Meeting the Mets

I met Eileen, or E Fitz Smith, last year through Dawn Eden when both were at the New York Daily News and she had an interesting idea for a commuter blog feature, as far as blog features go, but I guess it stopped short of Martin Dunn's desk. Now she has a photographic exhibition on the commuter experience at the Fairfield Arts Council Gallery. I am a newly oft-off-peak Metro-North Katonah rider so my interest is duly piqued. Related: LoHud's Suburbarazzi blog is one of the best reads around. More on that another time.

I met Greg Levey in Israel through Jacob Shwirtz when Ariel Sharon was still bulldog-fronting Gaza withdrawals and shit. Greg was one of his speech writers, but that whole coma thing put both of them out of a job. Greg has "rebounded" more successfully, with a move to Semite-friendly Canada for a teaching gig at Ryerson University in Toronto. He also has a soon to be published book about the whole experience, Shut Up, I'm Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government which hopefully will one day climb Amazon rankings and not a Mossad target list. He's a frequent contributor to Salon and just started his own blog.

I have not met YM contributor Jim Behrle yet (he was supposed to make us all rich and dead but we're only closer to the latter) but you should read his commentary below on poetry in The New Yorker and Paul Muldoon right now. I did not want to sully his sharp post with a dull-bolded Update but Muldoon fans, please take note: he's teaching a poetry master class and moderating a Reading Series event with Emily Fragos, Matthea Harvey and Brenda Shaughnessy at the Y in the spring.

I've rarely met a blogging request I didn't honor and four people have emailed me asking about my thoughts on Alex Balk's Gawker departure so I guess I have to come up with something. I really don't want to but I would hate to let down YM's four fans by breaking stride now. Stay tuned for the same old pointless same old same old...