We just watched the last episode of John Adams. I got the DVD from the library and we went through it in one week, all seven installments. I have to admit, the last episode brought tears. The partnership between John and Abigail was well-portrayed and deeply moving. The older I get, the more I find the strongest story resonance with depictions of deep, deep friendships, especially those that exist between lovers, spouses, life partners. I cannot imagine losing Donna, who has become exactly that for me, in spite of the fact that I have friends of longer acquaintance, good friends, too.…
Month: August 2009
Hating the Government: An American Tradition.
G.O.P. Chairman Michael Steele made a few remarkably in-your-face comments recently about the health care debate. Here, in his own words, is pretty much where he thinks the nation is going, why it shouldn’t go there, and what the Republican Party stands for.
This morning on NPRÂ he tangled with Steve Inskeep, in particular over this.
One quote in particular caught my eye:Â ” Simply put, we believe that health-care reform must be centered on patients, not government.”
When you listen to the NPR interview it’s clear that we’re hearing another in the now decades-long tirades against the government which has become the hallmark of Right Wing politics in this country.…
A Question…or Two…or More…
Just a couple of what seem to me like obvious questions. (I know, I’ve been writing a bit on the health care debate, and I’ll try to do some other things after this, don’t want to bore anyone, especially myself.)
I see a lot of protesters waving signs that contain something like this: HEALTHCARE REFORM YES, GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER NO. TORT REFORM NOW!
Something about that doesn’t quite add up. If health care is to be reformed, who is going to do it? The industry isn’t without that there is a threat. Which means there will have to be something outside the industry doing the threatening. …
The Madman In The Auditorium
I like Barney Frank. He says what he feels, usually in a way that makes his argument better. But it’s almost a no-brainer to do a comeback on the idiocy with which he was faced in Dartmouth, Massachussetts this past week. I mean, what do you say to someone who thinks it’s a valid statement to compare Obama to Hitler?
A woman carrying a poster with Obama’s image modified with a Hitlerian mustache stepped up to the microphone to ask why Frank supports a Nazi policy.
There are so many things wrong with this it boggles the mind where to begin. …
Boston, 1989
One of these days I will get the Art section of this website straightened out. If you go there now, you’ll find a lot of photographs, but several of them when clicked on expand to huge size and you only see a corner of the image. I found that if you click on that again, it reduces to screen size. Still, it’s a bit of a pain.
Meantime, I can always post an image here now and then, and for no other reason than I like to. Like this one, taken in Boston circa 1989.
I’m proud of my photography. Quietly, almost too shyly. …
The My Factor
Listening to the harangue over the health care reform squabble, I can’t help thinking—even I saw a few episodes of West Wing, I who do not watch television, so of all the Lefties out there who probably hung on every second of that show, why is it so hard to grasp how things don’t get accomplished in D.C. ? Yeah, it was fiction, but it was, in my opinion, pretty accurate in terms of the culture.
But people complain and wonder why Obama doesn’t just “ram his reforms through.”
Well. The man is a consensus builder. We just got done with a president who wasn’t. …
When I Was But A Wee Thing
I found a very old packet of photographs the other day, going all the way back to nearly the beginning. They were snapshots taken the day of my Christening. This would have been, according to the date written in the booklet, November of 1954. I pulled the one of my parents and me, did a little clean-up with photoshop, and here it is.
Mom was a fox, dad had moviestar good looks—maybe B picture, but who cares? Mom was absolutely crazy about him and he has never lost his complete fascination with her. They have never regretted a single day they’ve spent together as far as I know (barring the usual ups and downs every relationship has) and they are good companions. …
Dante’s HMO
Now for something less sturm und drang (which is ironic, since just now it is thundering and raining outside) and more reflective.
We’re still attending the Dante reading group. Yesterday we did Canto XIV of Purgatorio and indulged some lively conversation over the meaning and intent. It’s become fairly obvious (long ago, back in Inferno it was obvious) that Dante was not talking about the afterlife, not in any serious way. All of this is a critique of the world and its denizens. It is a thoroughgoing strafing and scourging of the component parts of the world through which he moved. …
Can’t Get No Women So I’ll Die Blues: An Absurdity
George Sodini never got it right, apparently. He posted a kind of diary entry on the web explaining how not right he got it. “The biggest problem of all is not having relationships or friends,” he wrote.
According to his confession on the web, he hadn’t had a girlfriend since 1984 or a date since May of 2008. Hadn’t had sex for 19 years.
“Women just don’t like me,” he wrote.
So he came up with a solution. If he couldn’t get his life the way he wanted it, he would end it. He acquired firearms, ammunition, he set down a plan. …