This was a good Halloween. I watched four Buffy episodes: “Halloween,” “Hush,” “Fear Itself,” and “Once More, With Feeling.” Also, I think I got my youngest brother hooked on the Slayer. The fact that Joss (”the guy who did Firefly“) did it seems to have helped a lot. Its weird to think of it that way.
Legendary Boston Celtics coach and general manager Red Auerbach died over the weekend. Celtics players will wear patches with the word “Red” written in green on a black clover leaf. It sounds like a psychological test.
The latest addition to the right side of this blog is The Radical Center. So far I’m not too impressed because it states that we are in a period of “dealignment.” In our history there have been a few points at which support for the major political parties has shifted: The 1820s, 1860s, 1890s, 1940s, and, arguably, the 1980s or 1990s. At base, realignment is the reorganization of subgroups among the major parties of the day (the first and second actually involved new parties: the Whigs and Republicans, respectively). The idea behind dealignment is that party identification has eroded to a point where party doesn’t really matter. It may be true, but what bothers me is that the book doesn’t present any evidence beyond the fact that more people self-identify as “Independent.” What is more important is how the constituent parts of the coalitions are voting. Are they still voting for the same parties? Are they voting in the same numbers?
Maybe it will get better.
I may try to vote tomorrow when I’m at the county complex. I’ve finally figured out who to vote for in each office. The toughest race to figure out was governor. I’m voting for Judy Baar Topinka. The Chicago Tribune’s endorsement of her helped crystallize what was already going on in my head.
This is the third gubernatorial election for me. Like the other two, the candidates are disappointing. In the end, it is the Governor’s corruption, cynical, fiscally irresponsible policies, and contribution to the school-testing mess that swayed me. Treasurer Topinka is probably not as corrupt as her opponent and understands that as she put it, “We just cannot let this go on.”
John Ferling’s Setting the World Ablaze was very good. It’s a comparative biography of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. The first three presidents are great subjects for comparative biography because they come from different backgrounds. Jefferson and Washington were both rich Virginians, but they got there in different ways.
Washington was the first to really understand what Britain was doing in the post-French and Indian War period. He saw that the King and Parliament were trying to reign the colonies in by reducing the freedom to which they had grown accustomed. Adams and Jefferson figured it out years later.
Adams worked tirelessly in different posts here and in France during the war. In Congress he was the workhorse of the independence movement. In France, he managed concessions in peace negotitaions where others had failed. His work during the war doesn’t get much attention because he did a lot of the boring work.
Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. Others could have written it, but Jefferson’s writing made it powerful document it is. Jefferson’s work during the war doesn’t get much attention because he didn’t do much after 1776. He went at least a year without mentioning it once in correspondence.
I recommend the book as it is an enjoyable read, and makes these three men and the times they lived in more accessible than some other books. At a little over 300 pages, it’s not too cumbersome, either.
While a waited for the train after my reunion, I scribbled down what I expected to be the post about the 10-year reunion. It was boring, so I’m leaving it in the moleskine. I almost left after 20 minutes or so, and I’m glad I didn’t. I just had a few beers with one person I was really glad to see, and I am planning to take a trip to the city to see one person I have kept in touch with since high school and one I haven’t.
The highlight for me was seeing Laurie. She was the one dyed-in-the-wool liberal whose beliefs I completely respected. Her beliefs were based on more than rote memorization of what liberal teachers and the like said, and she acted on them. After high school, she found herself all over the world, but is now in Washington, D.C., working as Director of Communications for a strategy group.
In the end, though I was reticent about going, I’m glad I did.