The need to replace bad tenants with better A day of spring appeared out of nowhere Monday, trees blooming in the park, a troop of tiny kiddos roped together with teachers fore and aft, sociable dogs, and yellow daffodils in bloom, though I’m not a botanist, and maybe they were begonias but to me they’re daffodils because begonias sound like pneumonia and so Wordsworth and Herrick wrote poems about daffodils. Let’s just assume that’s true. I came home to try to read the instruction book for my new printer, which was written by an electrical engineer for another electrical engineer, one pro trying to impress another, two guys who whizzed through college math courses that to me were a solid brick wall, and here I sit, reading through pages of fabulous technical know-how trying to figure out how to print on one side of the paper, not two, and it simply isn’t there — the secrets of the universe are freely available through this machine, but I can’t find the ON switch. This is my complaint against poets: they write for each other, knowing that nobody else is interested, and for that reason nobody else is interested.Candidates for public office speak to others of their ilk, fellow politicians, officeholders, coatholders, executive assistants, so when Joe Biden stood up Tuesday night in victory, he tried to be exultant but politics doesn’t lend itself to exultation. He cried, “All of you who’ve been knocked down, who’ve been counted out, who’ve been left behind, this is your campaign!” But that’s not his line, it’s Bernie’s. And Bernie stood up and said, “I tell you with absolute confidence that we are going to win the Democratic nomination and we are going to beat Trump.” I know a number of guys from Brooklyn and none of them would say “with absolute confidence” except ironically. “Absolute confidence” is the code word for Highly Dubious. Read the rest of the column >>> | 
