We tell you on this show that we are all about the news at the top of the hour, the news without which men die miserably day, the news we need, the news we heed, the news inside the fast-breaking, late-breaking, heart-breaking news, the news we brake for, slowing down with poetry, and in our focus today on the headline news about confirmation hearings for Secretary of the Interior, and the running of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the fate of the National Parks, and federal lands created to protect the environment, John Muir is in the news, because of his words, and by coincidence, this is the time our communities are having Bobby Burns Birthday Parties, known as the Bobby Burns Dinners, toasting him. Aye, we’re toasting this week, all over the world, it’s the anniversary of the first Bobby Burns’ anniversary dinner, as we raise a glass to “To a Mouse.”

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Thoreau’s Lines A Tattoo (Temporary but Permanent on the Inside) (“put it on your bicep, Dr. B!)”, or a Whitman “flag of my disposition,” and what those words together mean in our times. A show of green sleuthing as we explore the role of poetry in laws on behalf of wilderness and freedom. How can a few words change the world—literally, our lives, our physical world? Come, let’s into the woods, and think about what nature has to teach us, the lessons we need to live with each other on this earth, from trees, brooks, stones, and . . . everything (“. . . which is natural which is infinite which is yes”—e.e. cummings).

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SO . . . HOW SHOULD WE BEGIN? YOUR TRUSTY DIY GUIDE TO A NEW YEAR, BEING NEW THE POETRY WAY.

A Guideline to a New Year, the Poetry Way. Hello friends, who lend me your ears, we’re hear together for the Poetry Slow Down, slowing down for the news we need, the news we heed, the news without which men die miserably every day—so they say—our poet William Carlos Williams’ case for poetry saving the day, our lives—making our day, with the way we say. Today it’s about how we’re old and new, borrowed and blue, going forth bravely into a so called new year! I’m your host Professor Barbara Mossberg, Dr. B, with our Producer Zappa as in THE MR Frank Zappa Johns, and we’ve moved from old school tradish on-off, dial-in radio, to the new fangled forms of how we talk to each other these days, in podcast, at barbaramossberg.com, available 24/7, whenever!

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As we ring in the new year, we think about the days when January wasn’t even a month, much less the herald and threshold of a new year, and how to get things started right, with cleaning, you heard me, cleaning, and it will be a clean sweep of a show, getting the dust out and it’ll be quite the dust up, as we get all spruced up for a new year, with poetry. And no spiders will be injured in the making of this show, or in its advice.

Stay tuned for The Poetry Slow Down, with Dr. B, Professor Barbara Mossberg, Produced by Zappa (yes, named for that Zappa) Johns.

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