The Column of Life

 The Presidential Inaugural Committee announced Wednesday that this inauguration's poet will be Richard Blanco. At 44, Blanco is the youngest poet, as well as the first Latino and the first openly gay poet to take part in an inaugural ceremony. He joins NPR's Renee Montagne to discuss his plans for the inaugural poem, as well as his own story of coming to America. Go here .

There is no real consensus on whether the visitors from the East on this day, celebrated as Epiphany in much of the Apostolic tradition, were kings, magi, wise men or wise guys, for that matter. This much we know: they gazed at the stars and came bearing gifts -- but they weren't Greek. The gifts were gold, frankincense and myrrh, all fit for a king. Here are three gifts for you, actually three fine men who are furnished with many gifts as anyone can see -- all fit for any king, pilfered from Blue . There was a time when Sicily had emirs -- yes -- prior to the time of that other Norman invasion. Mary Taylor Simeti married a Sicilian man and went to live in his homeland. That experience produced a very informative book about the cuisine of the emerald of the Mediterranean. Within that book, Pomp and Sustenance , she tells grand tales of many recipes over many centuries of Sicilian food. That Moslem Arabs, a.k.a Saracens, had a very powerful influence is evident not only in the cul...

The Private War That Killed Spencer Cox | My Fabulous Disease "Spencer Cox died without the benefit of the very drugs he had helped make available to the world. He perished from pneumonia, in an ironic clinical time warp that transported him back to 1985. It was as if, having survived the deadliest years of AIDS, having come so close to complete escape, Spencer was snatched up by the Fates in a vengeful piece of unfinished business."