In honor of Halloween, a Yeats poem

In honor of Halloween, here is a poem from William Butler Yeats, my favorite poet:

The Cat and the Moon

THE CAT went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon
The creeping cat looked up.
Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon,
For wander and wail as he would
The pure cold light in the sky
Troubled his animal blood.
Minnaloushe runs in the grass,
Lifting his delicate feet.
Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you dance?
When two close kindred meet
What better than call a dance?
Maybe the moon may learn,
Tired of that courtly fashion,
A new dance turn.
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
From moonlit place to place,
The sacred moon overhead
Has taken a new phase.
Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils
Will pass from change to change,
And that from round to crescent,
From crescent to round they range?
Minnaloushe creeps through the grass
Alone, important and wise,
And lifts to the changing moon
His changing eyes.

Toni Morrison's A Mercy and T.R. Reid's Healing of America

I read two really good books lately that have nothing in common.

First, Toni Morrison's A Mercy. She's Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize winner, author of the harrowing and well-respected Beloved. She's also very intimidating, because her recent novels have struck me as long, difficult and dense. So I found her recent novel, A Mercy, tempting, because it was fairly short -- 176 pages -- and the first few pages were intriguing. Read the excerpt; it begins:

Don't be afraid. My telling can't hurt you in spite of what I have done and I promise to lie quietly in the dark--weeping perhaps or occasionally seeing the blood once more--but I will never again unfold my limbs to rise up and bare teeth. I explain. You can think what I tell you a confession, if you like, but one full of curiosities familiar only in dreams and during those moments when a dog's profile plays in the steam of a kettle.

The setting is 1682, and the narrator above is Florens, a young enslaved woman, who tells her own story, interweaved with stories of others who live on a Maryland homestead. There are two other enslaved woman, a Dutch trader, his "mail order" wife (probably they didn't call it that back then), two indentured servants, and a free African blacksmith. I don't want to tell too much here, but I'll just emphasize I thought this was a fascinating, poignant gem of a novel, very thought-provoking and beautifully written. And it inspires me to go back and and read Beloved.

The other book I liked was The Healing of America, by T.R. Reid. This is nonfiction, a look at health care systems in other countries and what lessons they might hold for the U.S. Reid was in the unique position of working abroad for many years, and having a stiff, sore shoulder. So he took his shoulder to all the doctors and health systems of the world and wrote about it. (OK, maybe not all the health systems of the world, but the United States, France, England, Germany, Japan and India.) What he finds is pretty interesting. According to Reid's telling, the French seem to have the most hassle-free system for records and billing. In Japan, you don't really need an appointment, you just walk in and get seen. In England, you don't get whatever treatment you want, but whatever you do get is free. India's traditional medicine yielded surprisingly good results. And the United States loves its high-tech surgeries.
Another interesting point Reid makes is that in other countries, doctors get their med school tuition paid for by the state, and then they make more middle-class salaries. This is different from the States. Little insights like these made for a fascinating book, very thought-provoking.
One thing that made me chuckle mordantly is that Reid felt the need to put a brief justification in the book about why he was writing about the medical systems of other countries. Some Americans may feel that we shouldn't consider any information from other countries, because ... why? Because we're better than them? Because they couldn't possibly have anything to teach us? He rejects those ideas, and so do I. I just don't get not being curious about new ideas and ways of doing things. It's kind of an anti-learning mentality, and I can't stand that, as you well know.

Reader Advisory: New Jersey Politics

I'm instituting a new feature here at spoonreader: Reader advisory for news stories and features. I hope to highlight something interesting I read every week, with an emphasis on the periodical literature (librarian-speak for newspapers and magazines). My goal will be to post something on a Monday or Tuesday, or possibly as late as Wednesday.
This week's story is one I found very, very funny; it's about New Jersey politics; it's from the New York Times Magazine; and it's by Matt Bai.
It's told from the point of view of Jon Corzine, the incumbent Democratic governor of N.J., and it's about, well, why the state is so screwed up and Corzine's political fortunes are so troubled.. I'm picking this one because I love the writing, and because I think it has important insights into local government and why it can seem so dysfunctional.
Sample lines:

• "Even in the best of times, New Jersey’s highly taxed voters are a chronically cantankerous lot, and no one’s likely to confuse these with the best of times."
• "If California collapsed of its own weight and drifted off into the Pacific, New Jersey would instantly become the most dysfunctional state in the country."
• "New Jersey could raise up its own army and invade Pennsylvania, and all the state’s voters would want to talk about, still, would be their property taxes."
• "The question of why property taxes keep rising could keep a symposium of budget experts arguing for a week, but at its core, the property-tax problem hints at a deeper, structural flaw in the state, a defect that’s more cultural than it is fiscal. Basically, New Jersey is sliced into so many local fiefs — 21 counties, 566 municipalities, more than 600 school districts — that it’s just about falling apart."

I should say I don't know much about New Jersey. I don't have a reason to be interested in New Jersey. But I read this article from start to finish and was fascinated. That's a mark of a well-told story. So please do enjoy this little gem of political reporting and read the whole thing for yourself.

Books about the '08 campaign

I consider the 2008 election something of a subject specialty, so I've been trying to be strategic about reading new books about the election. I just read The Battle for America 2008 by Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson. Balz is with The Washington Post, so this is a fairly straightforward political account of the election, with a few minor new revelations. Interesting things that jumped out at me: They report that Democrat Ted Kennedy made a condition of his early endorsement that Obama address health care reform in his first year. And, they go into brutal and hilarious detail about Republican candidate Fred Thompson's reluctance to actually campaign for the presidency.
The other book I'm reading now is Renegade: The Making of a President, by Richard Wolfe, who covered the election for Newsweek. I'm just starting this one, but the book's selling point is that Wolfe got the most inside access to the Obama campaign.
Other campaign books I'd like to read:

• How Barack Obama won : a state-by-state guide to the historic 2008 presidential election, by Chuck Todd and Sheldon Gawiser: I expect this to be a very geeky (in a good way!) analysis of voting patterns in the 50 states.
• The audacity to win : the inside story and lessons of Barack Obama's historic victory, by David Plouffe. Written by Obama's campaign manager. Again, this one will probably be pretty much in the weeds for true politics junkies. I'm hoping to gain insight on Obama's caucus strategies from this one.
• An unnamed book (or at least I don't know the name) from Ryan Lizza, who covered the election for The New Yorker magazine. I really liked Lizza's reporting during the campaign; his article "Making It" was one of the best things I've read on Obama's years in the Illinois state senate.
• And no list would be complete without Going Rogue: An American Life, by Sarah Palin. I can't wait to see what she has to say about the campaign. I hope it's well-written and interesting. Sometimes books by elected officials can be really boring, but we'll see.