Bonfire Night

05Nov09

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli’ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, let [...]

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Reading

26Oct09

If Detroit had been savaged by a hurricane and submerged by a ravenous flood, we’d know a lot more about it. If drought and carelessness had spread brush fires across the city, we’d see it on the evening news every night. Earthquake, tornadoes, you name it — if natural disaster had devastated the city that [...]

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Tags: current events, reading

Amelia

08Sep09

“When she lectured at colleges—as she did frequently, to promote careers for women, especially in aviation—she urged the coeds to focus on majors dominated by men, like engineering, and to postpone marriage until they had got a degree. On Earhart’s own wedding day, in 1931, the thirty-three-year-old bride handed her forty-three-year-old groom, George Palmer Putnam, [...]

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Reading

25Aug09

Most Berliners I know—a generally liberal bunch and pretty typical for the city—tell me the police are playing up the leftists’ role, and they downplay conservative chatter about a coming wave of leftwing violence. But they don’t deny that the city is restless. Many Berliners in the central districts are unhappy over the city government’s [...]

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Reading

15Aug09

Yet for all the benign memories, Woodstock also set in motion other, more crass impulses. While its immediate aftermath was amazement and relief, the festival’s full legacy had as much to do with excess as with idealism. As the decades roll by, the festival seems more than ever like a fluke: a moment of muddy, [...]

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Reading

14Jul09

Now you gotta realize that the time that we spent together did not really include much communication. Having coffee was not the most intimate relationship. Through the play we hadn’t talked to each other. I was standing next to a stranger and so was she. And as we’re walking out, “Will you marry me?” “Yes.”
Now [...]

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I know the election is long over, but…

30Jun09

There was some buzz on The Awl and on The XX Factor blogs today about an article on Sarah Palin in the latest Vanity Fair. The fact that this woman could have been vice president, even PRESIDENT, still gives me cold chills.
At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could [...]

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Reading

17Jun09

Wherever I went, people fussed over me and made sure that all my needs were met. But they can get so caught up trying to please, or seeming to, and declining offers, or seeming to, that true intentions are hidden. There’s a lot of mind reading and lighthearted, meaningless dialogue while the two parties go [...]

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May God bless those who fight for change.

16Jun09

Opposition defies protest ban in Tehran -via NY Times

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The other shoe dropping

29Apr09

G.M. said it would eliminate another 21,000 factory jobs, close 13 plants, cut its vast network of 6,500 dealers almost in half and shutter its Pontiac division.
By the time it is finished, G.M. expects to have only 38,000 union workers and 34 factories left in the United States, compared with 395,000 workers in more than [...]

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