Last evening, after enduring what seemed like 7 taxing hours at the health care summit, President Barack Obama returned to the White House to preside over the ceremony for the 20 recipients of the National Medal of the Arts and the National Humanities Medal.Winners included Bob Dylan, Clint Eastwood, Frank Stella, architect Maya Lin and Elie Wiesel.Among the humanities honorees was historian Robert A. Caro who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 1974 book The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. In his remarks Obama mentioned that he had read Caro's book when he was 22...
Obama and Sendak on the South Lawn
Storytime was part of this year's White House Easter Egg Roll festivities. Here's a 5 minute video of President Barack Obama reading Maurice Sendak's "Where The Wild Things Are" on the South Lawn of the White House.The first lady and children followed by reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond.C-Span has more video here.Event doubles as a tremendous plug for the upcoming film adaptation of "Where The Wild Things Are"Here's the trailer for that:Thanks to the LibraryThing blog for the lead
BibliObama : The Coming of a Literate President
Last week president-elect Barack Obama called Argentine President Cristina Fernandez. It is commonplace for a president-elect to check in with world leaders before they take office but here's the kicker:According to the Latin America News Agency, Prensa Latina, Cristina Fernandez "told reporters accompanying her that Obama expressed his desire to visit Argentina, which he called a great country, and recalled his life as university student when he was acquainted with the work of Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis Borges."Obama has already been seen carrying books about current events, Fareed Zakaria's Post American World; poetry, Derek Walcott's Collected Poems; and history,...