Our local drugstore has an excellent toy department, and I often let Danny purchase a small toy when we are there. Today, he selected a large bag of yellow and red plastic firefighters.
We returned home, and he was happily playing with his firetrucks and new firefighters when I heard him yell:
"Ring up the fire brigades, we have to save St. Paul’s."
He had a plastic bowl inverted over Mega Blocks as a model of the cathedral. It was only then I remembered I’d let him watch part of a PBS documentary on the Blitz last evening.
This was almost as cool as the time he built the Berlin Wall out of blocks and had his Fisher Price Little People ramming the gate in a Tonka truck.
-And if McCain wins and I’m forced to listen to Palin’s nasal voice for the next four, possibly eight years I’m going to jab them into my eardrums. Then, I’ll probably make a scarf…maybe a shawl…shawls keep you warm when huddled around that clean-coal burning stove re-steeping the same tea packet you used the previous morning.
I’ll give her credit though, she pretty much stated outright that she wasn’t going to answer the questions, and talked about topics she had better studied. That’s chutzpah, but it worked.
Someone needs to tell Palin that the quote she attributed to Reagan originated with John Winthrop:
"We shall be as a city upon a hill for all eyes are upon us."
I rather think Sarah Palin would admire John Winthrop, what with banishing heretics to Rhode Island, and protecting the colony from psychic battle with witches. She’d be all over that-I can hear it now:
"Roger Williams, yur bein’ banished to Rouges Island ‘caus you don’t love the Massachusetts Bay Colony the way true Puritians do. I told ‘ya not to go sittin’ down and makin’ peace with our Wampanoag enemies there-now lookit, they want to scalp us all. I said I’d get back to ‘ya with some examples so uh, have a look at yer friend Anne Hutcheson over there. She’s a heretic, Rog. ‘Ya hear me? A heretic. Being Govenor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony…a cod producing colony…Sacred Cod, Roger, Sacred Cod, I know a thing or two about dealing with heretics that will bring the wrath of God on our shining little beacon here.Lost at sea Roger-that’s what will happen to our heroic cod fishermen. What have you done heroic Roger? Invite the savages to a big dinner? You are sooooooo out of here Rog. My friend Cotton Mather over there? Totally not a heretic.* He loves the colony. He’s a friend of the colony. And Cotton MAther will stand squarely, Pilgim buckles gleaming in the sun and declare his loyalty to the colony. You don’t see Cotton Mather out re-distributing the wealth of the colony to Indians.
* Yeah, yeah, I know Cotton Mather was a bit later but cut me some slack-we’re only talking about a couple decades.
Well, Old Mistresses has a different connotation.
If the Republicans win, Palin will be the most attractive Vice president since Gerald Ford.
Watching the Democratic convention this evening it occurred to me that I don’t really want to hear "speak truth to power" become the campaign slogan-primarily, because the Democrats are not speaking truth to power. I’ve heard it twice so far this evening. It was absurd coming out of John Kerry’s mouth and even more ridiculous from Joe Biden’s. Talk about diluting meaning.
It’s that amnesia thing again. "Speak truth to power" has been so removed from context and turned into a marketed catchphrase that it is meaningless. So there you have it-that’s how capitalist America deals with radicalism-by turning it into a marketable commodity. Fashionable radicalism, but not enough to get you on a watch list or infiltrated by the Feds. It reminds me of a friend’s daughter who as a nine year old declared herself an anarchist as an excuse to dress only in black.
It is almost as absurd as the crowd at PBS comparing Biden to Hubert Humphrey. I never thought I’d feel sorry for Hubert Humphrey.
-Brilliant. Just go read her comics. Now.
The Norman Invasion one is pretty funny.
You’re going to need to sit down before reading this. OK? The FBI is sponsoring Black History Month commercials being played on Hip Hop radio stations. Yeah, I know, amazing.
So, to quote the old anti-smoking billboards, "Where’s the outrage?" But I’m old. And from Chicago, and I don’t have amnesia.
- and not just because of inbreeding. I’m not confident Americans would do a whole heck of a lot better at distinguishing figures from history and literature.
Part of President Lincoln’s family farm is for sale-by the square inch. The proceeds go to charity.
I’ll re-post this from July of 2006, as I really don’t have anything new to add.
On the 90th Anniversary of the Somme
The rich and powerful are still sending the working class off to die in their wars.
I’ve spent a good part of my life thinking about the Somme, as I lived for many years nearby a forest preserve named for that horrific battle. I’d sit in traffic looking at the sign welcoming visitors to Somme Woods, and think how odd it was that it was filled with oblivious hikers, suburbanites out for picnics, and children on bike trails. I’m sure at the time of it’s dedication, the preserve was intended as a memorial for a battle still present in memory. Today? I don’t know, do they even teach the first World War in history classes anymore? It must be difficult to teach the dangers of nationalism in public schools that now have required courses in "Patriotism." Maybe they just stick to the oversimplification that the war was fought because the Archduke took a bullet in the head at Sarajevo-at least that’s how it was taught when I was in high school.
I remember looking up the Somme, and being so shocked by the numbers of dead that I had to re-read passages just to be certain I was reading correctly.
Seems remarkable that after something so awful, with so much death, that nations would ever be able to rally people to fight for another "cause" again. Remarkable, isn’t it?
