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I have to remember that you cannot really play with Sammy. He just jabbed out at me and gave me a pretty good scratch. I was surprised that he didn't draw blood. It felt like a good deep scratch. However, looking back down at my finger, I now see a small, slight line of moist red. Cats. I love my cats, but I kind of wish that we never got together, that we never found that squatter family of cats behind our shed after the deluge of 2007 with those adorable kittens. That beautiful calico kitten in particular got me and put a spell on me. Ash isn't bad, though. She is gentle with me and just about redeems this whole cat enterprise of mine. She was always a special one.
Mar. 30th, 2017
Reading Life
Mar. 30th, 2017 10:55 pmAfter a reading a number of George Will's columns in his "One Man's America", I am surprised by how they go down like cotton candy. It's like propaganda for junior high students. I guess when you read him only once a week at best, you might not see this as readily.
I'm not saying that I think he is dumb, nor that I have just gotten a lot smarter in the last few months. You only have to catch his commentary on TV to see that he is top-flight, if his credentials weren't heavy enough for you. Maybe he is 'writing down' in his columns, counting on a pretty simple audience, people like the Rush Limbaugh audience. They do like their stuff bowdlerized and saccharine.
I will continue reading the book, but I'm thinking that I should have gotten the Krauthammer book. It's just that, back in the 90s, my local paper carried more Will than Krauthammer, so that I feel a bit more of a bond with the bow-tie guy, a connection to my lost youth. I also liked watching him on Sunday mornings.
As it is, I ordered another Clinton book today, Sidney Blumenthal's "Clinton Wars". I was actually more intent on Nixon, as there is a new biography on him that looks very promising. There are a number of Nixon books I am interested in. I went to research them to decide which one to get, but a funny thing happened on the way: Amazon pitched Blumenthal's book to me. The book was already on my wish list, but I have been reserved about it because Blumenthal is a part of the Clinton entourage. I'm afraid that his book might be like reading an Elvis book by George Klein. That's not really what I want. However, it hooked me because Amazon said they only have one hardcover left, and it was going for four dollars and change. So, I jumped on it. The Clintons, the 90s, that connection, that feeling.
Maybe I'll order the Nixon one next week. The way I fit these books into my reading life is to treat the chapters as essays. I read one chapter and then put it aside and read a little bit of something else, Lincoln, Hitch, Orwell, Mann, Homer, Shakespeare, Plato, Maureen Dowd, D. F. Wallace, whoever. So many books, so damn little time. Not a whole hell of a lot of memory & intellect either. I greedily take in what I can, but it's like trying to swallow the sea.
I'm not saying that I think he is dumb, nor that I have just gotten a lot smarter in the last few months. You only have to catch his commentary on TV to see that he is top-flight, if his credentials weren't heavy enough for you. Maybe he is 'writing down' in his columns, counting on a pretty simple audience, people like the Rush Limbaugh audience. They do like their stuff bowdlerized and saccharine.
I will continue reading the book, but I'm thinking that I should have gotten the Krauthammer book. It's just that, back in the 90s, my local paper carried more Will than Krauthammer, so that I feel a bit more of a bond with the bow-tie guy, a connection to my lost youth. I also liked watching him on Sunday mornings.
As it is, I ordered another Clinton book today, Sidney Blumenthal's "Clinton Wars". I was actually more intent on Nixon, as there is a new biography on him that looks very promising. There are a number of Nixon books I am interested in. I went to research them to decide which one to get, but a funny thing happened on the way: Amazon pitched Blumenthal's book to me. The book was already on my wish list, but I have been reserved about it because Blumenthal is a part of the Clinton entourage. I'm afraid that his book might be like reading an Elvis book by George Klein. That's not really what I want. However, it hooked me because Amazon said they only have one hardcover left, and it was going for four dollars and change. So, I jumped on it. The Clintons, the 90s, that connection, that feeling.
Maybe I'll order the Nixon one next week. The way I fit these books into my reading life is to treat the chapters as essays. I read one chapter and then put it aside and read a little bit of something else, Lincoln, Hitch, Orwell, Mann, Homer, Shakespeare, Plato, Maureen Dowd, D. F. Wallace, whoever. So many books, so damn little time. Not a whole hell of a lot of memory & intellect either. I greedily take in what I can, but it's like trying to swallow the sea.