I wish I could wear something like this, but I am a couple of centuries too late. Apparently you can purchase Renaissance clothing from this website, but it doesn't exactly suit my present lifestyle--which features ye olde jeans and sweats. I am sorely tempted, though.
They sell everything you need to lead the Tudor lifestyle: clothing for men and women, shoes, chains of office, drinking implements, and last but not least, weapons. Isn't the Internet great?
"Golden lads and lasses must, like chimney sweepers come to dust."
By happenstance, I found out that one of my old boyfriends had died. He was always a romantic figure to me, good-looking, smart and rebellious. He always did the unexpected. He wasn't exactly mad, bad, and dangerous to know, but close enough for southern Ohio. I broke up with him because I couldn't stand the ups and downs of a relationship with someone basically undependable. I don't even know if he realized I had broken up with him, because he kept coming in and out of my life. The last I saw of him was when we both graduated and he went hurtling into the world like a rocket. I heard of and from him once in a while afterwards, then I went off somewhere and lost touch with him. I always wondered what had become of him.
Well, he is dead, and has been for quite a while. That certainly answers the question of why he was not at our last reunion. But I was amazed to discover that this iconoclastic figure had ended up as a small-town school superintendent.
When I was four years old, it was determined that I had been hanging around the house too long, so my parents sent me to a pre-school run by two old ladies, Miss Louella and Miss Virgilia. They lived and did business in a formerly swanky neighborhood of Columbus, in a great old house with a turret that had a stained glass window on the landing. A pleasurable shiver of fear went through me when I went by this window. It was mysterious but exciting.
Miss L and Miss V taught me to set a table properly, to use napkin rings, to say "Yes please" instead of "yes," and "No thank you," instead of "no." They also taught me to read, a skill I learned rather quickly.
When my mother saw that I could read, she started me in school in the second grade, skipping first grade entirely. Mother believed that you shouldn't spend too much time in school, should get it out of the way, graduate from college and go to work as soon as possible. She herself had done this, never taking a summer off, zipping through high school at the age of 14 and graduating from law school before she was old enough to pass the bar exam. (You had to be 21.)
My father also got out of high school at the age of 15 and proceeded to Madison WI, where he went to college. His father was mad at him because they lived in Illinois and he could have attended the University of Illinois a lot cheaper.
I went to school which was very "progressive," which meant they didn't teach you much about anything except the triumphs of the Soviet Union, and let you do more or less what you wanted. Anything practical you wanted to know you taught yourself. For instance, I taught myself the alphabet because I wanted to look up things in the dictionary. Try looking up words if you don't know the alphabet. It's hard.
I emerged from this den of iniquity at the age of 11, when mother gave in and enrolled me in public school junior high. For some reason, perhaps a coin toss, I was placed in the eighth grade. The other kids were 13. Mother also made me wear braids and knee socks. Still, I had friends. I didn't mind junior high; I was in the glee club and practically the citywide spelling champion. I could have aced the spelling competition if I had not been dubious about the spelling of the word "acquaint." I knew there was a C in there but it didn't seem right somehow, so I left the C out. I've always felt bad about this, because within a nanosecond of spelling the word wrong I realized the C definitely belonged in the word.
After junior high came a new town, a new school, a departed father, and High School. When I tell you that I, at age 13, was the champion dork of Central Ohio, I am not exaggerating. I was 13 and a sophomore, alone and miserable and friendless.
So one day I picked up a copy of Pride and Prejudice and read it from cover to cover. It was so good I re-read it immediately. Then I read all the tripe in the school library, much of it consisting of stories of young girls or women who became interested in a career in photography, dance, the theater, or interior decoration while at the same time falling in love with a cute guy. Then I read all the works of P G Wodehouse that the public library---which never discarded a book--had on their shelves.
Ever since then I have had to have two lives going, my real one and the one in the book I was reading. I like to take refuge in a book for a couple of hours a day. If I don't have a book to read, and a stack of other books waiting to be read, I start feeling panicky.
Television, talking books, even music--they don't do it for me. I like all those things, but I need a real book. Hard-covered, paperback, clean, dirty, old or new, trash or masterpiece, I need a book waiting for me to read.
All my interactions with Hammacher Schlemmer have been courteous and helpful. Every time I buy something from them, it does not do the job it was purchased to do, and I have to send it back. They accept returns willingly. Their customer service is a pleasure--polite, helpful, timely. The staff also speaks excellent American English.
The only problem is with the merchandise. Everything they sell is over-priced, unnecessary, or too expensive. I worry that the polite, helpful customer service staff will shortly be unemployed. I mean, who would buy that stuff?
Dell ought to hire the whole bunch en masse. It would be so nice to speak to someone whose English is comprehensible.
I mean Blago. I thought it was a smart move to appoint Burris. I also admire his spunk for sticking by his post. I seem to remember Bill Clinton responding to pressure to resign in the same way.
Suppose Blago is tried and found innocent. What then? I don't trust Fitzgerald, who made a big to-do about the Valerie Plame kerfuffle, spent tons of money, and put Scooter Libby in jail for, essentially, nothing. I don't trust the guy, and am surprised to see him still holding a government job. To me he seems like one of the pod people. Did anyone spot him disembarking from a spaceship lately? Or is he just a zombie?
I suspect he jumped the gun on Blago, and now needs extra time to figure out whether Blago used the office postage meter for personal business, or whatever other crime he can pin on the guy. Maybe he lied to somebody or other about Valerie Plame? Or Valerie Jarrett? Or Valerie Schmidlapp, queen of the cheerleading team at my old high school? Fitzgerald decides to prosecute someone and looks for a reason. He's creepy.
And now the Illinois Assembly in their purity and innocence are shocked--shocked! to find that corruption is taking place in Illinois politics! and recoil from Blago in dread that they will be tainted.
What a herd of independent minds!
Waterboarding is a thing of the past.
The selection of Leon Panetta, who was Bill Clinton's chief of staff, was intended to tell Americans the era of waterboarding, warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary renditions and secret prisons was now over.
Don't you feel a little depressed when you see a picture, say a wedding photo or a baby with a bow in her hair, for sale in a garage sale or thrift shop? I do. That's one reason I am scanning all the family pictures into my computer. To my future descendants: don't ever throw a cute picture of me away, or I'll put a hex on you. Ugly picture, okay, get rid of it. Always picture great-great-grandma (me) as a roaring, tearing beauty.
I saw a commercial warning the public to save energy by unplugging your cell phone charger. Boy, did that annoy me! The smug, smarmy self-righteousness of it. I felt like going out and burning a tire, just for spite. Take that, environment! Heat up, you stupid planet!
Every week I fill up another two bags of stuff and take it to the Good Will. But the stuff just keeps coming. You have to be vigilant or it will take over the house. My younger daughter confessed to me that she and her husband have two storage units. Their garage, where they parked their cars a couple of years ago, is now full of stuff which is threatening to invade their living quarters.
My basement is full of half-empty paint cans, left behind by the sellers of the house. Once upon a time, I would have carefreely (is there such a word?) thrown them away. Now I have to schedule a hazmat team to come and deal with them correctly.
The reason I don't have a dog is that I don't want to walk around the streets carrying a baggie full of doggy doo. That and the fact that Mr Charm won't let me get one.
A lot of things are going on now that are rather upsetting, so to distract myself I've been scanning old photos. This is a really nice one of my younger grandson, who's a big boy of seven now.
There's a character in a novel by Evelyn Waugh--in might be Decline and Fall--who "blots his copybook(an understated way of saying disgraces himself)." Because he went to the right school his associates decide to let him off easy by putting him in a room with a bottle of whiskey and a pistol, trusting he will "do the right thing (Off himself)."
They go back a few hours later and find him sitting there, having drunk the whiskey but still alive. So they concede defeat and get him another job.
And so it is with Blago. The Illinois legislature, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and the news media all thought they could embarrass him into doing the right thing and taking one for the team. Not a chance!
And so he made a brilliant move, appointing a Senator to replace Barack Obama, as he is constitutionally empowered to do. Not just any one, but a black man. And at the press conference announcing the appointment, another black man who just happened to be there got up and helpfully pointed out that he would be the only black person in the Senate, and that Harry Reid and the rest of the bunch had better seat him, or else.
Now Blago's political enemies--all Democrats--are gnashing their teeth in impotent rage while the Republicans are feeling smug as all get out.
Stanley Bing wants to know.
And, to veer from the point, what a name for a gonif--made off with money, did he? Dickens couldn't come up with a better one.
My idea is that the guy had to be a gambler. Trollope's books are full of young, rich aristocrats who have gambled away towering fortunes. There's not enough money printed by all the world's government printing presses for a compulsive gambler.
You can tell a compulsive gambler because all their relatives are going around with their pockets turned inside out, having given their little all so that poor Bernie doesn't get two broken legs.
This image, of the campus of my Alma Mater, makes me sentimental.
Oh to be young, free, and in the right place.
She's perfect for the Senate seat. She looks like she's straight out of central casting. First--the debutante slouch, taught only in the most expensive private schools in the nation; then there's the slight equine resemblance, emphasized when she tosses her mane artlessly away from her face; and the aforementioned straight I-can't do-anything-with-it hair, which takes endless time and money to achieve; and lastly, the air of entitlement, of deserving to be a Senator by acclamation, without going through the dreary business of running for office.
Next at bat: Chelsea Clinton.
I don't ever remember having heard of the position of "president-elect." Is it sort of like being the Prince of Wales? How much does the job pay, and is everyone eligible?
I am reminded of these words from the Mikado:
Emperor: I'm the emperor of Japan!
Katisha: And I'm his daughter-in-law elect!"
Just saying.
Menorah lighting tonight.
Chanukah was taken with calm, not to say torpor, in my family. Somebody lighted candles (that would be bubbe), and if they remembered, or I nagged, they came up with a cash bribe. Not Christmas, by a long shot. We didn't even have Chanukah gift wrap paper, let alone gifts to wrap. And as for household decoration, forget about it!
Meanwhile, I was wild with excitement as the neighbors put up lights and Christmas trees. Mother issued a firm nolo prosequi on this stuff, but once or twice Santa Claus delivered a doll, which he placed at the foot of my bed. We didn't have a chimney, and if we did have one, and Santa got cinders on the oriental rug, mother would have killed him.
Tonight, I lit the candles when the sun had gone down. It was the shortest day of the year, gloomy and raw, and I was glad to have the cheerful sight of the candles burning in my kitchen. When my grandson was little, he had his own menorah, his mother had hers, and I had mine. We put them all in the living room, near the window, and they were a pretty sight, especially on the eighth night. Surprising how a few candles light up the place.
For the record, these candles were blue and white, not multicolored.
There's lots of innocent merriment coming out of Chicago these days. It turns out many Chicago politicians are crooks, selling political office, appointing wives of contributors to cushy jobs, and cursing over the telephone, among other crimes and misdemeanors.
I don't really mind the sleaziness on display here. What sticks in my craw is the sanctimoniousness of it all. These crooks--sorry, elected officials--profess just to want to work tirelessly for the people of Illinois, particularly the poor and underprivileged. It's all for the poor--and the children, of course. The combination of high-mindedness and criminality really sickens me.
I am reminded of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr, a Harlem politician, minister and crook. He was unabashedly in it for the money and the wine, women and song. He didn't assume an air of piety while having his hand in your pocket. He was a scoundrel, he knew it, and everybody else knew it, including the voters who kept returning him to office. As politicians go, he was refreshing. His polar opposite would be Eliot Spitzer, who gave holier-than-thouness a bad name.
About this time of year, I start to meditate on the Meaning of Life. My conclusions? Your life can change overnight.
Once upon a time I thought my life would continue along its pleasant but uneventful course. Mr Charm and I would attend concerts and visit with friends and I would work in the library. All that came to a sudden end, without notice. The friend I had the most fun with died and I was not ready to lose her. I was supposed to go to Atlantic City with some friends who were great fun to be with, but he got sick and couldn't go, and suddenly, he too was dead.
Even the college I enjoyed attending so much had morphed into a huge university. I went back to visit and found the place unrecognizable--they had moved the river which was a prominent feature of the place.
And I found myself in Delaware, where the only person I knew was the real estate lady who sold us our house.
On a lighter note; I have had so much vexation with Verizon, who unexplicably keep misplacing my payments, not to mention billing me $45 for viewing a World Wrestling Federation event. Now do I seem like a person who would watch a WWF competition? After hours of voice mail, I spoke to several rude individuals about all of this. All of them had ingested their daily I Don't Care Pill that day. I was so upset that I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about Verizon.
Today, I decided to give it one last try. After being re-directed to the wrong person no less than three times, I finally spoke to someone who understood what had happened and was in a position to do something about it. Hallelujah!
I am one of Macy's best customers: They send me so many coupons that it doesn't pay for me to shop anywhere else. After I apply my $25 off coupon, my $50 off coupon, my just for today coupon which gives me 20 percent off on every purchase, and a voucher they sent me which is just like cash, I pay a little less than I would at K-Mart, and I like Macy's better.
but expensive.
I apologize for prematurely announcing the most useless Christmas gift of 2008. The above beats the fish training kit hollow.
When I first saw this advertised on the New York Times website, I thought it was a representation of four breasts, two with eyes. How wrong I was. It is a hand cooler. Whether it cools your hands or some beverage within, it is world-class ugly.
I am officially speechless. If anyone can find an uglier or more useless gift, please e-mail me the particulars. This one will be hard to beat, though.
From the December 2008 edition of Hadassah magazine, a letter to the editor:
You asked your respondents to focus on "issues of concern to Jewish voters." Clearly the most important issue is Judaism itself and our freedom to practice it....I think [Sarah Palin's] candidacy changes the parameters of the debate.
Her public statements and the few glimpses of her that we have been allowed indicate that hers ls a Christ-centered worldview and that she believes in the primacy of that religion above all others. (Note: Is there anyone who does not believe in the primacy of their own religion?)
If there is any more frightening issue of concern to Jewish voters (Note: I can think of several others, but that's just me )than the possible (Note: But not probable in a million years) erosion of the free exercise of religion, I cannot imagine what it might be.
I haven't gotten any comments lately, which worried me--but then I remembered that I hadn't posted anything in ages, so what's to comment on?
So here I am, with what a lady I once worked with called "nits and lice," miscellaneous trivia dredged up from the hodgepodge in my mind.
I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving? Mine was very nice, thank you. My daughter and her husband love to take over the kitchen, so I let them. My kitchen's too small for more than one person, anyway. I made the stuffing and peeled the potatoes and disappeared. My daughter and aforementioned husband love to go to the Acme every day, so they do. They even checked on Wednesday night to make sure the Acme would be open Thanksgiving Day. (It was.)
Their life is a whirlwind of purposeful activity. This daughter is the mother of a 7-year-old who she is convinced will perish if he does not get broccoli and green beans every single day. We did have an very enjoyable time. My older daughter and her son were able to come for the holiday so we were all together, which doesn't happen often enough.
They came at dinnertime the Monday before Thanksgiving. Unfortunately there was a power outage at thee o'clock Monday afternoon so I was unable to cook anything. We all went out to dinner and then they very sensibly went to the Holiday Inn for the night.
I've been reading a book called "The Legal Limit" by Martin Clark. It's very good, particularly the small-town Virginia setting. But it could have been better if an editor like Maxwell Perkins had been on the job. I guess they don't edit anything these days, or maybe the authors are paid by the word, because this book would have been better if it had been shorter. It tells the story of two brothers, one of whom peaked as a high school football hero and has gone downhill ever since, and the other a striver who pulls himself up by his bootstraps to become the county prosecutor in his home town. The action takes place over a period of twenty years, with the younger brother--the prosecutor--as the hero.
The book covers his life from his early twenties to his forties. The parts dealing with life as a small town prosecutor and his relations with his friends and neighbors, and particularly his brother, are well handled. His courtship and subsequent marriage, not so much.
His wife sounds too good to be true: I am sure it's not outside the realm of possibility that there are women who are tall, beautiful, intelligent, honest and artistic geniuses, but it's not plausible or believable within the covers of a novel. Also--and this is a minor quibble--scenes of passionate abandon are much more fun to experience than to read about. I could have done with a little less of his gay best friend's problems as well. Still, I enjoyed the book, most of the characters are extremely well done, and I look forward to reading Clark's other books.
Another meme, courtesy of Father Brown: I have to pick 15 blogs:
This award acknowledges the values that every blogger shows in his/her effort to transmit cultural, ethical, literary and personal values every day.
The rules to follow are:
1) Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person that has granted the award and his or her blog link.
2) Pass the award to other 15 blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgment.
Okay, here goes:
decision '08 (time for a new name, though);
Jules Crittenden;
Mark Steyn;
15 minute lunch;
Iowahawk;
scrappleface;
gates of Vienna;
passing parade;
Jack;
powerline;
Wyatt Earp;
Michael Yon
citizen of the month;
Lileks;
Tim Blair.
There are many more excellent blogs I follow, so I set myself some criteria: I generally am prejudiced toward blogs written by one individual. I decided not to include any Delaware blogs--there are too many good ones. I also tried to exclude blogs whose owners only blog once in a while and those who have terminated their blogs.
Anyway, there you have it. Whew! It was exhausting, posting all those llinks.
Lock up the silverware and hide the car keys! David Brooks lauds the high school heroes who went on to make the Ivy League the sinkhole of political correctness and fraudulent scholarship it is today.
Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).
[]
The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law).
This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs.
Any think tanker can come up with broad doctrines, but it is rare to find people who can give the president a list of concrete steps he can do day by day to advance American interests. Dennis Ross, who advised Obama during the campaign, is the best I’ve ever seen at this....
Delaware people are so much politer than people in NY and NJ. I hardly ever approach a door that someone doesn't hold it open for me--even teenagers. They're friendly and pleasant, too.
Even the panhandlers are polite. I had occasion to be in downtown Wilmington a few times lately, and encountered three panhandlers in one day. They were polite, almost deferential: "Pardon me, ma'am..." Such a nice change from the panhandlers in San Francisco, for instance, who will threaten you and follow you around.
One young man had a novel approach. I was selecting stuff at a salad bar, when he came up to me and told me he wanted to buy something or other--a soda, maybe? He asked me if I could give him a dime. I was so struck by the modesty of his request, I gave him a quarter.
Your Bumper Sticker Should Be |
 Anything worth taking seriously - is worth making fun of |
I mean the ones we don't have yet.
I'm referring to Comcast and Verizon, who are constantly sending me offers for Internet, phone service, tv, etc. at bargain basement rates. Once they get their claws on you, however, it's no more Mr Nice Guy. My mother told me that if I was too easy, boys would not respect me, and she's right. Verizon doesn't even take my calls.
Did it ever occur to these businesses that if they were nicer to their current customers, people would be content to continue paying their salaries?
The number of cars with "My son is an honor student at XXX school" bumper stickers seems to be multiplying exponentially. Also--and I admit this is anecdotal evidence--I never seem to hear a young person discussed without assertions that he or she gets nothing but As and Bs.
Are our children getting smarter? Has our educational system improved to the point where everyone is fulfilling his or her potential to the max? Can we rest confident that America's future is in the hands of these budding geniuses?
Or is there a new definition of honor student--someone who attends school most of the time, gives the teachers no lip and doesn't burn the building down?
In Alice in Wonderland there is a dodo race. Everyone runs around aimlessly wherever he wants to, and at the conclusion, everyone wins and gets a prize. Is this the model for the American education system?
and they find each other:
This unappealing pair met over the Internet, and they broke up after she caught him virtually cheating on her. I can't find a picture of their avatars, but you can bet your boots they look better than the actual couple, him ripped and studly, her svelte and slinky.
Amy Taylor, 28, split up with her husband, David Pollard, 40, after catching him digitally cheating on her in the popular online game "Second Life."
The British couple had a passion for "Second Life," in which people lead alternative existences over the Web, with personas - or avatars - that are typically far more svelte and suave than their real selves.
Pollard and Taylor spent countless hours living in the game as their attractive alter egos, Dave Barmy and Laura Skye, after getting married both in real life and in the game in 2005.
In real life, Taylor and Pollard are both overweight, and he is balding.
But in February 2007, Taylor caught Pollard having sex with a pixel prostitute ....
"I looked at the computer screen, and I could see his character having sex with a female character. It's cheating, as far as I'm concerned," she said....
"We made it up, and he promised her he would never do anything to hurt me again, and would never cheat on me again," Taylor told The Daily Mail of London.
But two months later,... She caught Barmy in a compromising position with another woman.
It wasn't long before Taylor confronted him while he was in the act.
[]
"He said our marriage was over and he didn't love me anymore," Taylor said.
She filed for divorce on the grounds of "unreasonable behavior." A divorce lawyer told her the next day that this was the second case involving "Second Life" she had dealt with in one week.
Taylor has since given up "Second Life" for "World of Warcraft," another online game.
Let's stop it. Voters are voting by mail (what an opportunity for fraud!), by absentee ballot, provisionally, with or without previous registration. Ballots are being conveniently found in the back seat of cars and other inauspicious places. Let's stop it now.
Elections should be clean and should be seen to be clean. If people want to vote, let them show up at the proper venue at the proper time and register. Then let them all vote simultaneously, on the same day. This system has worked for 200 years and there is nothing wrong with it. The idea that people have to be coaxed to vote is a rotten one. If you don't care enough to show up at the polls, that's fine. There should be no coercion, and no "volunteers" signing up "voters" in streets and homeless shelters.
At some pre-determined time, all the votes should be counted and the ballots sequestered. Ballots found after that period, no matter where, should be discarded. Precincts which report after that period should not have their votes added to the total. Polls should be closed at the previously announced time, and no latecomers should be admitted.
This Al Franken thing now going on is a disgrace to the republic. So is Franken, but that's an issue for another day.
Several conservative commenters--I believe Krauthammer was one--were touched by the sight of Jesse Jackson weeping at Barack O's election. I can't believe the old fraud and shakedown artist was weeping tears of gratitude.
More likely, someone probably stepped on his toe.
You Are 90% Yankee, 10% Dixie |
 You're so Yankee, it's possible you've never even been to the South! |
The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Bill Bradley was on Hannity and Colmes tonight. He suggested that all the people who were campaigning for BO over the weekend ought to be enlisted into--what? I know not, but I don't like the idea of having the Soviet Youth dropping around the house to see whether I'VE RECYCLED or something. I want all these willing volunteers who are so eager to help Obama achieve his vision to leave me strictly alone. I prefer that they sink into apathy, or go off and get drunk or do drugs. I don't want to be part of Obama's corps of concerned citizens.
What I want to do is turn my thermostat to whatever makes me comfortable, to get gasoline that is reasonable and readily available, to eat whatever unhealthy food I feel like scarfing down. I don't mind paying for what I use. I don't want Big Brother looking over my shoulder.
At art class, one of the women said it was time we had a president who would save the planet. Could we first have a dispassionate look at what, if anything, is wrong with the planet? Ditto health care? Could we investigate dispassionately what's wrong with American health care, and how good--or bad--other systems are?
We take so many things on faith, without any proof. I'm not convinced global warming exists or that there is anything the United States could do to remedy it without crippling our economy. Obama talks blithely about bankrupting coal producers. If he delivers on any of his promises, he will be a piss-poor president.
I blame Bush for the Democratic victory, at least partly. He didn't bother to get the country behind him on the Iraq war. Or on anything. He just went on doing whatever he was doing without explaining himself or justifying himself. The presidency is a bully pulpit, but he ignored its propaganda function, and that's how he lost the battle for public opinion.
McCain was pretty pathetic, too. Why didn't he publicize the Rev Jeremiah Wright's relationship with Obama--a relationship that stinks to high heaven? Why didn't he articulate his plans for solving our financial crisis? Why did he tie himself to using public financing, the equivalent of tying one of his legs behind him?
Basically, I believe that Obama won for two reasons: one, the economy. The financial meltdown worked in his favor. Two: the man is just plain lucky. He only won his Senate seat because his opponent dropped out, among other things. I just hope his luck extends to the country.
I've always loved the idea of Guy Fawkes Day since I first read about it in Mary Poppins as a little girl:
Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t'was his intent
To blow up King and Parliament.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England's overthrow;
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!
Instead of setting fire to cars--the French way--the Brits enjoy setting off fireworks to commemorate the foiling of a plot against the government. Fireworks must light up the dreary November skies nicely.
I went to New Jersey Thursday to visit a relative who is recovering from surgery. I was surprised at how uneventful the trip was. The generic, nondescript trees lining the turnpike didn't look as generic and nondescript as usual, due to the fall foliage. And the traffic--well, I came home at rush hour, and there were a minimum number of trucks on the road. Even at the place in the road where truck traffic and car traffic come together, which is generally pretty fraught, everything proceeded smoothly. Usually there is a snarl of traffic which causes tempers and radiators to boil over, but on that day everything proceeded quietly.
This must be the result of the economic meltdown. Business must be very slow. It was uncanny, as if a disaster had occurred somewhere nearby. I felt...uneasy.
However, I did get my car pumped full of New Jersey gas by somebody else.
Was this unethical?
For 39 years as an educator, Robert Grandt has been promoting other people’s books. So this year, when his daughter helped create a graphic novel of “Macbeth,” Mr. Grandt could not resist bragging a little in the newsletter he distributes as a librarian at Brooklyn Technical High School.
Mr. Grandt’sdaughter, Eve Grandt, co-illustrated a version of “Macbeth.” He said he was taken aback by conflict-of-interest charges. "I was just so proud of my daughter for writing it," he said.
“Best New Book: Grandt, Eve, ‘Shakespeare’s Macbeth — The Manga Edition,’ ” he wrote under the heading “Grandt’s Picks.”
He also placed a few copies of the book at a library display table, and posted a sign: “Best Book Ever Written.” If someone were interested, they got a book free.
But one person’s parental pride is another panel’s ethical transgression.
On Monday, the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board announced it had settled a case it had brought against Mr. Grandt for promoting his daughter’s work. He agreed to pay a $500 fine and admit in a three-page stipulation that he had violated the city ethics code.
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