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Barack Obama is using mass text technology to make his VP announcement to his supporters. Using this technology in this manner for the first time, the people signed up to receive the text, before the actual announcement, are planned to have a better sense of that personal involvement and exclusivity. Of course that ‘exclusivity’ will last a matter of seconds as every reporter in the US has signed up as well. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A blog about writing, baseball, literature, family, pets, and life, but not necessarily in that order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A blog about writing, baseball, literature, family, pets, and life, but not necessarily in that order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A blog about writing, baseball, literature, family, pets, and life, but not necessarily in that order.American Life in Poetry: Column 177 By Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006 Kristen Tracy is a poet from San Francisco who here captures a moment at a zoo. It's the falling rain, don't you think, that makes the experience of observing the animals seem so perfectly truthful and vivid? Rain at the Zoo A giraffe presented its head to me, tilting itsideways, reaching out its long gray tongue.I gave it my wheat cracker while small dropsof rain pounded us both. Lightning cracked openthe sky. Zebras zipped across the field.It was springtime in Michigan. I watchedthe giraffe shuffle itself backwards, towardthe herd, its bone- and rust-colored fur beadingwith water. The entire mix of animals stoodaway from the trees. A lone emu shookits round body hard and squawked. It ranalong the fence line, jerking open its wings.Perhaps it was trying to shake away the burdenof water or indulging an urge to fly. I can't know.I have no idea what about their lives these animalslove or abhor. They are captured or born here for us,and we come. It's true. This is my favorite field. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © Kristen Tracy, whose most recent teen novel is Crimes of the Sarahs, Simon & Schuster, 2008. Poem reprinted from AGNI Online, 9/2007, by permission of Kristen Tracy. Introduction copyright © 2008 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

On the right: Yours truly, blogger Mike Matthews [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Thanks to everyone for making the past three days the BIGGEST in DWA’s more than four years in existence! On each of the three days, we went well over 2,000 hits. On one day we did more than 3,000. However, the interesting thing is that we did more than 1,000 unique visitors on two of those days and 900 on the third. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The time: 4:30 pm [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A blog about writing, baseball, literature, family, pets, and life, but not necessarily in that order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

…with his offensive and vile brand of filth! Here’s the audio from my appearance on yesterday’s Rick Jensen Show. The Rick Jensen Show starts around minute 70. So give it a minute to load and then go forward. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

…with his offensive and vile brand of filth! Here’s the audio from my appearance on yesterday’s Rick Jensen Show. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Dear Diary: The email came mid-day Tuesday. I arose from the coach which was providing suitable comfort for a mid-afternoon nap. Looking over the back of said piece of furniture, I noticed I had a new message in my Gmail browser. The message was via my “Contact Form” feature in the upper-left corner of the blog. The message had arrived eight minutes earlier. A producer from WHYY’s “Delaware Tonight” asked if I’d be interested in appearing on a panel discussion on Friday evening. Being the media whore that I am, I phoned this producer and offered an emphatic “Yes!” Producer informed me there’d be two other guests along with the host. I wondered who these guests would be. I didn’t want to ask for fear of being rebuffed (Yeah, right. When is your fearless blogger ever afraid?) She informed me she’d call me on Thursday to complete a pre-interview. Thursday arrived and I awaited her phone call anxiously. She asked me several questions, most wondering why I am the way I am and why I’m such a wonderful person. OK, not really. Questions on her mind revolved around the legitimacy of bloggers and the medium as a whole. Did I see myself as influential? (”Umm…no”) Is the language I use a good thing? (”Ummm…yes”) Do you see blogs as having an effect on the political process? (”Umm…maybe”) After asking, she confirmed I would have to dress respectably. For me this means ensuring no stains on my shirt and properly combed hair. It also means I’d have to whip out my five-year-old suit. Ugh. In the past five years I’ve gained and lost 50 pounds. Lately it seems that 50 pounds has fallen on the “gained” side. I was not looking forward to Friday. I took the dreaded suit out of its nice-and-neat plastic wrapping from the dry cleaners. I think I last wore this thing to a funeral or a job interview several years ago. I’m so friggin’ huge I didn’t know if I’d be able to fit only one leg into the pair of pants! Alas, it wasn’t the pants I had to worry about. They fit fine. It was the garish yellow shirt that was about two sizes too small and that hideous jacket that wouldn’t button that turned out to cause me worries. I was busting at the seams. My man-boobies were ready to pounce at any moment and I wondered if a quick Saran Wrap-wrap would do the trick. I took off my undershirt, rushed downstairs and got out the plastic stuff. I immediately began a wrap of my man-bosoms I left this on for all of five minutes; I soon found out I was sweating so profusely that I was beginning to marinate in the wet nastiness forming around my torso. I wanted to go back to the kitchen, grab the turkey baster and suck up all the salty juiciness. The Saran Wrap had to go. And it did. I made do with two too-tight undershirts to help compress my man-titties. Though compression was achieved for the most part, my feelings about stepping outside into the oppressive heat in a car with no air conditioning made for little relief. The time: 4:30. I was to be in studio no later than 5:15. I quickly and carelessly put on my tie and decided to sit down so I could cool off just a bit. A big man exerting lots of energy in short periods of time is a recipe for disaster. The only recipe I could think of, though, was the bowl of avocado, mango, and crabmeat to be topped on a crunchy piece of Belgian endive. Leftovers from dinner the other night. I dug in. Dammit, Michael. Don’t you know ... [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A blog about writing, baseball, literature, family, pets, and life, but not necessarily in that order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A blog about writing, baseball, literature, family, pets, and life, but not necessarily in that order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A blog about writing, baseball, literature, family, pets, and life, but not necessarily in that order. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It's Easter, and somehow I woke up thinking of Yeats and his poem Easter, 1916 . There was a period in my life when Yeats was a cornerstone poet for me. I think, among other things, I was fascinated with how his life and work bridged the Victorian and Modern eras--he lived from the end of the U.S. civil war (1865) to the outbreak of the second World War (1939). But I also was attracted to his melancholy in poems like "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "Sailing to Byzantium" (and yes, that opening line of Byzantium, "That is no country for old men" is indeed the source of the title of the book and the movie ). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Is there something about being at 9000 feet that makes your poo so damn nasty? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Yes, that is the name of a TV show here in the Mormon-polygamist-evangelitard state of Utah. It features women who’ve had abortions and who now are trying to repent their sins! Nevermind that all of the women featured are ones no one would want to fuck any how. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

So I am looking for a new office. I have been in Waltham for the past couple of years, but want to move back into the city, Boston, Brookline, or Cambridge, probably in that order. I am not terribly picky about space, but it needs to be an office and not a cubicle and I want it to be all-inclusive--rent, utilities, and Internet included. And it must be on the T. If you are a broker and represent one of those expensive "executive office" spaces like Regus, don't bother--I am not interested and don't have the budget. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Back in the day, I would get to 6-8 Red Sox games a year, but the tickets are just incredibly expensive now, and with the boys so busy and expensive, we go less. I think each of the last two years, we have only gone once. But we got to go as a family on Monday, and we saw an incredible game-- a no-hitter by Jon Lester , a young man who is only a year away from battling an aggressive form of cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bill Buckner is throwing out the first ball . I guess enough time has passed since you-know-when . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

... Pierre-Auguste Renoir . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

... and produces gems like this, a 1988 article that relates a story about how Larry Bird viewed an earlier Boston legend, and one of the heroes of my youth, Bobby Orr. At the Boston Garden when the national anthem is played, Bird gazes to the heavens. Everyone assumes that he's looking at the Celtics banners, but ironically, he began to fix his eyes on only one banner--the retired No. 4. But not retired by the Celtics. The No. 4 belonged to the Bruins' Bobby Orr. Bird has stared at the black and gold banner so many times, he can see it in his mind's eye. He knows every stitch, how many lines pierce the circle around the capital B. "Eight. Don't bet me," he says. Bird had met Orr only once and had never seen him play, but he had heard how great he was as a player and had learned how much Boston admired Orr as a person. Bird had been too bashful ever to tell Orr this, though, and revealed it only last month in his speech at the Sports Museum dinner, where Orr was on hand for the unveiling of Bird's statue. When Orr heard Bird speak of him, the breath went out of him in a whoosh, and there were tears in his eyes. "My god," Orr whispered in the dark. "My god." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A moment of summer bliss, foreshadowed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

American Life in Poetry: Column 153 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To flog myself publicly, I’m calling up that I’ve been bad about exercising in the past few weeks, only going to the gym twice (sometimes just once ) each week. All of the sordid details are documented on my Twitter exercise blog . This is all a result of my new year’s resolution to become more physically fit . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cloudy and 85 degrees . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

My clock radio waking me at 6:30 AM to the sounds of a Red Sox baseball game Even stranger--being in bumper-to-bumper traffic when the Red Sox tied it in the top of the 9th on Brandon Moss's first-ever major league home run Three guys ogling a new driver in the parking lot when I got to the office. We just had Easter, which is about as early as you can have it, and I don't see much green yet. I am still waiting for more traditional signs of Spring, like buttercups! [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

American Life in Poetry: Column 157 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

... , "has been one of the dark places of the earth." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

American Life in Poetry: Column 152 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I don't cook much, but I went out for dinner with my older son the other night and discovered the restaurant had dropped my favorite dish from there, Penne Puttanesca , from the menu. I had to go with something else, but that left me thinking of the dish since. So this morning I woke up with the idea to make it myself. Those of you who cook a lot know the Internet is a treasure trove for recipes, so I searched and found a bewildering array of choices. But I read a bunch, and found one I liked , at a sight whose name, MassRecipes.com , seems to indicated it is built for volume and not necessarily for quality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It's Easter, and somehow I woke up thinking of Yeats and his poem Easter, 1916 . There was a period in my life when Yeats was a cornerstone poet for me. I think, among other things, I was fascinated with how his life and work bridged the Victorian and Modern eras--he lived from the end of the U.S. civil war (1865) to the outbreak of the second World War (1939). But I also was attracted to his melancholy in poems like "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" and "Sailing to Byzantium" (and yes, that opening line of Byzantium, "That is no country for old men" is indeed the source of the title of the book and the movie ). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ted Kooser thinks so. Around this time of year, for more than 20 years, women around the country have checked their mail and found a postcard bearing a red heart in the corner and a poem: a valentine from Ted Kooser, who was U.S. poet laureate from 2004 to 2006. Now, he has collected those poems in a book called Valentines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pitchers and catchers report today ! [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

American Life in Poetry: Column 156 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From my high school newspaper, junior year. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A moment of summer bliss, foreshadowed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

American Life in Poetry: Column 153 [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

... Pierre-Auguste Renoir . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I don't cook much, but I went out for dinner with my older son the other night and discovered the restaurant had dropped my favorite dish from there, Penne Puttanesca , from the menu. I had to go with something else, but that left me thinking of the dish since. So this morning I woke up with the idea to make it myself. Those of you who cook a lot know the Internet is a treasure trove for recipes, so I searched and found a bewildering array of choices. But I read a bunch, and found one I liked , at a sight whose name, MassRecipes.com , seems to indicated it is built for volume and not necessarily for quality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cloudy and 85 degrees . [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ted Kooser thinks so. Around this time of year, for more than 20 years, women around the country have checked their mail and found a postcard bearing a red heart in the corner and a poem: a valentine from Ted Kooser, who was U.S. poet laureate from 2004 to 2006. Now, he has collected those poems in a book called Valentines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pitchers and catchers report today ! [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City . The book is even better than the title, and it will soon be on the big screen . A nice review of the book is here. The author has a terrific website with a lot of original material, though it's a little heavy on the pop-ups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

My second training session at the gym was last Friday, when my introductory trainer took some more measurements and prescribed a weight lifting regimen. Though my BMI is just fine (22), my body fat measurement is a bad situation (I’m at 25%), with the bulk of that in my midsection. The trainer stepped through the weight equipment, setting me up with the right weights and repetitions to start on. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Further to my new year’s resolution , I’ve been to the gym a few times now, and had my first evaluation and training session today. A personal trainer asked me a series of health questions and took some measurements. Then had me complete a pair of tasks. The results were pathetic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

My 2007 resolution (become conscious of the environmental impact of my actions and, with that knowledge, reduce my ecological footprint) went very well . I consider it a great success. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Yes, I got a video camera yesterday (thanks Dad and Stepmom!) So I decided to play with it. Perhaps I’ll get my film-major sister to help me with all the bells and whistles and that shit. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

To friends near and far! [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]