The election of a competent president. Seeing my youngest off to school. Taking it all in. Forestalling senility. Puttering in the garden. Feeding little birds. Living a conscious, examined
LIFE.
LOVE
BEAUTY
ART
William Jefferson Clinton, Christiane Amanpour, Tasha Tudor, Jon Stewart, Isabella Rossellini, Peter O'Toole, David Bowie, Rickie Lee Jones, Jack Nicholson, Christopher Walken, Jonathan Franzen, Gore Vidal, George Clooney, Jane Goodall, Daniel Craig (intimately), Madeleine Albright, Leigh or Leslie Keno (I can never keep you guys straight), John Waters, Frank Gehry, Dolce and Gabbana, fellow Humanists, etc....
But in the meantime, I guess you'll suffice.
Beck, Beethoven, Billie Holiday, Black Eyed Peas, BRMC, Bowie, Callas and Caruso, C a k e, Coldplay, Ella Fitzgerald, Eydie Gorme, Kathleen Battle, LCD Soundsystem, Lizz Wright, Madeline Peyroux, Prince, Mel Torme, Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rickie Lee Jones, the Pretenders, The White Stripes, Howlin' Wolf, Wolfmother...so very much depends upon one's mood.
Junebug, Napoleon Dynamite, Happiness, Crash, House of Sand and Fog, American Beauty, Dead Man, The Cook the Thief his Wife and her Lover, Lawrence of Arabia, X-Men, Leaving Las Vegas, To Kill a Mockingbird, O Brother Where Art Thou, Clerks, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, Hero, Fearless, Little Miss Sunshine....
Mostly PBS (news,Frontline, Independent Lens, etc), 24, and reality shows (a guilty pleasure that I indulge a little too often). Also, not having cable, I'm dying for the last season of The Sopranos to be released on DVD.
Alhough it's been a few years, Franzen's The Corrections remains my most favorite recent book, followed closely by Anne Enright's The Gathering. The imagery evoked by those two just staggers me. I enjoy the more lurid, less historical work of Vollmann and quite a variety of poetry (though rarely contemporary). The collected works of Beatrix Potter and Maurice Sendak delight me perhaps even more than they do my children. Oh, and I find the early writing of Truman Capote fabulously lush. I will happily accept any suggestions on darkly humored, substantive fiction.
Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Mary Poppins, Christopher Lloyd (the Horticulturist), Rosa Parks, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Doctors of Doctors without Borders, Jimmy Carter(post-presidency), women who raise children in the face of war pestilence and famine, men who value peace more than power, Nancy Pelosi....