Word: muses
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Americans might even honor the exuberant, slightly bizarre poetry of their commercial muse. Two or three generations ago, the national laureate might have been the anonymous bard who wrote the Burma Shave roadside quatrains ("In this vale/ Of toil and sin/ Your head grows bald/ But not your chin/ Burma Shave.") The beer commercial ("You've danced all day on a pool of fire," or some such: "Now Comes Miller Time!") has invented a sort of macho haiku that might turn into a national verse form...
...They will not remember your face, or your name; they may preside over Harvard and Radcliffe, but they are partially human. Skippable, unless you fear that you may never get that close to them again. Your fears may be justified. The Fogg is a nice place to stroll and muse, too. The rest of you will have to wait with baited breath till tomorrow...
...perception that the world gets crazier every day is not particularly new. It may not even be true. But the diverse people who hold this view have one thing in common: a good deal of spare time in which to muse. Novelist Walker Percy, 64, has made such free-floating contemplatives his trademark. From The Moviegoer (1961) on, his heroes have been thinking animals, unencumbered by the routines and demands of daily life. They are either feckless or rich...
...quantitative method of cliometrics (from Clio, the muse of history) has demonstrated ways in which computers can define trends and correct the errors of historical preconception. For years historians have spoken of the Civil War as the nation's economic breaking point, the moment when, as Charles and Mary Beard argued 50 years ago, the urban industrial North seized power from the agrarian South in a "second American revolution." Through cliometrics, says the University of Pittsburgh's Samuel Hays, historians have analyzed such production figures as railroad mileage and steel output, and found that the "takeoff points" occurred...
Like Childe Harold, Jimmy Carter was on a pilgrimage to Venice this week, not to muse on the fate of a vanished empire but to confer with the leaders of six allies in an effort to repair their sadly weakened ties. It was the sixth such summit in as many years, and it promised to be the most rancorous. Not in years has the West seemed in such disarray, with a newly self-confident Europe going its own way on issues ranging from the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan to the deadlocked Middle East peace talks. Predicted a senior West German...