Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

A student at the Abundant Life Christian School shot and killed another student and a teacher and wounded others. And I thought, If only we had prayer and Bible study in the classroom, this would not happen. Oh, wait a minute; this was a Christian school.

Where is Elon Musk? Trump suggests that the government will study any connection between vaccines and autism. Such research has been done many, many times with the same result (i.e., there is no connection). This is a clear waste of taxpayer money. However, I don’t expect Elon or Vivek to speak out against this reckless spending.

I used to play a lot of tennis, but those days are over.  Friends urge me to play pickleball, but I have not. The name pickleball is silly. The game is sillier. And you can tell the game was invented by some old-fashioned men. You can’t set foot in one part of the court. They named it the kitchen.

There are movements again to get rid of daylight savings time, although proposals differ. Some want to return to God’s time when at noon the sun is overhead. Others want to have permanent daylight savings time without the twice-yearly shift. (No more Spring forward, Fall back.)  But what we should really remember is what a wise person said: “The best way to save daylight is to use it.”

Especially during the holiday season, we should remember what Jerry Seinfeld has said: Nothing in life is “fun for the whole family.”

Over the last few decades Republicans have been responsible for most of the drama surrounding government shutdowns. I learned from C.W. Goodyear’s President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier (2023) that the first government shutdown was caused by Democrats. It was under President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1879. The Congressional term expired without passing sufficient funding for the government. Democrats attached riders, that is, unrelated provisions, to appropriations legislation to curb federal poll watching in the South. Hayes vetoed these bills. Goodyear writes, “Never before had a House majority deprived the government of funding in an attempt to extort a policy change.” Eventually the Democrats backed down and the government resumed. There was no mention of a debt ceiling.

Perhaps showing my age, I had no idea who Andrew McCarthy was, but I plucked his book Walking with Sam: A Father, a Son, and Five Hundred Miles Across Spain off the Barrett Friendly Library shelves. The book about hiking the Camino de Santiago touched me. It is a reflection on love, a father and son, fame, faded fame, ham, eggs, lots of pizza, blisters, physical and other pains, and…well, love. It made me reflect on much in my life.

After the House ethics report on Matt Gaetz, I wonder if Woody Allen’s line is still true: “The most expensive sex is free sex.”

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“It’s a favorite pastime of Americans, and American conservatives especially, to keep watch for various evildoers scheming to seize the public sphere and rob of us our historic liberties.” Sohrab Ahmari, Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It.

“Richard Cadogan raised his revolver, took careful aim and pulled the trigger.” Edmund Crispin, The Moving Toyshop.

“Can you remember meeting William Shakespeare for the first time?” Farah Karim-Cooper, The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking about Race.

“When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog name Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of fine spring afternoon.” James Crumley, The Last Good Kiss.

“Olmsted’s letter from Texas about the romance of nomadism was tailored to its recipient: Anne Charlotte Lynch, a New York poet, globe-trotting traveler, and eminent convener of literary salons.” Tony Horwitz, Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide.

“The bodies were discovered at eight forty-five on the morning of Wednesday 18 September by Miss Emily Wharton, a sixty-five-year-old spinster of the parish of St. Matthew’s in Paddington, London, and Darren Wilkes, aged ten, of no particular parish as far as he knew or cared.” P.D. James, A Taste for Death.

“Rain drums Chicago’s gridded streets on the early morning of June 9, 1880.” C.W. Goodyear, President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier.

“The Dean, as he lay awake in bed that memorable Sunday night, pondered the astonishing vagaries of the weather.” Michael Gilbert, Close Quarters.

“On May 2, 1938, three special trains, carrying hundreds of German diplomats, government officials, Nazi Party leaders, security agents, and journalists, left Berlin accompanying the Führer on his first—and what would turn out to be his last—visit to Rome.” David I. Kertzer, The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini, and Hitler.

“In the time before steamships, or then more frequently than now, a stroller along the docks of any considerable seaport would occasionally have his attention arrested by a group of bronzed mariners, man-of-war’s men or merchant sailors in holiday attire, ashore on liberty.” Herman Melville, Billy Budd, Sailor.

“It is hard to imagine working with books—writing an essay, a lecture, a report, a sermon—without the ability to find what you’re looking for quickly and easily: without, that is, the convenience of a good index.” Dennis Duncan, Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age.

“The most powerful man in Indiana stood next to the new governor at the Inaugural Ball, there to be thanked, applauded, and blessed for using the nation’s oldest domestic terror group to gain control of a uniquely American state.” Timothy Egan, A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan? Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“They watched as a dead man was brought to the hospital: a fractured skull, blood everywhere, ligaments ripped loose from their mooring—medics had hauled him there ‘in three buckets,’ a bystander remarked.” Reid Mitenbuler, Wanderlust: An Eccentric Explorer, an Epic Journey, a Lost Age.

“There was an old Jew who lived at the site of the old synagogue up on Chicken Hill in the town of Pottstown, Pa., and when Pennsylvania State Troopers found the skeleton at the bottom of an old well off Hayes Street, the old Jew’s house was the first place they went.” James McBride, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.

“Hold out your hands and let me lay upon them a sheaf of freshly picked sweetgrass, loose and flowing, like newly washed hair.” Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

“Everyone in Lamperdown knew that Mr. Behrens, who lived with his aunt at the Old Rectory and kept bees, and Mr. Calder, who lived in a cottage on the hilltop outside the village and was the owner of a deerhound called Rasselas, were the closest of close friends.” Michael Gilbert, Game Without Rules.

“In August 1945, after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan surrendered, the soldiers, sailors, and airmen scheduled to participate in the invasion of Japan reacted as you might expect.” Evan Thomas, Road to Surrender: Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II.

“When people ask me what I do—taxi drivers, dental hygienists—I tell them I work in an office.” Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

“Approaching the museum, ready to hunt, Stéphane Breitwieser clasps hands with his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklau, and together they stroll to the front desk and say hello, a cute couple.” Michael Finkel, The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession.

“Killing someone is easy.” Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club.

“For more than a decade, defenders of democracy have been issuing a stark warning: The world is in the midst of a ‘democratic recession,’ with sign of a turnaround on the horizon.” Sohrab Ahmari, Tyranny, Inc.: How Private Power Crushed American Liberty—and What to Do About It.

“Jacob Finch Bonner, the once promising author of the ‘New & Noteworthy’ (The New York Times Book Review) novel The Invention of Wonder, let himself into the office he’d been assigned on the second floor of Richard Peng Hall, set his beat-up leather satchel on the barren desk, and looked around in something akin to despair.” Jean Hanff Korelitz, The Plot.

“In January 1829, Abram Garfield emerged from a shack in Orange, Ohio, swiveled west, and started toward what passed for civilization on this frontier.” C.W. Goodyear, President Garfield: From Radical to Unifier.