll answer three questions,’ I said. ‘Then we’re finished.’ I liked that, giving him three questions. Three times more than he expected. Deep within me the tide turned.

‘OK. I’m feral, afraid of everyone, but I respond to cuddles. What is that supposed to say?’

‘It says exactly what it says. You have only known the wild. Your instinct to flee is highly developed. It’s a survival mechanism. That you respond to cuddles when you can’t avoid them is also a survival mechanism. The cuddler is given what he or she wants when you respond, so he/she is less liable to harm you. You either outrun them or outwit them. Those are your possibilities.’

‘Why don’t I have a past? I want to be like other boys.’

‘You have a past. You were raised by badgers. You were loved, in a way.’

‘No, not like that. I want a human past. I must have a mother somewhere. A father. I’d feel better about myself if I knew who they were.’

‘That’s not important in the book.’

‘Maybe not, but it might be interesting for some of your readers as well as me. The colonel’s wife could do some research, look for babies that went missing ten, twelve years ago; it would be easy enough to give some indication where I came from.’

‘I’ll think about it. No promises.’

‘And I fight and spit and bite the colonel’s wife when she bathes me; but later I’m tender towards her.’

‘That’s because you’ve learned. The less opposition you put up against these people the more they take care of you. You learn to give them a little so that you gain a lot.’

‘Where did you find me?’

‘That’s the last question.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘You were in my consciousness. I didn’t know you were there. I stumbled over you in a dream.’

‘Can we talk again, another time?’

‘That was your last question.’

‘You’re mean, you know that?’ He thought for a moment. ‘I don’t like the idea that I’m interested in anal scent glands.’ He scrambled down from the chair and returned to the other characters. They all looked my way. It was obvious they had problems.

Celia Gallagher, tall and leggy with a heart-shaped face, took a step in my direction and one of the others gave her a push. She took another two steps towards me and glanced back at the others.

I guzzled the dregs of my coffee and moved away from the table, dodging between the banners and flags of the protesters and striding across the road towards home.

*

Jasko Caus at Jasmin’s Heart has an interesting series of articles on James Joyce:

An early inspiration for Dubliners was the work of Norwegian dramatist, Henrik Ibsen. Joyce, a polyglot, learnt Norwegian in order to read Ibsen. What he received from Ibsen was a very important, if not essential instruction for his writing: …”A measure of dramatic life” that Ibsen talks about is actually Joyce’s radiance. So is the case when he takes seemingly quite ordinary details and situations of Dublin life and makes them radiant.

*

Please sign the petition to build support throughout Africa and round the world. Stopping the arms is a concrete step leaders can take to help bring justice to Zimbabwe. Add your name below now – http://www.avaaz.org/en/no_arms_for_zimbabwe/5.php

The Chinese ship, An Yue Jiang, was turned away from South Africa and is heading for Angola in the hope of docking there, Mozambique’s transport minister said on Saturday.

Mozambique did not allow it to enter its waters.

“I hope this will be the case with all the countries because we don’t want a situation which will escalate the (tension) in Zimbabwe more than what it is,” Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, who is also chairman of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional grouping, told reporters.

The 300,000-strong South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) refused to unload the weapons because of concerns Mugabe’s government might use them against opponents in the post-election stalemate.

Instead of a smooth free-flowing journey by foot, open-topped bus, boat and bicycle, many of the 80 torchbearers were stopped on several occasions and encircled by Chinese torch officials and uniformed police officers protecting the flame from swooping protesters.

About 2,000 Metropolitan Police, including airborne, mounted and river units, were mobilised for the eight-hour event.

When a schoolteacher from Anshang province, appeared with the flame he was surrounded by so many police that his handover to the Chinese ambassador, Fu Ying, was all but invisible to the hordes of photographers and cameramen who had been waiting for just that moment.

As the torch continued its jerky progress through the London streets, it seemed hard to believe that either the British or the Chinese government could have been happy with what they were witnessing. In fact the Chinese Embassy had seriously considered abandoning the day before it was half over.

Predictably, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy said: “It was very successful.”

The front page of China Daily, the English-language Communist Party newspaper, proclaimed: “Warm reception in cold London”.

Duncan Goodhew, the former Olympic swimmer who ran with the torch, said of the protest: “It shows how extreme things can get in this country and it’s a great shame. It’s such a bad example for children.”

June

by Shi Tao

My whole life

Will never get past “June”
June, when my heart died
When my poetry died
When my lover
Died in romance’s pool of blood

June, the scorching sun burns open my skin
Revealing the true nature of my wound
June, the fish swims out of the blood-red sea
Toward another place to hibernate
June, the earth shifts, the rivers fall silent
Piled up letters unable to be delivered to the dead

Translated to English from Chinese by Chip Rolley

Shi Tao, a journalist and the author of this poem was imprisoned by the Chinese Government after forwarding to an overseas website a document from Chinese government censors warning their media not to report on the 15th anniversary of the June 4 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Shi Tao was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment and 2 years’ deprivation of political rights. Although he remains in prison his poem is free and is following the Olympic torch around the world.

International PEN, the worldwide writers’ organisation, are campaigning for the release of around 40 writers currently imprisoned in China. Shi Tao is one of them.

“The Olympics are a force for good.” Not always! The 1936 Olympics, held in Nazi Germany, were an astonishing propaganda coup for Hitler. It’s true that the star performance of Jesse Owens, the black American track-and-field great, did shoot some holes in the Nazi theory of Aryan racial superiority. But Hitler still got what he wanted out of the Games. With the help of American newspapers such as the New York Times, which opined that the Games put Germany “back in the family of nations again,” he convinced many Germans, and many foreigners, to accept Nazism as “normal.” The Nuremburg laws were in force, German troops had marched into the Rhineland, Dachau was full of prisoners, but the world cheered its athletes in Berlin. As a result, many people, both in and out of Germany, reckoned that everything was just fine and that Hitler could be tolerated a bit longer.

She explains how the sponsors of the Beijing Games, including Samsung Electronics and Coca-Cola, try to justify their involvement (lots of cash for their shareholders – naturally). She reports on the pompous remarks of the chairman of the International Olympic Committee in the face of protesters at the lighting of the Olympic flame.

Applebaum then goes on to dismantle many of the fallacies used to justify these “peaceful games” taking place in the capital of one of the world’s worst and most repressive regimes.

She shows how boycotts have been used successfully in the past, including the case of South Africa, and how the Olympics are an ideal place for demonstrations.

But the bottom line is that no one involved in the preparations for this year’s Olympic games believes that this is about sport or athletes, or that Beijing will be an innocent display of sporting prowess. We’ve all recognised, right from the beginning, that the 2008 games are about Chinese politics and an attempt to have them legitimized by the international community.

I’m not going to China.