Ginny

Age: 77 Place: Originally Nebraska, now Texas Family: Husband, 3 daughters, 3 sons-in-law, 3 grandchildren Occupation: Retired Education: BA, MA Nebraska; Ph.D. UT-Austin Work On hhe Double (1979-1992); taught: ta Austin, Blinn Jr. College (1993-20015), Kelly Girls intermittently.

Alton’s Farm

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Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a  sedes, a seat?—better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said; and there I did live

                                                                      Henry David Thoreau – Walden

Alton died last week.   At 85,  the last of John Jerry and Lydia Machann’s family:   six boys and two girls surviving to adulthood.   He had remained on the family farm, making it yield enough (cattle, cotton, oil) to buy another plot and support him and his brother, AC, for their long lives.   When a third brother, Robert, took early retirement from his factory job and returned to the farm, he, too, bought another plot, left to Alton. A child when his family moved in, Alton died in the house they built to anchor that land.

The Machans were stubbornly individualistic:   half Machans; the other half Machanns.   However, with all those sons, the name died out quickly.   Half the sons were not the marrying kind, another was childless, another had a son and daughter but that son died far too young, and the third was my husband’s father  an only child, whose children are all girls. The three brothers led quiet if demanding lives. In his last bedridden years, farm life went by his window he worried about whether a cow ambling by needed deworming, he’d consult the weather reports to see what was coming and his bird books as he watched his feeder.

Before we married, my husband returned to Austin one Sunday, having signed away all but oil royalty rights to the land left by his grandparents.   All the siblings (or siblings’ representatives) had.   There were many rational reasons for one, broken up it would not even support a lonely farmer.  Then, Alton wanted to farm.   He told his oldest friend about going to Waco, working in the factory for a week.   He returned ready to beg to stay on the farm; I can’t imagine his parents didn’t need another set of hands farms generally do.    This signing was after his parents’ deaths.

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Pugilists and Statesmen

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Ads are being run against de Santis; he voted, they claim,   to increase the retirement age amidst other possible solutions.   He, like Ryan, are youngsters pushing their elders off cliffs; of course, some   might see politicians manfully taking on a long term problem.

These ads may be effective but with them mere discussions become toxic – the opposite of a statesman’s approach    Bush began with a high-powered, sensible committee; 9/11 intervened. Maybe they would have come up with nothing but it remains the problem it was well over twenty years ago.   How many policy debates follow the same pattern?

The problem is the context as well. Trump is pursued by truly demonic (and unconstitutional) opponents.   Ones who have sold us out for a few gold pieces to the environmentalists, the communists, the totalitarians, the. .   .    While they   take pleasure in making our futures carless, gasless, air conditionless, they embrace nihilism.   Indeed,   half the country seems in an intense sado/masochistic relation with their overlords.

In a petty way,   this ad poses a dilemma.   Our positions imply to the simple minded that either

a) we buy into the least statesman-like and most perilous of positions about our future in that policy area,
or
b) we buy into the most aggressive, constitution-be-damned, politically motivated of our opponents clown shows.
Neither has our long-run interests in mind; both personalize and trivialize policy in an increasingly serious world.

I had hoped de Santis would run and Trump wouldn’t:    I’d assumed Trump wouldn’t naturally take a statesman’s approach, more likely a pugilist’s, during the fallow period.   There was hope:   once elected he sometimes made good choices not traditionally considered winners.   But this toxic perspective that will affect him as well as de Santis, making a good solution less likely.   Surely no solution leaves the system untouched.    Well, probably the Democrats have one – print more money.

Selfish, Personal Post: If You Were to Start Tomorrow, What e-mail service would you use?

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After a day of waiting on hold with my new internet server (I “bundled” for considerable savings but also because our local cable provider had been swallowed in a buy-out),   the last techie informed me that it was surprising I still got any e-mails – not that they were disappearing from my inbox and from deleted, etc.   (And pretty soon I wouldn’t get any.)    Suddenlink addresses, apparently, were being sent to some black hole.   Meanwhile, Optimum does not provide that service.

I guess I need to move on.   Opinions are generally well supported (and not in short supply) among Chicagoboyz; what has your experience taught you?   I’d love anecdotes   but statements like – XX is wonderful or terrible will also help.    After all, who is more savvy than a Chicagoboy?   On the other hand, I’m incompetent and totally rely on the Greek Squad so simplicity and safety are my biggest concerns.

What is the Purpose of a Senator

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Dr. Oz is a bit weird, and I’m bothered by his apparent mixed loyalties.   Still, I’m pulling for him.    I assume a good heart surgeon learns, processes, acts.   And apparently he did very well.    Secondly, I only watched one of his shows but he listened closely to his guest (with a certain modesty, as in his response to Oprah).   I like patents – we need people who   analyze, define, and solve problems.   We are less sure of what he will be than we are of more conventional candidates.   Still, a life time of work done well make it less of a gamble.

Then there’s Fetterman – with remarkably few accomplishments, he would fight crime and increase energy with flailing, contradictory slogans.   His party praised his “performances”.   But senators reason, and it is the reasoning before the vote, the give and take with opponents, that defines a Senator’s value.    A Senator is, after all,   joining one of the great, if not the greatest, of deliberative bodies.   Some, we hear in their ads, still see that role.   But is that even a majority?   And how much do the parties differ?

His party wanted to own his vote.   Their job is to elect sufficient pawns to give a majority.   Then, they give up the power of their vote to the leaders who give up theirs to the swamp, leading to a populace more and more restless and less and less able to fight free of the octopus.   And so it matters little that Fetterman can not deliberate.   In his stabs at making an argument for his candidacy, he says he’ll be the 51st vote.   Of course.    Not as a representative of Pennsylvanians.   That vote and not that voice is what made him worth millions.    And so he is elected by the party, not the people.

We can’t possibly know what Oz will be like as senator; however, we all know what Fetterman will be.

And is his role as cipher all that different from Biden’s?   Or even the without-the-excuse of a stroke or senility, Kamala Harris?   How much applies to other members of Congress, some even more visibly impaired (Diane Feinstein, for instance).

When juries nullify and comedians comment

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We sought something to entertain my enlarged family; Tim suggested Norm McDonald’s last   monologue, “Nothing Special,” done the night before surgery.   Then, a group of comedians reminisced with stories of his eccentricity and gentleness from their days in standup and casino venues.

We watched SNL in its first years, when my daughters were infants; their generation had been, I think, more McDonald fans (we stopped watching as years went by.)   I had only heard after his death of the O.J. jokes that got him fired.   But my son-in-law remembered the shock, before the “woke” and “me too”   shame environment, when funny lines weren’t enough against political favorites.   Humor juxtaposes what we claim and what we do sometimes, it is often about the elephant in the room, the emperor’s illusory clothes.   The humor of SNL, is of skits and stand-ups, often topical; its “bite” may be sharp but we laugh because it is, in some sense, true.

Did the Sussman trial have its jokes?   It has no gore, no glamour, but a joke or two is helpful in sustaining truth and our sanity. It is a release valve so a society doesn’t blow up, it can pull a crazy back to reality, give a moment of wry self awareness much more easily accompanied by a laugh than a tirade.

The jurors felt the case shouldn’t have seen a courtroom, lying to the FBI is not, after all, a big deal.   (Not surprising in terms of how the FBI has conducted itself of late nor considering how seldom we do face and tell truths, but given the number of people who have been locked up for that act, it seems a bit brazen for a jury to take that stance.) I’d like some jokes about the obvious context, the blurted out mention of Hillary’s blessing on the whole sleazy project.   Jokes rest in our minds, they remind us.