BookTV

Can anything be said for a person who can listen to a three hour interview on BookTV and enjoy it? Sometimes I wonder just what kind of goofy person would DO that. When I went back to college at 37, I was so glad to be there that I sometimes slipped into lectures in classes I didn't take.

One I recall vividly. It was by a pediatrition who was lecturing to a group of nurses on how to identify babies with problems, at the time of birth. The thing I remember most is his proposing that palmestry might have some scientific bearing; no he didn't say it was absolute, he just said MAYBE. He went on to say that at the time the brain synapses are developing in a fetus, the lines in the hands are forming simultaneously. Of course his point was the simian fold.

That is when I went into a research project on Gypsies and was so darned mad that one of the two books in the University card catalog on palmestry had dissappeared. Book theft still infuriates me. But to be truthful, I have copped a book, maybe two, in my life as a librarian.

But back to BookTV. He Who Must Be Obeyed doesn't give one snap for it, but he listened a while yesterday when a panel of fairly distinguished people read poetry to a group of adults and children. There was William Krystal and others enchanting us. Poetry is certainly meant to be heard, instead of read. He Who Must Be Obeyed used to read poetry to me off and on over the past 50 years. When we had the Harvard Classics in the house it happened more often. I remember a lot of Confucious tossed in.

My wish for the year is to go to a local poetry slam. We have a active poet, Matt Mason, in Omaha who has organized them. It is the word 'slam' that has kept me away. But then it probably isn't a dance.

The three hour interview on BookTV was with Charles Murray; the writer from Iowa, Harvard, MIT, who had the country in an uproar over his book "The Bell Curve." He doesn't blog because he is the kind of writer who has to do a lot of editing. He has a point there. He uses the Web for a great deal of his research. His latest book is "Human Accomplishment." He had his list of high achievers. Wouldn't it be grand to have Lexus-Nexus!