The (new) New Colossus

High up on my list of life’s simple pleasures is walking into town on a cool morning. Thank you, Vision 2025, for the West End. Thank you, Starbucks, for the mocha latte. Thank you, Pandora, for the Vince Guaraldi station that I’m playing now to drown out Starbucks’ ambient music. (Am I the only person in the world who never acquired a taste for The Beatles?)

There were two contrasting emails waiting for me when I logged on. One was from a nomadic friend who reports that he’s now “1,000 miles from anywhere over an ocean that’s three miles deep.” The other was from a usually cheerful friend who reports that he’s “mired in depression.” Whether he means clinical depression or something less severe, I don’t know, but I do wonder if he’s appropriately insured.

New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman writing today about Monday’s G.O.P. presidential debate: “… compassion is out of fashion — indeed, lack of compassion has become a matter of principle.” In case you missed it, members of the debate audience, who did not appear to have come to the debate directly from a cock fight, shouted “Yeah!” when Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul whether a 30-year-old uninsured man needing six months of intensive care should be allowed to die.

They also cheered candidate Rick Perry’s record of 234 executions carried out during his tenure as Governor of Texas.

How the mission statement has changed since Emma Lazarus wrote “The New Colossus” in 1883.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

And may the Devil take the hindmost.

The September issue of fête is out. It features a faux Pimp My Reality magazine cover with embedded video. Editor Jay Spivey says he likes it, but wants something different for the next issue. We may oblige.