On the road …

… Tracy K. Smith, America's Poet Laureate, Travels the Country to Ignite Our Imaginations | Innovation | Smithsonian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)

Over her three-day trek across Alaska, Smith had marveled at all manner of taxidermy, from the stuffed moose standing sentry in the middle of the Anchorage airport to the buffalo head staring down at her as she read poems at an assisted-living facility in Palmer. But here was the real thing: a black bear, jaunty and unabashed, loping through a Mendenhall Valley subdivision at the edge of Glacier Highway in broad daylight.

“Oh, wow—wow,” said Smith, who considers her “spirit animal” to be her rescue dog, a chocolate Lab retriever named Coco. “I don’t know if I could live like this.”