Within a Sky Full of Earth

ARTIGO SOBRE HENRIQUE SENNA FERNANDES NA REVISTA BRASILEIRA BRAVO

Toca o telefone no escritório de advocacia do escritor macaense Henrique de Senna Fernandes. Chamada de São Paulo. Em Macau, ex-colônia portuguesa na Ásia e desde 1999 região administrativa especial da República Popular da China, os relógios estão no futuro — nesta época do ano, dez horas a mais em relação ao Brasil —, mas o idioma no qual se expressa o jornalista que procura pelo autor ficou no passado. "Can you speak in English?", pergunta do outro lado da linha, com voz constrangida e sotaque achinesado, uma assistente de Senna Fernandes, logo que ouve as primeiras palavras na língua da antiga metrópole.

O episódio reforça a ideia de que Senna Fernandes (1923) talvez represente o último capítulo de peso da história da literatura produzida em português no continente asiático — ou, ao menos, em Macau. Assim, a publicação no Brasil de dois livros do ficcionista, Nam Van (contos, 1978) e Amor e Dedinhos de Pé (romance, 1986), já constituiria, por si só, um acontecimento editorial. Há, no entanto, algo mais a sublinhar: a obra do autor é um paradigma da expressão identitária de Macau, moldada a partir da fricção entre as tradições portuguesa e chinesa, disso resultando uma "cultura de encontro". "O macaense é precisamente o produto do equilíbrio de várias culturas, entre as quais se destacam a portuguesa, a raiz, e a chinesa, o solo. Eu sempre quis mostrar essa possibilidade de duas culturas tão díspares encontrarem uma plataforma de entendimento e de adaptação, criando um mundo novo", explicou o escritor em entrevista a BRAVO.
[TOTALIDADE DO TEXTO AQUI] [FOTO BLOOMLAND.CN]

Recently published and available at Bloom Yellow is the quarterly issue of ARTICHOKE, the official magazine of the Design Institute of Australia. Interesting, relevant and sometimes controversial, ARTICHOKE communicates good design and the discussion of design issues to industry professionals and a broader audience of design aware consumers.
ARTICHOKE covers interior architecture and design, textile design, product design, exhibition design and graphic design, and provides designers with news and information on current trends and projects, and is published four times a year.
ARTICHOKE is endorsed by the Design Institute of Australia (DIA) and the Australian Institute of Architects.
See some sample print pages here and come to Bloom to buy it, we can tell you is worth every dime spent. Good photos, good design, good texts and a beautiful piece of printing material.

ARTICHOKE MAGAZINE • AVAILABLE AT BLOOM NOW!

It's a new arrival at our yellow shop the frieze magazine, an English venture on contemporary art and culture.
This publication is managed by the Frieze Foundation, a non-profit organization established in 2003 and responsible for the curated programme at Frieze Art Fair, who comprises artist commissions, talks, films, music and education.
Frieze Art Fair is held every October in Regent’s Park, London. It features more than 150 of the most exciting contemporary art galleries in the world. As well as these exhibitors, the Fair includes specially commissioned artists’ projects and an ambitious talks calendar. Frieze Foundation is funded by the European Commission’s Culture 2000 programme.
The magazine, along with its website, is now the front-head of the whole project and the scratch from where it began. Launched up in 1991, frieze magazine, is the leading magazine of contemporary art and culture. frieze is published eight times a year and includes essays, reviews and columns by today’s most forward-thinking writers, artists and curators. You can buy it now in Macau at Bloom Yellow at St. Lazarus district. For subscriptions send us an email. Thank you!
RELATED LINK: frieze project

If you come to BLOOM YELLOW today the first thing you notice is that the magazines are epidemic and are crawling through every space available. As we got many different titles they spread around and we're running out of place for all of them, which in a way is good because we have a good offer.
One of the last arrivals is Foreign Affairs, the preeminent journal of foreign policy and international affairs, who provides to government and business leaders, students, and the general public with insightful, thought-provoking analysis on world events for over 80 years. Before it becomes policy, it's all there, in Foreign Affairs.
Founded in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations is a non-profit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs through the free exchange of ideas. Its 3,400 members include nearly all past and present Presidents, Secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury, other senior U.S. government officials, renowned scholars, and major leaders of business, media, human rights, and other non-governmental groups. Each year the Council sponsors several hundred meetings including televised debates and other media events, and publishes Foreign Affairs, the preeminent journal in the field, as well as dozens of other reports and books by noted experts.
Since 1922, the Council has published Foreign Affairs, America's most influential publication on international affairs and foreign policy. It is more than a magazine — it is the international forum of choice for the most important new ideas, analysis, and debate on the most significant issues in the world. Inevitably, articles published in Foreign Affairs shape the political dialogue for months and years to come.
On this issue [September/October 2008, Vol 87, Number 5] you can read about the Dauting Agenda of the next U. S. President, who will inherit a more difficult set of international challenges than any predecessor since World War II, an essay by Richard Holbrooke. Along you can follow the Bush Era in perspective. Read also articles by Christopher Hitchens and Antonio Guterres, former Prime-minister of Portugal and UN High Comissioner for Refugees. Look for A Strategic Economic Engagement, the right way to engage China, an essay by Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary.
Plenty of readings to start your weekend and to boost the coming month.
[FOREIGN AFFAIRS WEBSITE]

And yes, we are back in town!

From all the magazines that arrived to Bloom Yellow in our new quest, icon was one of those that stood out from the rest. Clean and beautifully designed, it's one of the world's finest architecture and design magazines, with a whole content to keep an eye on. Every month there are interviews with the most exciting architects and designers in the world, insights to the best new buildings, analyses to the most interesting new cultural movements and technologies, and reviews on an eclectic range of exhibitions, books, products and films.
Magnificent and accessible, rigorous and insightful, icon shows you exactly what's happening in architecture and design today, and what it means for the future.
Since the first issue in 2003 they've won a dozen awards, including magazine of the year (twice), best architectural journalist and best critic at the International Building Press awards, and best designed business-to-business magazine and best use of typography at the Magazine Design Awards. If we could sell a lot icon's every month we were doing a very good action and Macau, for sure, would be a better place to live. So please come and get it. Order and subscribe it! Indulge yourself!
We have started with the August issue, the 062 edition of icon, it comes with a colourful cover hand-stained by Fernando Brizio. Inside, the Portuguese designer talks about his work and his debt to Buster Keaton. Also profiled this issue is Junya Ishigami, widely tipped as the next big thing in Japanese architecture and a young master of post-SANAA minimalism. And icon explores Dominique Perrault’s Ewha Womans University in Seoul, a glass-and-steel chasm dressed up as a hill.
Meanwhile, has design photography lost touch with reality? Computer rendering and photo retouching have become so prevalent that some designers no longer want their products to look real – they ask them why. In news, there’s new work from Álvaro Siza, Zaha Hadid, Jurgen Bey and Tom Dixon, and Andrea Branzi talks about the crisis in architecture. In review, there’s psychosis at the Hayward, a musical building in New York and an expensive piece of gadgetry in a pint glass.
Is that enough for a magazine?
MORE AT icon'S WEBSITE

A revista LER, fundada em 1987, regressou de novo às bancas, totalmente renovada, com uma nova equipa, liderada por Francisco José Viegas, com um nova imagem gráfica, um novo formato, e com novos colaboradores onde se destaca a maior informação possível sobre os livros à venda em Portugal — mas sempre com vivacidade na vontade de chegar a um público mais vasto, afastando a ideia de que é um produto exclusivamente intelectual.
É talvez com esse desígnio de chegar mais longe, diga-se em termos de vendas e de projecção da revista no mercado nacional, e depois de Lobo Antunes e Saramago, que o terceiro número da nova geração da LER traz Margarida Rebelo Pinto na capa. Lá dentro, numa entrevista de nove páginas com a autora que já vendeu um milhão de livros em toda a sua carreira, Carlos Vaz Marques tenta pormenorizar os passos e o valor desta escritora que tanta polémica tem gerado no mundo literário português, encostando-a um pouco à parede mas sem na verdade a pôr em causa. Poder-se-á pensar que esta escolha entra um pouco em dissonância com o resto da revista, mas o mundo vive do debate de ideias por fazer e das suas discussões. Margarida Rebelo Pinto é um fenómeno da edição de livros e um dos maiores exemplos de sucesso. Será esssa razão suficiente para a dimensão que lhe é dada?
A LER de Julho/Agosto traz ainda os destaques de Zadie Smith, Hisham Matar, Mário Cláudio e de todo o panorama da publicação mais recente, com extractos de Roberto Bolaño, com Os Detectives Selvagens e de David Peace, com Tokyo - Ano Zero. Fala-se também dos 25 livros para deglutir este Verão e das 10 cidades literárias para visitar e ler. Esta revista conta com um dsitinto leque no seu corpo 'clínico' de colunistas e colaboradores onde se podem encontrar os nomes de José Mário Silva, Eduardo Pitta, José Eduardo Agualusa, Inês Pedrosa, Pedro Mexia, Abel Barros Baptista, entre muitos outros.
A Bloom tem trazido discretamente a LER para Macau, onde planeia uma apresentação da mesma com mais detalhe, por agora pode encontrá-la no Albergue de São Lázaro, onde se encontra sediada a Bloom Yellow, onde se encontram à venda ainda os números anteriores.
[A LER ESTÁ AQUI]

Intelligent Life is an engaging lifestyle magazine from The Economist. With spirited writing and bold design, now available each season, this elegant publication brings its unique perspective to an eclectic range of issues from travel and the arts to fashion and philanthropy. In features and shorter pieces, Intelligent Life delivers insights into the pleasures and potential of modern living. With distinguished writers from around the world and evocative photography commissioned for each issue, Intelligent Life is a dynamic new environment for readers and advertisers alike.
The issue 4, Summer-2008, is dedicated and has a cover story with the architect Zaha Hahid. After being dismissed as a paper architect because her buildings never seemed to be built, Zaha Hadid is now firmly established as a star in her field.
Intelligent Life is now published quarterly: September, December, March and June. The magazine will be available on newsstands all around the world, or by subscription, in the UK, continental Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In Macau, it has just arrived to Bloom. We have just a few. Run while you can!

Fun, educational and sort of quick. This magazine blurs the lines between a great education and great entertainment. Packed full with pages of tidbits, quirky facts and history, a delightfully eclectic new publication who teaches what you should have learned in school - but didn't.
For the record: mental_floss magazine is an intelligent read, but not too intelligent. They're the sort of intelligent that you hang out with for a while, enjoy our company, laugh a little, smile a lot and then you part ways. Great times. And you only realize how much you learned from them after a little while. Like a couple days later when you're impressing your friends with all these intriguing facts and things you picked up from them, and they ask you how you know so much, and you think back on that great afternoon you spent with mental_floss and you smile. Then you lie and say you read a lot.
And here it is now at Bloom Yellow, the July-August issue. If you think you're loosing something on your right or left side of the brain this is the right way to catch it and "feel smart again."
This issue: In the search for Olympic heroes, mental_floss found more than the fastest and the strongest. They also found the craziest, the dirtiest, the meanest, the boldest, the bravest, the saddest, and the funniest. From the swimmer who dog paddled his way to last place to the gymnast who won three gold medals with one leg, they've got all your shocking Olympic stories right there.
Plus: The Quest To Solve The Hardest Math Problem In History. The discovery how Igor Stravinsky introduced the world to music so good that it hurt.
Beijing: Despite the city's 14-inch height limit on dogs, Beijing is living large. Explore its plans to feed the dead, stop the rain, and survive a nuclear holocaust. And much more!

Now we're one of those guys who never stops barking! Do guys bark? Well, now they do! ;-)

Mountains of cash, beautiful women, and a nonstop round-the-world party. This is the life of Calvin Ayre, founder of the online gambling powerhouse Bodog, a company headquartered in Antigua. Shortly after university, Ayre sold everything he owned and with $10,000 to his name he created a brand that could cross over into any industry: The Bodog Entertainment Group. This year, in April, Ayre announced his retirement from Bodog. He now intends to devote his time to The Calvin Ayre Foundation, a private and independent foundation with a charter to do charitable work worldwide. Josh Dean from Fast Company magazine wanted to know why and he met him in Macau earlier this year in February where Ayre was digging for new connections and expansion opportunities for his company. You can read the whole article online or go directly to St. Lazarus district and step into Bloom Yellow (check our map here on the right side) to take the paper version and take it wherever you want. FC is a full-color monthly business magazine that reports on innovation, digital media, technology, change management, leadership, design and social responsibility. It was launched in November 1995 by Alan Webber and Bill Taylor, two former Harvard Business Review editors, and it's now owned by the Forbes 400 billionaire, John Mansueto. FC is the sister of Inc. magazine, a publication dedicated to covering growing businesses and entrepreneurs.

Our great challenge at our new store, Bloom Yellow, is the wide selection of magazines we are bringing to Macau. You can check them at St. Lazarus or simply ask for a tittle throwing us an email, we can get access to hundreds of different titles in English, French, Italian, Spanish and German, you can get them either from special order or by subscription through out our counters. Of course Portuguese titles will come sooner or later.
Right now we bring you Cook's Illustrated. Published by Boston Common Press this magazine provides readers with recipes, cooking techniques, and product and food recommendations exhaustively developed in our extensive Test Kitchen facility - the same kitchen featured on our cooking show, America's Test Kitchen. Included are best ways to prepare favorite American dishes - from pot roast and chocolate chip cookies to grilled salmon and fruit cobbler. Best (and worst) cooking equipment - from chef's knives to cookie sheets. Best brands - from canned tomatoes to baking chocolate. Best cooking techniques - from brining shrimp to baking ham. And all of this is provided without a single page of advertising - just 100% cooking information.
On this issue learn the best way to preserve your natural ingredients in the fridge, keeping all its nutrients and flavours safe and in full shape.
[NOW AT BLOOM YELLOW]

AND THAT'S WHY I LOVE THE NEW YORKER *
On the morning of July 8, 1980, Raymond Carver wrote an impassioned letter to Gordon Lish, his friend and editor at Alfred A. Knopf, begging his forgiveness but insisting that Lish “stop production” of Carver’s forthcoming collection of stories, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” Carver had been up all night reviewing Lish’s severe editorial cuts––two stories had been slashed by nearly seventy per cent, many by almost half; many descriptions and digressions were gone; endings had been truncated or rewritten––and he was unnerved to the point of desperation. A recovering alcoholic and a fragile spirit, Carver wrote that he was “confused, tired, paranoid, and afraid.” He feared exposure before his friends, who had read many of the stories in their earlier versions. If the book went forward, he said, he feared he might never write again; if he stopped it, he feared losing Lish’s love and friendship. And he feared, above all, a return to “those dark days,” not long before, when he was broken, defeated. “I’ll tell you the truth, my very sanity is on the line here,” he wrote to Lish.
[FOLLOW THE FULL TEXT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES HERE]
* If you like we borrow you this edition of the magazine, but you have to promise that you'll bring it back.

Born 1968, in Canada.
Canadian publisher and style guru.
His father, Paul Brule, was a Canadian football star and later went into business. His mother is an artist.
Tyler Brûlé attended more than ten school while his father went from one football team to another. His parents split up.
He says that he guessed that he was gay when he was aged seven, and that he was always obsessed with clothes. His father stopped talking to him when Tyler Brûlé told him about his sexual tendencies.
He studied journalism and political science in Canada and the United States.
He worked in television in Australia.
In 1989 he moved to Britain to take up a job with BBC Manchester's youth television department and worked on style stories as well as some hard news.
He worked as a freelance writer for Vanity Fair, Vogue, Stern, and other publications.
In 1993 he was sent by Sky magazine to Afghanistan with photographer Zed Nelson to do a story about Médecins Sans Frontières. While driving through Kabul they were machine-gunned and Tyler Brûlé was shot. They managed to escape and get to a hospital where it was found that his injuries were to his arms and would end losing the use of his left hand. He returned to England and continued to be hospitalised for some time.
He set up the style magazine Wallpaper* in 1996. He sold it to Time Inc. in 1997 for over £1 million but continued to oversee it. By 2001 it had a worldwide monthly circulation of 134402.
He also launched the sports magazine, Line, and Spruce, fashion related, but were not successful and lasted for 3 issues only.
In 2001 he was hired to design the "look and feel" of Swiss International Air Lines at their relaunch, after the collapse of Swissair. In the same year he became the youngest ever recipient of the British Society of Magazine Editors' Lifetime Achievement Award.
In May 2002, Brûlé left Wallpaper and concentrated on Winkmedia (now Winkreative), a design agency he founded in 1998.
In 2005, hehosted the TV media magazine The Desk on BBC Four. In 2006, he co-produced Counter Culture, a documentary series about cultural aspects of shopping, on the same channel.
He was a columnist for the Financial Times, The New York Times, and Neue Zürcher Zeitung am Sonntag. His "Fast Lane" column, which appeared in the weekend supplement of the Financial Times, covered his observations on travel, trends and high-end consumer goods gathered in the course of his travels during the week, which often seemed to involve visits to more than two continents.
In October 2006, he announced that he would create a new magazine, to be called MONOCLE, which launched February 15, 2007. In December 2006, he announced in "Fast Lane" that he would be taking a break from the column to work on projects. On February 14, 2007, the International Herald Tribune announced a "new weekly column on urbanism and global navigation" by Brûlé, starting on the 3rd of March.
It is said that Brûlé's father does not appear to have used any diacritical marks or accents on the family surname.

This is Weekend Weekly a travel magazine from Hong Kong with a high circulation rate. As you can see on the left bottom corner we are on the cover, along side with some landmarks of Macau. It's incredible to have such a privilege and at first we could not believe it.
Nowadays everyone is giving a special attention to Macau. More and more visitors are coming and the scoop of citizens that want to live and work here is growing up. The territory is most of all an opportunity for business. Mainly for outside investors that bang the real estate and put it on fire. And other find their niches of market among the revenues of tourism and leisure. For most of the local population this snowball it's not bringing its benefits as prices are much higher on everything. But life goes on.
Weekend Weekly one more time gives its front to the other side of the Delta. But this time it's not about the big projects of luxury or the new casinos and their big complexes of entertainment. The main article is focused on the Best Kept Secrets of Macau. The undisclosed daily life of the streets. Small projects that give to the city a different expression. Almost individual efforts to create unique resources and furtive amenities where you can hide from the frame of the stressful demanding urban life.
From cultural places, to restaurants, to associations and other strolls, this edition, where the architect Nuno Soares also chooses his particular places, points to new targets on the map. And so, there we are as the Lonely Planet's Pick. We are much grateful and honored. This is a cover to be hanged on the wall. [CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE IT BIGGER.]

The new issue of MONOCLE is here and you cannot miss it. Of course you can, but that's up to you. You'll loose a lot of things you should see and read. I mean, I'm not trying to convince you about buying the magazine. It's just that I like it. Alright, I am. Really I am trying to getting your eyes into it. Yes, you should buy MONOCLE. Because it's so nice. The touch of the paper, the content, the layout. It talks about cities in the world. It tells you about other countries and their tempts to grow outstanding, not necessarily new or big, but wonderful. From Pakistan to Denmark you'll have it all. A, B, C, D, E. Affairs, Business, Culture, Design, Edits. And I'm the marketing manager down here.
MONOCLE is a multimedia venture by the Canadian journalist and entrepreneur Tyler Brûlé, a dissident and the man behind Wallpaper* magazine. It is edited by Andrew Tuck. The Creative Director is Richard Spencer Powell, and the Director of Web and Broadcast is Dan Hill.
'The cover brings the analogue world and the movement to resist against the digital conquer. Plus a security check on airport perimeter defenses. Inside, and every issue goes a bit on the orient, you have China's economic lubricant with its new pack of luxury malls; a photo essay on the new Beijing buildings; the African community in Guangzhou. And if you cannot hear about China anymore you can dig aside an article on Kabul or Johannesburg. Or whatever.
MONOCLE is one of the few magazines that cost less in Asia (100 Mop$) than in Europe (10 €). Maybe there's even a black market about it. People buying in Asia and smuggling it in Europe at a higher price. But that is something is not my business and I don't really know.
[FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS THROW AS AN EMAIL HERE AND YOU GET 2 ISSUES FOR FREE]

My Little Dead Dick is the visual diary of photographers Madi Ju of China and Patrick Tsai of the USA. They got together last year, when they both traveled to Macau in order to meet face-to-face after a month of intense internet correspondence. After nine days, they went back to their own countries, quit their jobs, settled their accounts, and said good-bye to their friends and loved ones to pursue their dreams of a life spent together taking photos. This issue is coming out like right on their one-year anniversary, so we asked them for photos from their first nine days together to commemorate it. That's what you can see here in these photos. True love in bloom. It makes us feel not so cold and sad for a little while.
[ONLY ON VICE MAGAZINE]

OCTOBER 2007 ISSUE • FROM FINDINGS SECTION • PAGE 120

Health experts continued to be concerned about the early onset of puberty, particularly among girls; chemical pollution was mentioned as a likely culprit, as was the growing number of families without live-in father, who emit chemical signals that inhibit their daughters' sexual development. Crystal methamphetamine use among young adults was on the rise; users tend to be white, male, Western, and poor, and they tend to have incarcerated fathers. Young adults who drink malt liquor are more likely to develop drinking problems; they're also more likely to smoke pot. Binge drinkers prefer beer. Researchers concluded that 40 percent of deaths worldwide are caused by pollution. There were reports of mahjong-induced epilepsy in China, and a lamb was born in New Zealand with seven legs. A health expert warned that humans are not fit for human consumption.
[NEXT ISSUE OF HARPER'S IS DUE TO ARRIVE TOMORROW AT BLOOM, RUN WHILE IT LASTS!]

Harper's Magazine, the oldest general interest monthly in America, explores the issues that drive every national conversation through such celebrated features as Readings, Annotation, and Findings, as well as the iconic Harper's Index. With its emphasis on fine writing and original thought Harper's Magazine provides readers with a unique perspective on politics, society, the environment, and culture. The essays, fiction, and reporting in the magazine's pages come from promising new voices as well as some of the most distinguished names in American letters, among them Tom Wolfe, Annie Dillard, Barbara Ehrenreich, T.C. Boyle, Jonathan Franzen, David Foster Wallace and Mary Gaitskill.

THE HISTORY OF HARPER'S
Harper’s Magazine made its debut in June 1850, the brainchild of the prominent New York book-publishing firm Harper & Brothers. The initial press run of 7,500 copies sold out immediately, and within six months circulation had reached 50,000.
Although the earliest issues consisted largely of material that had already been published in England, the magazine soon began to print the work of American artists and writers — among them Horace Greeley, Horatio Alger, Stephen A. Douglas, Winslow Homer, Mark Twain, Frederic Remington, Theodore Dreiser, John Muir, Booth Tarkington, Henry James, William Dean Howells, and Jack London. Several departments served to note regularly important events of the day, such as the publication of Herman Melville's new novel Moby-Dick; the laying of the first trans-Atlantic cable; the latest discoveries from Thomas Edison's workshop; the progress of the crusade for women's rights.
In more recent years, the magazine published Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill long before either man became a political leader. Theodore Roosevelt wrote for Harper’s, as did Henry L. Stimson when he defended the bombing of Hiroshima. In the 1970s, Harper’s Magazine broke Seymour Hersh's account of the My Lai massacre and devoted a full issue to Norman Mailer's “The Prisoner of Sex.”
Over the years, the magazine's format has been revamped, its general appearance has evolved considerably, and ownership has changed hands. In 1962, Harper & Brothers merged with Row, Peterson, & Company to become Harper & Row (now HarperCollins). Some years later the magazine became a separate corporation and a division of the Minneapolis Star and Tribune Company. In 1980, when the parent company announced that Harper’s Magazine would cease publication, John R. (Rick) MacArthur and his father, Roderick, urged the boards of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Atlantic Richfield Company to make a grant of assets and funds to form the Harper’s Magazine Foundation, which now operates the magazine.
In 1984, Harper’s Magazine was completely redesigned by editor Lewis H. Lapham and MacArthur, who had become publisher of Harper’s Magazine and president of the Foundation. Recognizing the time constraints of the modern reader, the revived magazine introduced such original journalistic forms as the Harper’s Index, Readings, and the Annotation to complement its acclaimed fiction, essays, and reporting. Throughout the years Harper’s has received eleven National Magazine Awards, among many other journalistic and literary honors.
The year 2000 marked the sesquicentennial of Harper’s Magazine and, to celebrate, the magazine has introduced several new editorial inventions and restorations: Archive, Map, and Review. It has also published An American Album: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Harper’s Magazine, a 712-page illustrated anthology -- with an introduction by Lewis H. Lapham and a foreword by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. -- a cloth-bound volume that offers a unique perspective on American life, distilled from the pages of the nation's oldest continuously published monthly magazine.
[EVERY MONTH AT BLOOM • FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS THROW US AN EMAIL NOW!]

JANUARY 2008 ISSUE • FROM READINGS SECTION • PAGE 31

I Met a Seducer

One day a seducer met a seducer
now said one   what do we do
fly into each other's arms said
the other   ugh said one   they turned
stood back to back   one
looked over one's shoulder   smiled
shyly   other turned seconds
too late   made a lovelier
shy smile   oh my dear said other
my own dear   said one
BY GRACE PALEY
[from her collection Fidelity, to be published in March by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Paley died last year at the age of eighty-four just after finishing the manuscript of her last book.]

According to a survey regarding the performance of the Government featured on the website of Macau Business magazine almost one third of the voters picked 'none' as they're favourite Secretary, the crucial elements of the executive.
It was an informal question: "Vote in your favorite Secretary to rank the Government Secretaries acording to their performance", it was asked. If the answer is 'none' the meaning is that either the majoraty don't give a damn for governemnt issues or they don't regard any of the Secretaries as having a good performance. Anyhow the first second choice is Francis Tam, the holder of the Economy office.
The poll is not scientific but must be taken in consideration as a fragment of information about the discontentment of the citizens. Take it as you want. It's just an idependent and simple gaze at the public administration staging.
[TAKE PART OF IT AND CAST YOUR VOTE HERE]