Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and Women

With the political news so depressing, let's cheer about some things.

Patti Smith has won the National Book Award for "Just Kids". She deserves it. "Just Kids" is a beautifully written memoir of her early days in New York City and Brooklyn and her life-time friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe. We reviewed it when it first came out.

Jim Carroll, punk rocker and poet, left "Petting Zoo", a novel about a New York-born artist struggling with his inspiration after he had won fame and fortune. The last chapter was finished by the executor of his estate after Carroll died writing it. The book has an introduction by Patti Smith.

"Because the Night", a song written by Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen, shows up on Bruce's "The Promise", a compilation of 26 songs not included with the original "Darkness on the Edge of Town". Nice to hear Bruce in his prime.

Mark Twain entered the New York Times bestseller list at #2 for his 100-year old "Autobiography". This is actually startling since the book is printed as a scholar's edition and not for easy reading.

I guess congratulations to Tom Wolfe for getting a Lifetime Achievement National Book Award. I stopped reading him after "Bonfire of the Vanities", a truly terrifying urban nightmare.

Congrats to Stan "the Man" Musial and Jasper Johns for receiving the Medal of Freedom from President Obama. People have been lobbying for Stan "the Man" since the days of Dubya. Also congrats to Bush Senior for his Medal of Freedom and Maya Angelou.

Also at the White House, President Obama, our Geek-in-Chief, awarded the National Medals Laureates of Science,Technology and Innovation to:

Steven Sasson, the inventor of the digital camera.

Marye Anne Fox, Chancellor and Professor of Chemistry at the University of California , San Diego. She received the National Medal of Science for her research contributions in the areas of organic photochemistry and electrochemistry. Her work has led to the development of materials that can capture solar energy and thin films which can be used for information storage.

Warren Washington,Senior Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research. He receives the National Medal of Science for his development and use of global climate models to understand climate and explain the role of human activities and natural processes in the Earth's climate system. Naturally, he will have to be investigated by the House Republicans for perpetrating the climate change hoax.

Sargeant Guinta was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was the first living person awarded the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War. Right-wing Christians protested that the Medal of Honor has been feminized because it has been awarded in recent memory to those who risked their lives saving their fellow soldiers. The suggestion is that it should be awarded to people who have a maximum of enemy kills. Onward Christian Soldiers!

Pearls before Swine

Before I go search for the Arc of the Covenant, a few passing notes on cultural artifacts of another order.

Yes, Ralph Ellison's Three Days Before The Shooting has been shipped. I've been waiting for years for this. I hope it is not an omen that it arrives the day of Barack Obama's State of the Union message. It is the story of a mixed race Senator, who passes as "white" and is assassinated.

For those of you who are aging hipsters, yes Jimi Hendrix did record more songs at Electric Ladyland studios. And dig this--you can order 45s or vinyls of "Valleys of Neptune." Rolling Stone raves about it but anyone whom Yawn Wenner saw gets raves. Just check out the last few reviews of Neil Young. Apparently, there is alot more Hendrix that was finished and will be released in the future. The new disc or CD or whatever format you choose has 12 cuts on it.

If you love the Village and lower Manhattan, Patti Smith Just Kids is a wonderful memoir of her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. The book was done to fulfill a promise Patti made to him before his death of AIDS in 1989. It covers how they inspired each other's art and how, with literally nothing, they stayed in seedy hotels and cramped apartments before they hit the big time. It's hard to believe that Patti fresh off the bus from southern New Jersey slept for her first days in Manhattan in Central Park. The title comes from a story of two tourists walking in the Village and they see Patti and Robert dressed in a Bohemian manner. The wife says,"Dear, take their photographs." The husband says gruffly," No dear, they're just kids."

Feeling funky and lost hope. A friend of mine put me on to Adam Hochschild's Bury The Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves. His previous book was Leopold's Ghost, which portrayed the horrors and I mean "the horror" of the Belgian Congo. In paperback, Bury the Chains recounts the history of 12 men, who came together in a London printing shop in early 1787 to create the first grassroots movement to fight for human rights--the struggle to outlaw slavery. Human rights advocates will recognize a number of strategies these men created--consumer boycotts, wall posters, celebrity endorsements and lapel buttons. But the key lesson was their insistence on making their case with facts and not sensational charges. This is a great book to read to remember the roots of today's human rights movements before it got taken over by large corporate entities.

David Plouffe is indeed back,sending out e-mails for Barack Obama fans to host house parties to watch the state of the union address. I hope no one catches on what this guy can do. And, David, you're still young so you've got awhile before you become corrupt.

Have been reading Forrest Church's books of theology. Church was a Harvard Divinity Schoolmate of mine. The son of Senator Church of CIA hearing fame, he was the pastor of All Souls Unitarian Church in Manhattan. Love & Death covers his meditations on both as he faced treatment for cancer with the certain belief he would be dead in months. He went in remission and went on to finish his life with a final book on Unitarian theology. He died of cancer last year.

Unfortunately for me I started reading his books with So Help Me God: The Founding Fathers and the First Great Battle Over Church and State, which sounded to me like a revised version of his doctoral thesis. It covers our first cultural wars. George Washington wanted religions strictly regulated so that they could not have influence over politics. The President who was warmly supported by born-again Baptists was none other than Thomas Jefferson. Madison was an atheist and John Adams won the hearts of Presbyterians and Unitarians who at that time wanted a more official status of Christianity. Liberal churches demanded during the Civil War that having Christianity as an official religion would have spare the country. Anyway, Forrest does an excellent job in upending the apple cart in describing these early fights that continue to this day. It is a useful tool to counter the revisionist history now being done by the right.

But Forrest can write some clinkers. He was asked on a Caribbean Cruise to give a Sunday sermon. So he chose the subject of the film Titanic. Life like the Titanic is a beautiful and grand ship but it too will sink. I'm sure his audience quickly went for the pina coladas after that remark.

Finishing on biblical notes. The Ark of the Covenant is supposedly a drum that could be heard 3 1/2 miles away and terrify opposing armies. A tribe in Zimbabwe claims their priests brought it to Africa. The strange part of this is that DNA tests have identified the genetic markers for the priestly line of Jews. A separate DNA test of the priests in the tribe also show the same genetic markers, which are not found outside the Jewish race. And of course the protectors of the Ark were the priests. Who knows?

If you are greedy, boastful and don't feed the poor, you are a Sodomite. That's the real biblical meaning. That casts the Log Cabin Republicans in a wholly different light.

Off to Ethiopia. The home of the Rasta prophet Hailie Selassie.