There aren't many ways to explain this except to say this happened at The Lab, which, this last Wednesday, opened a new show: "In Plain Sight and Orientalist Photography." OK: two shows.

"In Plain Sight" featured a live performance by John Perrault and a dizzying amount of documentation of experimental public performance works from the 60s, including some that featured Boulder luminary Anne Waldman.

But the performance by Boba Fett and the Americans, which marked the end of the evening, had to be the gold star. Rumor has it that the group includes two members of Devotchka. I hope to see them again.

I've really fallen in love with this site, "Five Thirty Eight" which collates polling data and formulates them into electoral vote projections. I'm following the election closely, and this speaks to that interest, but, just the same, it appeals to my love of information graphics.

Today marks the 45th anniversary of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young girls—Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Roberts, Cynthia Wesley—and ensuing riots in which Virgil Ware and Johnny Robinson were killed.

I've written about this day again and again and will continue to do so, probably until I stop writing.

Today, I remember this way:

ELEGY FOR LITTLE GIRLS

     Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, September 16th 1963

Puncture the mud, the iron pours out

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tongue of fire, not a word

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stays still but breaks along the channels

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pressed in the cast floor’s sand.

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Now it’s pigs suckling at the sow’s

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iron teats, so many children blind

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to the air and world that harden them.

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A gift. Dark come on. When

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the slag-man pulls the plug, fire

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explodes, its violent, molten light

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bathes the irons, a glow on their spines

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like stained glass or twilight fades

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on headstones’ crests, row on row on row.

• "This Is Your Nation On White Privilege"


• Sarah Palin's reading list

"America's metaphors have become strained beyond recognition, our nation's verses are severely overwrought, and if one merely examines the internal logic of some of these archaic poems, they are in danger of completely falling apart," said the project's head stanza foreman Dana Gioia. "We need to make sure America's poems remain the biggest, best-designed, best-funded poems in the world."

Gioia confirmed that the public-works composition will be assembled letter-by-letter atop a solid base of the relationship between man and nature. The poem's structure, laid out extensively on lined-paper blueprints, involves a traditional three- quatrain-and-a-couplet framework, which will be tethered to an iambic meter for increased stability and symmetry. If the planners can secure an additional $6.2 million in funding, they may affix a long dash to the end of line three, though Gioia said that is a purely optimistic projection at this stage.

The rest is here.

In tonight's speech, John McCain uses the word "I" more than any other. He uses the word "fight" (20 times) more than "country" (16 times).

Among the words used only once:

• dependence
• happiness
• reason
• citizen
• earth
• character
• community
• decent
• wage
• diplomatic

Barack Obama's speech by contrast has these among its most frequent words:

• promise (31)
• America (26)
• American (18)
• Country (16)

Obama uses "fight" only twice.

This one deserves its own entry.

You have got to see this story.

And this one, about Banksy's trip to New Orleans.

And here's a followup on the Birmingham Weekly website.

And here's a flickr set.

...this book requires patience from any reader who dares divulge its contents. A Murmuration of Starlings does not rely on the strength of individual poems or lines, but instead, York creates a complete compilation which can only be appreciated if the reader walks step by step alongside York through the dark hallways of an American nightmare.