New Yorkers love the arts. Don’t they?

And this latest effort at promotion proves it. At various city venues the Poetry Brothel convenes for readings of high quality, literary works, poetry,  by names and no-names alike.  People like you and me.

Apparently the accoutrements feature heavy velvets, feathers, gambling tables, a bar, along with The Madame and her male partner, Tennessee Pink. 

But the REAL reason patrons are there is the poetry.

The website posts the offer, “Want to be a poetry whore?” If you do, you’ll get to read your own original work to the sincerely interested literary set.  For a price. (We’re not a non-profit, Pal.) For a higher fee, visitors can get a private reading.

Poets have to make a living, too, Maybe they became addicted to poetry early on. Maybe they have no training for other lines of work, so writing and reading “high quality” poetry is all they can do. Society has forced them to choose this dubious occupation.  At least some New Yorkers care enough to give them a chance.

I wonder how many Robert Frosts and Walt Whitmans out there will have their talents recognized and thus be discovered through this new kind of outlet? What a service is being provided! What irony! Capitalism applied to poetry. Principles of marketing 101. Advertisers have always known this: Poetry sells!

American ingenuity is what it is. We know that given the right environment almost every normal person will appreciate poetry. We’ve been using faulty, inferior means — a classroom and a textbook — not to mention those sadsack English teachers.  Now wonder they hate it.

On the other hand, I fear that if the concept proliferates, other industries will follow suit. Next thing we know there’ll be “performances” of various types at baseball games, recreational parks, and concerts. 

But then again, maybe people who love  a good concert, don’t need extras to get them to go.

The Beatty brothers have written a book detailing how they have, since childhood, been making money Pulling Weeds to Picking Stocks. Now in their advice book they share the principles of hard work, organization, and business savvy that they learned from their parents.

The 7 x 5 inch 100-pager, written on a 9-12 year old reading level had, just four days ago, an Amazon ranking of around 560,000th. Not good.

Then on Friday, David Beatty called the Rush Limbaugh radio program and stated his intention to donate about a third of the profits to the Marine Corps for their service to the country and their family.

Today? Monday morning? The Beattys’ book has leaped to the number five position! A now sold-out bestseller. They earn money teaching marketing principles and have just provided a powerful object lesson.

What’s the chief lesson here? Hard work? Excellence in parenting? Good teen models? Only in America?

All of the above. And I also know that the publishing industry generates more stories of serendipity and human interest that often supersede the actual content of what they publish. Sequel? ” Meet the (Beatty) Parents.

Atlas

In Ayn Rand’s last and most defining work, Atlas Shrugged, the world’s most gifted, innovative thinkers and inventors, the great minds of the nations, literally go on strike. In a socialist, government dominated, stifling society, these men and women of brains, brawn, and business acumen prefer going underground to benefitting those who lack all of the above. Many people, no doubt, identify with these Randian heroes as they struggle to pursue and produce excellence among those who lack the ability to apprehend or appreciate their talent. They go on strike, too, abandoning such people leaving them to their own inferior devices.

Though Rand was what one writer calls a “liberatrian atheist,” her ideas, her philosophy resonate with me on a fundamental level. There is truth here. It has mostly to do with freedom and man’s Godlike ability to imagine and create and achieve glory. It shows the nasty, fallen side, too – selfishness, cowardice, and jealousy.

Rand articulates her Objectivism in mellifluous prose making all 1,168 pages entertaining reading, that and also the longest novel in a European-based language. Her characters are exquisitely drawn and the good guys, hopefully not inimitable in reality.

Not everyone is or was thrilled with the novel. The National Review has posted a somewhat negative review by Whittaker Chambers from the 1957 archives, the year of the novel’s publication. Definitely worth reading.

Not intending to provide a traditional review (they abound,) I’ll change the novel’s ubiquitous query, “Who is John Galt?” to “Has Atlas Shrugged? ” Have those whose ideas, integrity, and independent self reliance create and inspire excellence abdicated their place leaving the rest to survive on their meager wits?

No? Then where are they? In our classrooms? In our courtrooms? In our capital city?

Finally I recommend William F. Buckley’s novel Getting it Right and the d’Anconia speech on money excerpt(Capitalism Magazine.) Also read the John Galt 90-page radio broadcast, a novella in itself, and Rand’s manifesto.

While it took me nearly a year to finish this novel, I’ll never regret or forget the experience. Today I rummaged used book stores for a copy of The Fountainhead.

He’s our friend, not because he knows us but because he loves good writing, especially short fiction. Today in serendipitous fashion, seeking a spot to submit my short shory I came across this site. Simple, artsy, and professional-looking, it would do just fine.

The two editors (there are just the two of them) suggested giving the magazine a read either online or buying a copy. I went through the table of contents for one issue and clicked on the Spring 2008 issue and began reading a story. Wow. He’s good. I’m in over my head. Another one! I can’t stop.

Proceding down the page for another read, I read an introduction to Love. Amazing. From there I perused the authors’ names, bylined by their story’s links. No way. Here are Ethan Coen (O, Brother Where Art Thou?), Wes Anderson, Margaret Atwood,  Tim Roth, and Woody Allen!

And the publisher? Francis Ford Coppola. No less.

This is big. I read Coppola’s mission statement. Inspiring. Various essays and reprints from well-known writers (Vonnegut, Dick) are there, too, along with impressive cover design. But it’s not another anthology of college text collections. Plenty of unknowns are published here, too.

Writers can enter the contest, submit a story, or join the virtual studio where “thousands” of writers critique each other. Or just read. The publication is Zoetrope: All Story.

I love stories, having been introduced to fairy tales and myth as a child. In the fourth grade I read A Midsummer Night’s Dream from an old yellowed copy, some relative’s school Signet Edition.  In third grade my teacher read us Bible stories, and I fell in love with Moses and David. (I never liked ghost stories, however; still don’t.)

After getting a master’s in English, I knew I was forever tied to the story, whatever its form. Talk to me, Do it well. Tell me a story. Use your imagination and we’ll be friends forever. You, me, Francis.

Kevin Costner, among my top ten actors, is starring in Swing Vote, a film that appeals on many levels. Based on the previews, my expectations were low.

Pleasant surprise! Entertaining from the beginning, it’s one of those films to which audiences demonstrably relate, the subject we love to hate being politics. But there’s much more.

Creating historical precedent, the presidential election hangs on a single citizen’s vote. Bud (Kostner) is a soon to be umemployed, underachieving egg factory worker who lives with his preteen daughter in adverse conditions. But he isn’t concerned — about anything. Molly, overly responsible for her age, takes care of Dad, nagging and urging civic behavior upon this beer swigging, woefully uninformed father.

Both presidential candidates court him in a parody of the lengths — or depths — a politician will sink to for a win. During a visit to Air Force One, to which Bud drives Richard Petty’s Dodge, the incumbent president, also the conservative, Kelsey Grammer, serves beer and employs THE football in an analogy of football and politics. They play poker, just two good old boys hanging out.

Dennis Hopper, the left, the greener party condidate, instantly becomes pro-life after learning that Bud might not like abortion. He throws a party featuring chipped beef appetizers — like Bud’s Mom used to make — and Bud’s old band, “pulling a few strings” to get them out of prison.

Bud has no political position — he lives for the next six pack — but reporters drag half opinions from him and the race is on to fuel each candidate’s show of agreement. Politics as carnival — the biggest clowns the candidates.

Neither campaign manager has a problem with an instant 180 shifting of their man’s stand on the issues to get Bud’s vote. They are the film’s bad guys.

But redemption comes to the others. The candidates emerge with consciences, and the reporter, who has betrayed Molly’s confidence, gives her the tape. Bud, who has received bags of mail from citizens with real needs, has an awakening, and before he moderates a debate, in an ill-fitting cheap suit, delivers a guilt-stricken monologue that drew tears from most.

Finally, at his humble voting station Bud approaches the booth in which his vote will determine the election.  Molly, who has been the instigating factor in Bud’s alteration all along, tries to follow him in. With a smile, he stops her and dramatically and proudly, I think, pulls the curtain. In this counrty voting is a very private thing. They both get it.

And we don’t know how he voted. (One viewer at the Monaco shouted “That sucks!) But that’s not the point. A voter finally understands the freedom and weighty responsibility that he has in the right to vote, not in ignorance, but informed. We know that the country will ultimately win.

Particularly refreshing is the fact that neither current political party’s view are favored. And while “it’s not that simple,” this process of ours, the film provides a clean, entertaining reminder about areas that have gone amuck in the system and the posibility of their correction. Good timing.

In fact, this Batman film is too dark to allow enough light in for a minute’s respite from the string of murders, both random and planned, the psychotic ramblings masquerading as philosophy, and the lack of any redemptive hope for mankind, Gotham City.

I did not enjoy this film, and it isn’t the genre. I saw Iron Man three times.  Rah! RDJ was intelligent, witty, capable, and fun. Heroic. Of course we wouldn’t expect any good superhero to be glib and entertaining with the Joker on the loose, but he might have done his morose, auto-alienated scenes with some sort of flair. They are flat.

We get a smile or two from Micahel Caine, who never fails to impress just by showing up. But Gyllenhall has no spark of life to share and supplies no relief from the gloom. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhert) is believable as the D.A., but he twists toward the dark side in the end. Naturally.

And Heath Ledger? A great sicko. Very murderous and pathetic and obscenely grotesque beyond the weird of Nicholson.  I know he’s the villain and a psycho. But he’s too over the top for entertainment at the PG-13 mark for what used to be a comic book crook styled for juveniles. Maybe that’s the point.

I also know that Batman the Dark Knight is breaking all records and has garnered mostly favorable revuews.  So a lot of people like this stuff, I guess.  It’s not why I go to the movies.

When the young gnat was born, also the day of his death since gnats have a life span of one day, he asked his father and mother what he should do. They were about to die and so had little time for instructing him, but they did manage to say, just before the end, “See how we hover and spin just above this burberry bush?”

The young gnat, who was already much older, had indeed seen how all the gnats he knew of were whirling and whirling in a furious swarm just above the purple bush behind the small, yellow house.

“Ah, he said. “So that is it then.”

The young gnat got into the bottom ring of the whirling swarm of gnats and began to spin. Faster and faster, more and more frantically he flew and as he did, he rose higher and higher.

This he did until the sun slid below the top of the cherry tree across the street, and then he fell, pulled to the ground, and landed in the red clay pot that in the summer held white petunias.

I like blogs and websites that include the author’s photo. Little did I know that personal Internet image is now the subject of “scientific” studies and has spawned a sea of photo-shopped “enhanced” versions of what might otherwise be average-looking people. Researchers tell us that “impression management” entails much of our time these days. You’re “out there” photographically or you’re invisible. Did you know that web invisibility is a bad thing?

The pictured man was a famous President — thinking about image and all.

I went through a few photos when choosing this site photo. Quizzical. Half-face. Obscured. Windblown. I’ve seen some web shots that are seductive, funny, caricatured or all three. (Do you know about MySpace angles?) Not for me. I ended up with a “not too uptight about this” just me on the sofa. Smiling. (The new research shows that women who smile in photos have “favorable outcomes” 30 years later. Wow! That’s a lot of mileage for something so easy!)

Michael Agger today for Slate writes about web head shots and links to the sites to which I refer also. His insight on photo selection scores. It’s a fine article and worth the read for the philosphy in his last sentence.

Facestat allows patrons to upload a photo, select a set of questions (Do I look intelligent?), and wait for the results. Do people think I look friendly? More importantly, do I care? The site says that its contents are “like market research for the individual.” But it’s free! And we’ll probably get what we paid for. 

Then there’s the Transformer. Here you play with your photo. Their fine print also says that they, too, are interested in “scientific” inquiry. Why didn’t our school offer this kind of science?

I’m writing a book about image issues especially as they affect women, so this post is also now, I guess, “scientific.” By Internet standards.

In one of NYC’s school districts, one principal with vision and a refusal to accept business as usual has achieved a reading test score improvement from 37% of 3rd graders who can read at grade level to 90% . One of his strategies is the firing of imcompetent teachers — he’s rid the school of 1/3 of the teaching staff.

Many variables affect education. We all know of success stories of kids that have received a quality education in public or private schools, large or smal classes, rural or urban settings, northern or southern locales, humanities program or none. Then there’s home school — its stats are the best in many areas. 

Today Slate has an article that supports my belief and Anthony Lombardi’s, the PS 49 principal, that “it’s all personnel.” Or much of it.  It’s the individual in a particular classroom that makes the difference. A gifted teacher has a unique communication style that makes others want to “pick up on” what she’s saying. It’s tone, it’s inflection, it’s passion, it’s expertise, it’s personality. Actually, it’s hard to define. But Lonbardi says he knows it when he sees it happening. And when it isn’t happening, he takes action. Imagine the injustice to a child who has had a string of bad teachers. 

The good news is that personnel is an element we can control.

Fighting teachers’ unions (they labeled Lombardi a “tyrant”) and firing substandard teachers isn’t easy. And that matters why?

Read the article for all the research data which indicates that predicting good teaching abilities is nearly impossible. Teaching creds, advanced degrees, and other resume items aren’t factors. A supervised internship followed by a do or die performance test is the most commonly suggested plan.

William Young’s The Shack is a best-seller for BN and has topped the NYT list. It’s a Christian genre book and that’s what makes its success surprising — and controversial. Albert Mohler, in a full-length radio program,  has called it “heresy,” and Lifeway has apparently pulled it. But in addition to sales, customer reviews say the book is enriching and renewing.

For me and other would -be writers the most interesting thing here is the book’s publishing history. Young, recently bankrupt and having lost a home of 19 years, wrote the book for his children and a few friends. They loved it, word of mouth marketing kicked in, and a best seller was born.

“Dear Mr. Young, we regret to inform you . . .”  Yes, the book, like so many other successes, was rejected by both Christian and secular publishing houses. Undeterred Young formed Windblown expressly for publishing his own novel. Then came a webpage. Barnes and Noble bought a few copies and when sales soared, ordered more. Many more.

Issues? Christian leaders say the book may be harmful. Fans say it’s the best Christian book they’re read. By the way, in the book God is a black woman.  A quick read will tell. I’m waiting for it to hit the used bookstores or be available at the library.

Young’s website gives the front matter and chapter one for readers. NYT Books has another review. And of course, blogs are weighing in on both sides.