Calvin Trillin, journalist and humorist, was born in Kansas City, Missouri. His father was a grocer who wanted Trillin to be president someday, but Trillin preferred to daydream about being a disc jockey. He admits he didn’t read much as kid, but at Yale University he became the chairman of the Yale Daily News and later covered civil rights for Time Magazine before becoming a staff writer at The New Yorker (1963), where he stayed for more than 40 years. Trillin writes most often about American politics, culture, and food. One critic said, “Trillin is to food writing what Chaplin was to film acting.”Trillin writes a short column for The Nation called “Deadline Poet,” in which he pokes fun at politics and politicians. He once wrote a ditty called “If You Knew What Sununu” about New Hampshire Governor John Sununu and a short poem about Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s presidential campaign: “So if playing the “woman card” really / Is entrenched now in Hillary’s plans, / She’s a bargain: Her president’s paycheck / Will be 10 percent less than a man’s.”Inequity between women and men….And the lesser sex…
Think and Do
by Ron Padgett
I always have to be doing something, accomplishing some-
thing, fixing something, going somewhere, feeling purposeful,
useful, competent—even coughing, as I just did, gives me the
satisfaction of having “just cleared something up.” The phone
bill arrives and minutes later I’ve written the check. The world
starts to go to war and I shout, “Hey, wait a second, let’s think
about this!” and they lay down their arms and ruminate. Now
they are frozen in postures of thought, like Rodin’s statue, the
one outside Philosophy Hall at Columbia. His accomplish-
ments are muscular. How could a guy with such big muscles be
thinking so much? It gives you the idea that he’s worked all his
life to get those muscles, and now he has no use for them. It
makes him pensive, sober, even depressed sometimes, and
because his range of motion is nil, he cannot leap down from
the pedestal and attend classes in Philosophy Hall. I am so
lucky to be elastic! I am so happy to be able to think of the
word elastic, and have it snap me back to underwear, which
reminds me: I have to do the laundry soon.
“Think and Do” by Ron Padgett from Collected Poems. © Coffee House Press, 2013.
from the Poetry Almanac
December 5, 2022
The Vibrant Channeled Creator 