Today’s prompt from Long and Short Reviews is, “Something to know before visiting my country or city”.
Well, for starters, don’t come between May and October because most of the year we endure the Great Sticky Siege. As regards Selma specifically, my ladyfriend probably started giggling because she knows exactly what I’m going to say, because I have an entire rant about it, but I’m going to surprise her and say this: people visit purely for Civil Rights history, which is valid given our role in it, but Selma has a history which is far deeper and richer than 1960s politics. Selma is one of Alabama’s few original river towns to survive into the modern day, along with Montgomery; the rest, like St. Stephens, Claiborne, and Old Cahawba, all died. This owed in part to its geographical advantage: it’s a high bluff on the Alabama river in the middle of Alabama’s richest farming soil, and until the 1920s that meant it commanded agriculture commerce. Everything came to us, and then it went elsewhere. First by rivers, then by rails. Railroads obsessed Selma’s civic and business leaders after the War. The town assumed signal importance during the Civil War, being burned in the last week of the conflict, but rebounded to become so influential that at one time, both of Alabama’s US Senators hailed from here. Then came cars and highways and — well. We missed the interstate bus, and now we’re struggling to find our way in the new world. We have an impressive architectural heritage that could rival Natchez if we received cruise lines like they do. The Alabama river is so dammed up, though, we’ll have to find another way.
WWW Wednesday
WHAT have you finished reading recently? Five Days in November, Kennedy and Nixon, and SHELLI: R-Evolution. The latter releases in a few days but I read an advance copy sent to me by the author. Review for K&N is done but I’m still in ‘edit and ponder’ mode. (Happy City was in edit-and-ponder mode for several years, but I’m fairly sure K&N will be posted tomorrow.)
WHAT are you reading now? Still Angle of Repose. One of my church members said to me Sunday, “Stephen! We need to have a Wallace Stegner chat.” He was disappointed that I hadn’t finished it yet (give me time people, do you realize how many books I want to hoover up?)
WHAT are you reading next? The Rupture, Regina Kay. Dark fantasy release from a friend. I can’t even say “dark fantasy isn’t really my thing” because I’ve literally read three and a half dark fantasy westerns by Rhett C. Bruno and Jaime Castle.
A corrupted memory with daddy issues. This job gets weirder all the time.
An experimental incubator synth, with high-octane empathy protocols, has just run off with a baby. The baby is due to be delivered soon, but it appears this unit has become attached to the baby she’s carried for so many months; she’d rather die than lose the infant. What happens next shocks both Jake and his synth partner, an illegal organic-synth bybrid named Shelli, and turns into quite a SF adventure. Imagine two partners who are given reason that they can’t trust one another’s minds, that the past has been made plastic, that things have been done which cannot be undone — and that a simple case of an apparently neurotic synth will lead to high-stakes action in the heart of DC.
The problem with reviewing some thrillers is that the twists are high-voltage enough that they will break through a simple precise. We begin with a simple incident; Shelli is not satisfied with appearances, and she wants to dig deeper. After certain evidence details bring an old case to mind, both Jake and Shelli are disturbed to realize that all records of the case are gone. In hopes of figuring out what’s happening, they go to Florida to visit the former case manager, but he gives Jake — and Jake alone — a dire warning. Drop this. There are things waiting in this Pandora’s box that should not be unleashed. Because Jake is warned about involving Shelli specifically, he goes alone, and (as one does when probing into cold cases everyone wants to remain dead as the grave) gets into trouble, and things steadily escalate. What makes the tension all the more sweeter is that at one point the reader will realize things the main characters cannot; it begins as a blip of “Huh, that’s strange” and steadily overtakes the plot.
I can’t say anything further without violating spoiler protocols, but R-Evolution contains all of Brode’s strengths from this series. Shelli is innately interesting; her bond with Jake is complex. The near-future setting allows readers to settle into a feeling of ‘the world mostly as you know it, but with synths’, and so the disasters that threaten are more real in a way than SF works that deal with wholly imagined cities and entities. Jake is grounded in the law enforcement bureaucracy of our world, just — in some near future. At the same time, this isn’t simply an action SF novel with robots; in the tradition of SF, it touches on philosophy — particularly, autonomy and sentience. While reading it, Firefly’s Serenity came to mind, as did TNG’s “Measure of a Man”. R-Evolution also touches on political philosophy, and in a way that is deliciously timed for America’s 250. Was it intentional? I have no idea, but for readers like myself who have been revisiting the American Revolution in history this year — who have sat in Independence Hall and listened (or read) Mr. Dickinson and Mr. Adams arguing whether or not our rights are inherent or fabricated, if they were writ in the soul rather simply in government edicts — it’s compelling in ways beyond “how do we stop this bad thing that is happening”. And yet at the same time, it remains Shelli’s story — Shelli, the synth who captures synths who misbehave; Shelli, the synth who became a human hybrid; Shelli, who like R. Daneel Olivaw has to live every second trying to figure out where she stands vis a vis humanity — and what she owes it, and to synths.
Great close to this series. I can’t believe we’re closing the sixth month of 2026 and this is only my first SF read, but hopefully the rest will be comparable!
SHELLI: R-Evolution will be released on June 19th, 2026.
Quotations
“Together again,” Jake said, sitting on a stack of boxes in the back of a utility van. “And traveling in style.” Shelli stood, statuesque, ignoring the vehicle’s unsteady motion. “Infiltrating 2Morrow Dynamics without being detected is the goal. The aesthetics were not my concern.”
Shelli had calculated the precise amount of speed and strength required to knock _________ down without causing permanent damage. However, despite her promise, she had enjoyed it.
“I’ve read your file. You’re no killer.” “Was that profile written before or after I became a father?”
“Jack, oh Jack! What have they done?” – Jacqueline Kennedy
In his memoir of working in the Secret Service, Within Arm’s Reach, Dan Emmett said that he was inspired by seeing an agent on television jump onto the presidential convertible during the JFK assassination to join the service. That agent was Clint Hill. Five Days in November is his memoir of JFK’s fatal trip to Texas, the family’s crushed return home to Washington, and the nation saying goodbye to its 35th executive. It is written by a man clearly haunted by the fact that he could have, should have, done more, despite any reader familiar with the details knowing otherwise. The memoir is rich in photos, including shots I’ve never seen before — like a rear shot of Jackie and the kids watching the funeral from the Truman Balcony — and is often moving. Obviously there are moments like little Jack saluting his father — a move he’d been practicing for an Armistice Day visit weeks before — but Jackie and Caroline kneeling at JFK’s casket and kissing the flag was also powerful. More than anything, though, this memoir drove home the close connection between JFK and JBK despite his frequent adultery, and how much he appreciated her own celebrity. The early days of this are full of him joking that they’d all come to see her, not him. While more appropriate for November reading, this was an engaging if somber read that lets Hill take readers through JFK’s last days and see behind the scenes.
Today’s TTT is “bookish wishes”, with an implication that we’re talking about books on our wishlist. I have far too many books to read at the moment as it is (and I mean active interest, like I keep wanting to start my third dish when I’m still chasing peas around from dish the first), so I’ll just do books I looked at on Amazon recently.
Teaser Tuesday
“Jack, oh, Jack! What have they done?!” – FIVE DAYS IN NOVEMBER
The Last Ten Books I Looked at on Amazon
(1) Visions of the Divine: An Artistic Journey Into the Mystery of the Eucharist, Stephen Auth.
(2) The Kennedy Detail: JFK’s Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence, Gerald Blaine & Lisa McCubbin
(3) The Road to Dallas, David Kaiser
Readers who have been bravely enduring my president obsession this past..year:
(4) The Rupture, Regina Kay. A fantasy novel by someone I “grew up with”, in the sense that we met online over a quarter of a century when I was smellincoffee and she was faith130 on the old 3DO gaming forums.
(5) States of the Union: A History of the Union through Presidential Addresses, David Kaiser
(6) 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon: The Epic Campaign that Forged Three Presidencies, David Pietrusza
(7) The Passion of Ayn Rand’s Critics, James Valliant. Earlier this week in a library group, someone posted a question: what do people see in Ayn Rand? I have a mixed opinion on Rand, seeing her philosophy as both invigorating but ultimately damned by its view of humans as primarily philosophical rather than biological creatures — but I tried to write a response to explain artistic integrity in The Fountainhead, or to point out that The Virtue of Selfishness has the same core conceit as any movie in which the main character decides to “follow their dreams”. When I hit “Post”, I was told the original post had been locked for commenting. I was sadly, not surprised. However, it evidently led to me looking for books that talk about Rand in an interesting way. This one was disappointing: it’s less about philosophy and more about the weird interpersonal drama of Rand and her ….boyfriend, I guess.
(8) TR’s Last War: Theodore Roosevelt, the Great War, and a Journey of Triumph and Tragedy, David Pietrusza
(9) Bad Blood: Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, and the Tumultuous 1960s, Jeffrey Smith. Annnnd now I have “Bad Blood” stuck in my head.
(10) Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker.
Fun fact: not only am I posting a JFK book today (it was a quickie — mostly pictures) but I have Vendetta, a history of RFK vs Hoffa waiting for me at the post office. I did not imagine catching the Kennedy bug.
What possesses a twenty-year old to read five hundred page biography of a president he knows nothing about? Evidently, I was impressed by his speechwriting. In December 2006, President Ford died, and I was honestly grieved. In my ‘memorial’ post for him, I mentioned that I’d come across one of his speeches on AmericanRhetoric (the website responsible for my old party trick of reciting presidential speeches) and was impressed by him enough to read his autobiography. Reading it in 2005 gave me an enormous admiration for President Ford’s character, and I could not help but revisit it as part of my America @ 250 project. My fondness for Ford as a man, my appreciation for his character, has never wavered in the twenty years since though my politics have changed several times in those decades. Revisiting it on the anniversary of President Reagan’s death, I found myself appreciating this memoir of a decent man in an indecent office yet again — despite sometimes thinking the sheer amount of text could have done with some trimming.
Gerald Ford, uniquely among America’s executives, was not elected in: he was appointed as Vice President after Spiro Agnew resigned, and then succeeded within a matter of months into the presidency as Nixon’s administration began sinking beneath the drama of Watergate. Ford incorporated this into his inaugral address:
If you have not chosen me by secret ballot, neither have I gained office by any secret promises. I have not campaigned either for the Presidency or the Vice Presidency. I have not subscribed to any partisan platform. I am indebted to no man, and only to one woman — my dear wife — as I begin this very difficult job.
That is the spirit this book is written in, and it is what made Ford then and now, even when he was frankly boring me a bit with incredible detail on foreign policy decisions — who will be the new ambassador to India? As accomplished as Nixon was, there’s no doubt he was an incredibly difficult person to be around: in Kennedy and Nixon, he declared himself that his personality was awful. Jerry Ford was…completely different. He came up in Congress; his love was Congress. When he left the White House, he asked Marine One to circle not the White House, where he’d been for scarcely two years, but the Capitol. The Capitol was the same place he insisted on having his oath of office administered in; it was the place he returned to for speeches not as an executive facing off against adversaries, but a colleague who had just found himself elevated in extraordinary circumstances. In this era, Congress still worked: it made decisions that affected foreign policy and complicated domestic policy, making it difficult to be an overweening executive. Ford had an easy spirit, one that could work with others to accomplish common goals — but he’d also dig in his heels, as he did as a young man when he threatened to quit the football team (where he was fairly accomplished) if they agreed to Georgia Tech’s demands that a black player be benched during their match. While my libertarian self harrumphs at some of his policy decisions, one gets a sense from this book that he was principled but willing to be flexible: sometimes too much so, frankly, as when he wanted bans against “Saturday night special” handguns because of an uptick in handgun violence. One never doubts, however, he had the best of intentions.
I cannot honestly say this is a fair review of a presidential memoir; I read it 20 years ago and began to admire the man, and I read it again knowing far more about the background but still not able to put Ford in a box and rip into him like an opposing attorney. There is an earnestness about Gerald Ford that I love; he is clothed not with charm and flair like Kennedy, or cold cunning like Nixon. He is an everyman; he is Mr. Smith, come not just to Washington but to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It is, of course, fascinating to see him as a witness to Watergate, to realize that he is not merely filling an office but is being thrown into the center of the action. In one of my recent Nixon books, I was struck by the paralysis of the RNC: Watergate started causing problems when Nixon was riding stag, without Agnew, and they couldn’t begin to start responding without having a stable veep at the helm. And the Democrats controlled Congress, so the man chosen had to be able to not only restore trust, but to work with Congress. The man and the hour had met. While that future veep gets deep into details on policy, it’s still fun to be in the room when history is being made– when he’s trying to figure out how to deal with China, with Russia, with the ailing economy.(I was happy to learn from this that Nixon admitted his wage and price controls were a mistake: it would’ve been better if Nixon or Ford had said that not only did they make things worse, but they were a gross overreach of the executive into matters that a Constitutional government has no place in addressing.) We get a sense of the man thrown into responsibility, and then — given how closely responsibility is linked to meaning — finding he loves the job too much to not fight for it. He was succeeded by Jimmy Carter, another very decent man who — like Ford — was not unfit for the office because of intelligence, but simply because the Oval Office is most effective when someone Machiavellian is wearing its ring. It’s sad, but — I fear — true. I was happy to revisit this, especially for the letter Ford wrote one of his sons who was entering adulthood: one of the quotes from that I often think of. It’s not pithy; it’s not sexy. It’s functional, and sincere. It is Jerry Ford. Would that his spirit lived more fully in DC today.
“You must realize that on the road of life, there will be disappointments, and that the best way to avoid another is to plan better and work harder.”
I have not sought this enormous responsibility, but I will not shirk it. Those who nominated and confirmed me as Vice President were my friends and are my friends. They were of both parties, elected by all the people and acting under the Constitution in their name. It is only fitting then that I should pledge to them and to you that I will be the President of all the people.
Coming up: I’m practically at the end of Kennedy and Nixon and will post a review this weekend; I’m close to the end of SHELLI: R-Evolution. I’d ordered Vendetta, a look at RFK and Jimmy Hoffa’s relationship, but the supplier cancelled. Possibly for the best. I now have two books written by Nixon.
Send help.
Also, I will read a proper Ford biography before this project is over: while I do trust Jerry to speak for himself, I also want an outside view.
ALSO: this is read 76 for the year. Ford was president during the 1976 Bicentennial. Totally an accident..
“Let us pray here in the Old North Church tonight that those who follow one hundred or two hundred years from now and may look back at us and say: We were a society which combined reason with liberty and hope with freedom. May it be said above all: We kept the faith, freedom flourished, liberty lived. These are the abiding principles of our past and greatest promise of our future.”
– President Gerald R. Ford, Bicentennial address. 1976. Modern America: k Modern America: lol
WHAT have you finished reading recently? To Rescue the American Spirit.
WHAT are you reading now? A surprise SF title and A Time to Heal by Gerald Ford. Also trying to finish Kennedy and Nixon. Oh, and I have a good start on Angle of Repose. I might have a problem.
WHAT are you reading next? Probably one of these three. I’m still in my reading mood and I just watched two D-Day movies.
Today’s prompt from Long and Short Reviews is, “A Story About Your Best Teacher”. I don’t think I can pick a best teacher; I have been blessed with more than a handful of people who were passionate about their students and their subject, and who managed to bring the two together. One man is worth mentioning, though, and I’ll call him “Mr. M” for now. Mr. M was my first college-level history professor; he was approaching retirement when I began taking classes with him, and as such was delightfully candid with his sidebars. His political philosophy was something akin to Bob Heinlein — a mix of libertarianism and militant anti-communism. (The first time I ever heard the name “Ayn Rand” was in his classroom!) When he was thinking, he had a habit of closing one eye and looking up as he pondered. He liked telling funny stories that connected with a point, and had a wonderful voice for it. (He was deep, dry, and sarcastic.) What I remember most about him, though, is that he introduced me to history as a worldview, a pattern of thinking. I remember vividly when he assessed our textbook, saying he felt that the author handled this part fairly well, but that they were weak on this part, and my eighteen year old mind was blown. I was still a kid, really, and the idea that textbooks were not The Authority – that they were written by people, that these people had limitations and biases – was entirely new to me. In another instance, we were discussing one of my incorrect exam answers (he was always concerned if I scored less than a hundred given that I always made hay with the bonus questions), and he told me not that I was wrong, but he explained to me the difference in characters between the king I’d vainly tried to remember and the actual king. As I remember, it was a matter of which English king tried to fight for religious toleration for Catholics. It was a moment of nestling so deep into history that kings became not answers to questions, but real people whose personalities we could grasp. Mr. M was an inspiration and mentor to me, and we remain in contact – he was actually my baptismal sponsor. Unfortunately, after decades of teaching he has evidently decided he is more interested in listening, as he rarely pipes up in Adult Formation unless we deliberately ask him what he thinks! Oh, and how’s this for a coincidence? Mr. M was in my facebook memories today!
I am not entirely sure why I called him Mark Twain incarnate after all these years, though.
“Christ, Jerry, isn’t this a wonderful country? Here we can talk about this and you and I can be friends, and eighteen months from now I’ll be going around the country kicking your ass in.” That, I thought, was a one hell of a way to speak to the next President of the United States. But it was vintage [Tip] O’Neill. A TIME TO HEAL, Gerald Ford
I am reading something other than dead presidents, but it’s a surprise SF novel. This is my Kindle shelf at the moment:
While I hadn’t planned to read Thedore Roosevelt until I’d finished off Garfield, etc, the ladyfriend bought this for me and I found it fairly absorbing – as in hey, why not spend two hours after work each day reading it before I even go inside the house? To Save the American Spirit is a narrative biography of Roosevelt that sees him as a forceful visionary, dashing into the 20th century and inspiring or dragging the American people behind him with a cry of “BULLY!”. It’s a very complimentary biography, then, but carries praise from Doris Kearns Goodwin and Walter Isaacson, both of whom have sterling reputations as biographers. Baier accomplishes what he sets out to do quite readily, I think – introduce readers to a man whose energy, optimism, and cheerful gung-ho drive can fascinate even an anti-government crank like myself.
I would’ve said even before reading this book that Thedore Roosevelt is easily one of the most memorable and interesting men to sit in the Oval Office: granted, he built the West Wing, so he did have a running start. Even as a young man who struggled with health problems and had not yer developed the physicality he was later known for – the pugilistic physique would come in time, especially after his adventures out west – Roosevelt had self-confidence enough that his university teachers would have to force him to shut up so they could properly teach their class. The older Oyster Bay Roosevelts were not interested in politics: they regarded it as beneath good breeding to engage in a field they associated with dubious political machines and the like. Roosevelt, however, was attracted to the fight: he wanted to be in the arena, and he wanted to clean it up. He made early common cause with Democrat president Grover Cleveland, a man who shared his zeal for fighting corruption and creating lasting civil service reforms. This was in a time when entire offices would be emptied out – Democrats replaced with Republicans – once a new man was in office, despite said offices not having any political roles.
Roosevelt is known for his “man in the arena” speech, – one that treats with disdain those who sit on the side and criticize, and praises instead the man or woman who jumps into the fray. Roosevelt was that kind of man: while serving as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and working so hard that his superior was annoyed at the constant planning (plainly John Long viewed his Sec. Nav job as a kind of drowsy sinecure), Roosevelt saw what was happening in Cuba and had to throw in. He gave orders in Long’s absence, and then resigned his post to raise a regiment of Rough Riders and take part in the looming conflict between the United States and Spain as the former intervened in Spain’s fight against Cuban rebels. There, he and his men distinguished himself – Roosevelt was particularly impressed by the black and Native American soldiers he fought alongside – and he came back a hero, setting the stage for him to be tapped as Vice President. An assassin’s bullet would usher Roosevelt into the White House, where he championed a more assertive executive.
My status as ‘conservatarian’ means I frequently view with skepticism the sweeping decisions made by men like Roosevelt and his cousin Franklin – however, I can generally step into another frame and see how those with another worldview could view other men as praiseworthy. With Roosevelt, I must admit the frame is fairly large and easy to step into: as I read this, I found myself within it despite not wanting to put myself there. The late 19th century was not known for executives with a lot of personality, but Teddy had it in spades: in The Cult of the Presidency, Gene Healy accused Roosevelt of being the first celebrity executive. (It was not a compliment.) Roosevelt was perhaps the answer to a question that lingered over the American union after the Civil War: who are we? Baier compares Roosevelt to Washington and Lincoln in terms of his lingering legacy, and after reading this I can understand why. If Washington presided over the Republic’s potentially stormy start, and Lincoln maintained and consolidated the Union, Roosevelt can be seen as having driven it into a new, more confident stage. He saw an America that was destined for greatness, not just sitting under its own fig tree and not being afraid – so he charged ahead with projects like the Panama Canal and urged the rapid expansion of the Navy, while at the same time making America a diplomatic contender by helping end the Russo-Japanese war. Even knowing the course of the 20th century and appreciating that American ‘greatness’ came at the cost of DC becoming a bloated monstrosity that is more responsive to internal lobbyists and external cronies – Roosevelt’s vision is attractive. It made me think of Obama, actually: by the time he was elected, I was already too disappointed in him to vote for him (2008 remains the only presidential election I’ve not voted in), he still made me Believe. His “It was a creed…” speech is a masterstroke of rhetoric, and Roosevelt was flinging out those “Stand up and cheer” speeches constantly. If nothing else, this book really drives home how inspiring he could be.
While I want to find a more even-handed take on Roosevelt in time (something that criticizes his zeal for engaging in action that goes well beyond Constitutional or even traditional mandates), this was fun to read and gave me a general overview with which to start developing a better appreciation of ol’ TR. Whoever much I want to dislike him because of his overreach, I find it impossible not to admire him as a man.
Related: The Old Lion, Jeff Shaara. A very celebratory novel of TR.
The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Exercise in Liberty is a unique work, as it is a history of how the Declaration came to be – not only politically, but philosophically. It begins as formal history, recounting the early 1770s as Parliament’s ‘long train of abuses’ began assembling itself against the American colonies. Birzer takes us through arguments and debates as the Americans speak out against abuses like the Stamp Act, the Quebec Act, and the Coercive Acts. We see them in their own words moving gradually from protesting their rights as Englishmen to protesting their natural rights as men, and then striking for Independency. That independency begins first in fact, rather than rhetoric, as various states adopted new constitutions in early ’76 which were free of England save for common law. We are privileged, via Birzer, to see voices from all sides, as he quotes from pamphleteers and essayists at length.
After studying the Declaration itself, Birzer borrows a page from Russell Kirk’s The Roots of American Order to examine the long traditions in political philosophy that led to the Declaration being written. Jefferson modestly opined that he had done nothing but capture the common thinking of the people. Through this work we can see a little of the truth in that – Birzer excerpts Dickinson, Adams, and others’ work – but one must push back against Jefferson a bit. It is one thing to summarize a people’s thinking; it is quite another to summarize it well, to capture the spirit and distill it into lightning that will continue inspiring Americans for now two and a half centuries. This is, in short, not merely a history of the document that declared American independence, but an exercise in the studia humanitatis, the classical and medieval tradition of searching for what it means to be human and to live well. This is no doubt intentional, as Birzer sees the Declaration as part of a tradition that began with Plato’s Republic and continued through Cicero’s On the Republic and Augustine’s City of God, each a reflection on how our political life is tied to our human flourishing. This ‘great conversation’ has other examples – notably, Virgil drawing on Homer for his Aeneid, and in turn inspiring The Divine Comedy. This work was both fascinating and deeply satisfying, written by a man who clearly loves his subject, and manages to be both serious and conversational.
WHAT have you finished reading recently? The Letters of JFK, edited by Martin Sandler. Very nearly finished with Brad Birzer’s The Declaration of Independence: A Radical Experiment in Liberty.
WHAT are you reading next? You know, we’re supposed to have finished our CC spin (for me, Angle of Repose) by June 5. I should really get on that. Also, random coincidence….three years ago I shared a quote from Angle of Repose on facebook!
In my mind I write letters to the newspapers, saying Dear Editor. As a modern man and a one-legged man, I can tell you that the conditions are similar. We have been cut off, the past has been ended and the family has broken up and the present is adrift in its wheelchair. I had a wife who after twenty-five years of marriage took on the coloration of the 1960s. I have a son who, though we are affectionate with one another, is no more my true son than if he breathed through gills. That is no gap between the generations, that is a gulf. The elements have changed, there are whole new orders of magnitude and kind. The present of 1970 is no more an extension of my grandparents’ world, this West is no more a development of the West they helped build, than the sea over the Santorin is an extension of that once island of rock and olives. My wife turns out after a quarter of a century to be someone I never knew, my son starts all fresh from his own premises. My grandparents had to live their way out of one world and into another, or into several others, making new out of old the way corals live their reef upward. I am on my grandparents’ side. I believe in Time, as they did, and in the life chronological rather than the life existential. We live in time and through it, we build our huts in its ruins , or used to, and we cannot afford all these abandonings.”
Ten Most Recently Liked Vids on Youtube
None of these would embed. Grrr.
(1) A live scene from HARRY V. I’ve never seen this produced on the stage — only the Branagh movie — so this was interesting. Harry’s “Once more into the breach” and “Crispian’s Day” speeches are favorites.
Gaming humor from a great channel that does a lot of it, beginning with Epic NPC Man. They have an RDR2 series I love.
(3) “Doctor vs Firefighter: Never Have I Ever”. I watch a lot of occupational videos on youtube — doctors, lawyers, firemen, etc reacting to footage — and this is a collab between two favorites.
Auto mechanics react to weird/outrageous ‘just rolled into the shop’ videos. Includes footage of a car trying to crank when the door is unlocked.
(6) A cover of LagWagon’s “May 16” from ‘WinningShot’, from a…Korean band. Every year I share the original on facebook on May 16th for some reason. No one has ever commented on it.
I hated having to watch this so much, but sassy Massie stayed funny to the end. “I would have come out sooner, but it took a minute to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.” Massie was primary’d by the Don for refusing to help pass the omnibus bill (that was basically Joe Biden’s budget but with some new stuff) and working with house Democrats to force action on Epstein.
Reading Freely 
