authors on the election

[hafital]

Writers welcome a literary president-elect."

For Morrison and others, the election of Obama matters not because he will be the first black president or because the vast majority of writers usually vote for Democrats. Writers welcome Obama as a peer, a thinker, a man of words — his own words. ...

"Until now, my identity as a writer has never overlapped with my identity as an American — in the past eight years, my writing has often felt like an antidote or correction to my Americanism," says "Everything Is Illuminated" novelist Jonathan Safran Foer.

"But finally having a writer-president — and I don't mean a published author, but someone who knows the full value of the carefully chosen word — I suddenly feel, for the first time, not only like a writer who happens to be American, but an American writer."

~~~

Today I had a new riding instructor as my usual guy was out of town, and she made me ride with my feet out of the stirrups, which I've done before but on a western saddle which gives you a bit more balance, so this time on english (and on a horse eager to go fast) it was harder. I apparently lean in too far forward, like for jumping only, which I knew was a problem.
~~~~

Sometimes CuteOverload really knows how to deliver. I'm freeeeeeeeeee. OMG I WANT ONE.

Comments

[kassrachel.livejournal.com]

That article is awesome!

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

I find that article offensively self-important.

Oh, and Jonathan Safran Foer, if your entire concept of America's writerliness is based on the writerliness of ONE MAN, then you are a reductionist to the extent that I pity your limits and expect your writing to be bad.

[hafital.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, but I don't think it's any more or less self-important than 90% of literary commentary out there, which is usually thinly veiled wanking.

I haven't read any of Obama's books, and has assumed they were ghost written, so I was more intrigued by that than Jonathan Safran Foer, who's works I find impenetrable.

[kaki4.livejournal.com]

I'm just so pleased to see an intelligent president. It's like icing on the cake to know he writes (after one who didn't seem to read), too.

[adonnchaid.livejournal.com]

For the riding -- try sitting with your pelvis tilted back a little and feel as if you're sitting just behind the motion. If you keep good contact with your hands, the horse should feel you behind the motion and holding the mouth and slow to the pace you want.

Oh, and hold really tight with your thighs and knees. I had an instructor who used to fold up a kleenex and put it between my knee and the saddle (stirrupless English) and if it fell, I wasn't holding on right. Have they made you post without stirrups yet? *g*

[hafital.livejournal.com]

Oh, and hold really tight with your thighs and knees.

Yes, I'm realizing I'm not doing this; love the tissue paper thing. I have posted without stirrups! But not on English. Today she started working on my posture during sitting trot without stirrups. I hadn't actually done much work on sitting trot before today, just posting and two-point.

Thanks for the pointers! :D