Bolton and Young

Former U.N. Ambassadors Andrew Young and John Bolton were on campus last week (on United Nations Day) for a U.N. Symposium. They were the featured speakers Wednesday night and were followed Thursday by a panel of former ambassadors mostly to African countries, as well as David Wilkins, a South Carolinian currently the Ambassador to Canada. Friday there were several panels made up of U.N. Scholars. It was Young and Bolton that drew the big crowd at the ticketed event. Bolton lead off, his methodical and admittedly interesting talk belying his zany, quizzical appearance, accentuated by his shaggy mane of a hairdo and his walrus-like mustache. His theme was the perpetual political gridlock that pervades the U.N., keeping it from acting. Also, he emphasized the inequity in payment for the U.N., with a handful of countries joining the U.S. in nearly singlehandedly supporting it, with most of the other countries essentially on the dole--but with an equal vote. He wound up proposing that countries contribute to the U.N. voluntarily. Bolton served only a year and was never confirmed by Congress.

Young, in contrast, told stories about how despite the politically difficult atmosphere (during the Carter administration), he managed to accomplish some things by working informally around the system. He told a great story of how at a boring reception a Chinese diplomat asked Young's wife where he could get good "Georgia food." She said, "At our apartment." So they invited the entire delegation over in a couple weeks. Meanwhile, Mrs. Young had her mother drive up to New York, bringing a bunch of food and cooking the rest in the Waldorf Astoria kitchen. The party was a great success, right down to the mint juleps provided by the Waldorf. This helped smoothed the way with the Chinese. Young's account was one of people-to-people contacts, whereas Bolton's was the report of a disaffected ideologue.

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A new theory about Edgar Allan Poe's death
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Joseph Lelyveld on Arthus Schlesinger's Journals

Colbert in Columbia

Stephen Colbert brought his fledgling presidential campaign to Columbia this morning at 9 a.m. He was greated by a spirited crowd of supporters on the University of South Carolina Horseshoe, many of them holding signs proclaiming, "Colbert '08--and so can you," a spin on the title of his current book, I Am America--and So Can You. Mayor Bob Coble introduced him, gave him a key to the city, and proclaimed this "Stephen Colbert Day." A native of Charleston and the 11th and final kid in his family, Colbert proclaimed, "I love South Carolina almost as much as South Carolina loves me!" and "I've travelled all over this state, from Charleston to Columbia!" and "I have a new state slogan for you: South Carolina--first to secede, first to succeed!" He heaped praise on S.C. peaches and shrimp and promised to crush Georgia if elected. He got plenty of laughs in his brief 10-minute speech before mingling in the crowd. I'd estimate there were 1000 people there.

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Colbert on his campaign

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Recent news on the campaign

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Colbertocrat.com

Kwesi Brew, Ghanaian Poet

As a recent college graduate and Peace Corps trainee at Teacher's College-Columbia University, I discovered the world of West African literature as I prepared to teach secondary school English in Ghana. I had never heard of Ghana before I received my Peace Corps invitation the spring of my senior year at Davidson College in 1967. Nor was I able to name a single West African writer despite my degree in English Literature. I had not heard of dramatist Wole Soyinka, novelist Chinua Achebe, or poet Leopold Sedar Senghor. With the help of anthologies such as Langston Hughes' An African Treasury (1960), I began to learn about the outpouring of writing from Africa, especially the work that came in the wake of the independence movement that was sweeping the continent. Among the Ghanaian poets I discovered was Kwesi Brew, who--like Senghor in Senegal--was a politician and diplomat as well as a literary man. Brew, born in 1928, died the other day in Cape Coast, his home town.

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Obituary for Ghanaian poet Kwesi Brew from The Guardian Unlimited

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John Kufuor, the Ghanaian president, mourns Kwesi Brew
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"The Slums of Nima" by Kwesi Brew

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Other poems by Kwesi Brew

Annie Dillard's THE MAYTREES

Since my in-laws gave me a copy of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek shortly after its publication in 1974, I have been a fan of Annie Dillard, especially her nonfiction, including An American Childhood and The Writing Life. I've just finished the book she claims will be her last, The Maytrees, a novel. Set mainly in Provincetown, it is the story of Toby Maytree, his wife Lou, and the free spirited architect Deary Hightoe who sleeps in the dunes. Toby falls in love with Deary (though I'm not sure his motivation for this sudden turn of events is adequately shown), and they retreat to Maine, leaving behind Lou and the son, Petey. Twenty years later they both return to Provincetown in dire straights, in need of help from none other than the painter Lou, who has made a life on her own in their absence. The book is a meditation on love, its inscrutability, how it can clash with the individual's urge for independence and space. But it's also about Cape Cod and the distinctive, isolated culture that peculiar geography has spawned--the dune shacks, the weather, the sand, the protection of the bay versus the more tempestuous ocean side. Given Dillard's metaphoric flair, it's hard not to see in these two sides of the slender finger of Cape Cod some reflection of two opposing human tendencies--the enclosure and safely of the protected water and its staid houses vs. the ravages of the Atlantic, the shifting dunes, the tenuousness of the now-protected beach shacks. Dillard's writing here is as usual suffused with observation about the natural world. The book brings to mind Henry Beston's classic memoir of his season alone on the Cape in The Outermost House (also a book my in-laws Jack and Jane Debes introduced me to).

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Reviews of The Maytrees from Digital Emunction/News

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By Diane Leach, a review I agree with in January Magazine

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Dillard's website

Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing wins the Nobel Prize

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Tony Hoagland on what American poetry lacks

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Newsweek "A Life in Books" Archive

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National Book Award Nominees for 2007