| High School Boyfriend
by Margaret Hasse You are hometown.
You are all my favorite places
the last summer I grew up.
Every once in a while
I write you
in my head
to ask how Vietnam
and a big name college
came between us.
We tried to stay in touch
through the long distance,
the hum and fleck of phone calls. It was inevitable
that I should return
to the small prairie town
and find you
pumping gas, driving a truck, measuring lumber,
and we'd exchange
weather talk,
never able to break through words
and time to say simply:
"Are you as happy
as I wanted you to be?" And still I am stirred
by musky cigarette smoke
on a man's brown suede jacket.
Never having admitted the tenderness
of your hands, I feel them now
through my skin.
Parking on breezy nights,
in cars, floating passageways,
we are tongue and tongue like warm cucumbers.
I would walk backwards
along far country roads
through late evenings cool as moving water,
heavy as red beer,
to climb into that August. In the dark lovers' lanes
you touched my face
and found me here.
“High School Boyfriend” by Margaret Hasse from Stars Above, Stars Below. © Nodin Press, 2018. Originally published in 1984. Reprinted with permission. (buy now) Today is the birthday of economist and Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt (books by this author), born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1967. He studies the economic factors involved in crime, and published a controversial paper, "The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime," in 2001. The paper concluded there was a correlation between the legalization of abortion and a reduction in the crime rate 18 years later; not only did it cause a furor in the abortion debate, it also came under criticism from the economic community for using flawed research methods. Weekly newspaper The Economistchided, "For someone of Mr. Levitt's iconoclasm and ingenuity, technical ineptitude is a much graver charge than moral turpitude. To be politically incorrect is one thing; to be simply incorrect quite another." Levitt and his colleague apologized for the error, and corrected it, but said their conclusion was nevertheless sound; although the link between the two variables was weaker, the results were still statistically significant. In 2005, he published Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything with New York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner. Freakonomics was followed in 2009 by SuperFreakonomics. Time named him to their list of "100 People Who Shape Our World" in 2006, citing his ability to think outside the box — "way, way outside," said Time. It's the birthday of comedian Bob Hope (1903) (books by this author), born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, near London. His family moved to the United States when he was four years old, and he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. His first successful show-biz venture came at the age of 10, when he won a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest. By 1940, after working in vaudeville, Broadway, and radio, he was one of America's most popular comedians. His comedy was verbal, not physical, and he usually played unsympathetic characters that the audience could feel superior to. Bob Hope died in 2003, two months after his 100th birthday. It was on this day in 1913 that the world premiere of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps caused a riot at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Known as "The Rite of Spring," the ballet tells the story of a young girl who is chosen as a sacrificial offering to spring and dances herself to death. The Paris of 1913 was caught between tradition and modernity. The opening of the Eiffel Tower had drawn scorn in 1889; telephones and elevators were beginning to creep into everyday life. In the arts, Picasso and Gertrude Stein were testing the limits of representation and narrative. On the evening of May 29, 1913, two types of people had gathered for the debut of this ballet: the wealthy, who expected beautiful music and choreography; and the Bohemians, who were eager for something bold and new. Stravinsky's opening called for a bassoon to "play higher in its range than anyone else had ever done." The audience stirred. The curtain rose on dancers dressed not in elegant, drifting tulle, but in heavy, drape-like fabric. And they did not leap lightly. They stomped about the stage. Audience laughter drove Stravinsky to the wings, where choreographer Vaslav Nijinksy had to shout his directions to the dancers, so loud was the reaction from the audience. The music was dissonant and jarring; there was no melody. There were catcalls and hisses, fistfights between patrons. Forty people were ejected, but not before the audience had turned on the orchestra. The musicians patiently played on, even as they were pelted with vegetables. Stravinsky once confessed his schooldays were lonely: "I never came across anyone who had any real attraction for me." The debut of the ballet changed that; within days, he was the most famous and sought-after composer in the world. The Rite of Spring is now considered a masterpiece of 20th-century music. | 