Eamus Catuli
Spring, babies!
Never mind the thermometer, it is indeed that season of rebirth and all the rest of that rot. For instance, Bloomington’s Farmers Market opens outdoors today. Yay!
Our lawn is turning really, really green. The chives are running at least ten inches tall. And Steve the Dog and I ventured down to Lake Monroe late yesterday afternoon. We listened to the Cubs home opener on WGN as we drove. Well, I listened. Steve prob. heard some kind of shrill buzz coming from the dashboard. Either way, the sound was decidedly unpleasant: the Cubs were whomped 7-2. Sigh.
Anyway, the lake is brimming with runoff from this week’s biblically-proportioned rainfall. I’ve seen it more flooded — much more flooded — but still, I get a kick out of monitoring the pool level (as my pal, water boss Pat Murphy, would put it) from season to season and year to year. It reminds me that a dammed stream, a river, or any body of water more or less breathes — in slow motion, sure — like every other living, aerobic thing.
The Cutright Ramp Almost Swallowed Up
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The Footbridge
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Water Laps At The Roadway
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Steve: “Dude, Ixnay With The Pix. Let’s Go!”
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[Wondering about the headline? Consult your Cassell’s Latin-English Dictionary. Once you’ve translated, then you can make fun of me.]
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Pants On Fire
Y’know how the ever-aggrieved Right in this holy land is always complaining about that big old mean liberal media? Well, maybe complaining isn’t quite the right word; how about squalling like rotten little brats?
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W/o their laundry list of imagined slights, insults, and deadly threats, I don’t know how the Right could survive. But they go on, screaming about how the world’s out to crush them. Chief among the crushers, of course, are television stations, newspapers, news magazines, Hollywood, all the interwebs, talk radio, anybody with a pen or a keyboard, and every living being who’s ever listened to, seen, or read anything.
And guess what: It’s all bullshit. William Kristol, one of the Right’s chief theorists and himself a media creature, is quoted by Joe Conason in the book Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth:
I admit it. The liberal media was never that powerful, and the whole thing was often used as an excuse by conservatives for conservative failure.
Thanks for the clarification, Billy-boy.
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Hamilton’s Hoosiers
Staying with book larnin’, let’s look at a Lee Hamilton anecdote from Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland:
Lee Hamilton, an Indiana freshman Democrat, described what it was like to defend his civil rights record at the local taverns:
“Haven’t we done enough for the Negro?” someone will ask…. That’s where they begin calling me names.
Freshman Wisdom
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