November 2008
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A long weekend in Santa Fe, New Mexico — a handsome small city. I don't know of another place in the nation in which the principal economic engine is the making and selling of arts and crafts. I myself am in the familiar situation: anything I can afford, I don't want, and anything I want,…
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I'm reading, or re-reading (what does it matter when it's been fifty years since the last go-around) Henry James' The Wings of the Dove. Once again, I'm variously stimulated, frustrated and infuriated. Has there ever been a writer who cries out to be parodied more than does Hank the J? Try to resist the impulse…
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Today's essaylet is being composed thirty thousand miles above ground, somewhere over, it appears from up here, Utah. I'm flying on Southwest Airlines, the Trailways of the sky — no frills, no food, no nothing. No passengers to speak of, either. Big ol' three-quarter-empty jet plane. "Nobody's flying nowadays," a stewardess told me. Chalk up…
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I'm jubilant that, come January 20, we'll once again have a president whose brain waves are dancing, who can bring an English sentence to completion, and who understands that America consists of much more than the Bushian roster of Fortune 500 executives, evangelicals, know-nothings, high school dropouts, gay-bashers, neocon imperialists, dittoheads, gun nuts, military contractors,…
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The Republicans have voluntarily transformed themselves into a regional and agrarian party. If the Democrats play it as it lays, they have the opportunity to create a permanent Democratic majority — permanent into the foreseeable future, that is. McCain was the candidate of a geographical region, not of the nation. How many votes did the…
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My election day was much like that of many Americans, I betcha. In the morning, out walking the neighboring precincts, to knock on doors and rouse up the occasional procrastinator. I was greeted for the most part by enthusiastic thumbs-up Obama voters but also by apologetic laggards whom I forced to swear holy oaths that…
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At Grusin Music Hall last night to hear the Takacs play Beethoven and Schumann, always a delight, and also a quartet by Bartok, which is, I’m sorry to say, even after many exposures is still screechingly hard on my tender ears (except for the very amusing pizzicato 4th movement). Perhaps some day I’ll "get" Bartok,…
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These last few weeks, I’ve been reading political news obsessively. Not just the NYTimes and the WaPo, but the left-wing blogs as well: Politico and Daily Kos and HuffPo and TPM. I follow the local political gossip on ColoraoPols. I check the latest polls on Pollster and 538, searching for trends and differentials. Worse still,…