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Category Archives: Ramblings

History isn’t always written by the winners

Monday, April 2, 2018

I just finished Ron Chernow’s Grant, a book I highly recommend.One thing the book brings home is the fact that the history of the Civil War, particularly the post-Civil War period, was written, not by the winners, but by the losers. I’ve been a history nut all my life. I remember reading every Landmark book […]

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Two years ago today

Saturday, March 10, 2018

I have been keeping a journal on my Ipad, on and off, for the past two years or so. If there is a phrase that connotes the opposite of “deathless prose”, that’s pretty much what the journal contains. Anyway, the app automatically shows entries from the same calendar date from prior years. Two years ago […]

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More on “shithole”

Sunday, January 14, 2018

I spend a lot of time playing *Words with Friends* with my brother-in-law, who lives in France. If you play the game you know that, unlike in Scrabble, if you play a word that isn’t a word, you simply get to try again, without losing a point. Also, the game has a built in dictionary […]

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A time to wallow

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

A few things about the Jones win last night. First, now this means I won’t get an email from him every hour. I should add that I responded to several. Second, thank you black people of Alabama for doing the country a huge favor. Third, the victory is made the sweeter by the fact that […]

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A foolish consistency

Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Over the past few weeks the nation has engaged in a rather heated conversation about sexual harassment. Republicans have been their usual hypocritical selves. Many liberals, meanwhile, have bent over backward to avoid the charge of hypocrisy have embraced what I submit is a foolish consistency. The urge to consistency requires two things. First, we […]

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A plug

Sunday, June 25, 2017

My wife and I went to a play at the Goodspeed Opera House today, and as we had some time to kill before the show started, we consulted Yelp, and settled on *2 Wrasslin’ Cats’. I can’t vouch for the food, but my wife says the coffee was good, and the ice cream I had […]

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Random thoughts, 2 days after the Tuesday night massacre

Thursday, May 11, 2017

We are in one of those periods where things are moving a bit too fast for pundits of any stripe. I was looking through my RSS feeds a few minutes ago and came upon this post at Hullabaloo, in which Digby made the obvious point that Comey’s firing was all about Russia, adding some evidentiary […]

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Tales from the Dungeon (That would be Popple Dungeon)

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

This is a totally non-political post, at least that’s the plan. One of the stupider things we ever did was buy a vacation house shack in Chester, Vermont. It did not ruin us financially, only because we ended up renting it out for enough to cover the mortgage. Anyway, it is on Ethan Allen (street […]

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A year ago today

Friday, March 10, 2017

In addition to writing on this blog, I’ve been keeping a journal on my iPad. It has a feature that shows you entries from previous years. My entry from last year on this date, among other things, reproduced a post I put on this blog giving my reasons for considering Hillary Clinton a flawed candidate. […]

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Happy Birthday, Abie Baby

Sunday, February 12, 2017

Today is the natal day of the greatest American president. The fact that he became president at all should give us hope. He succeeded a string of mediocrities who had, at best, stood by while the nation careened toward destruction. What were the odds that a man of his abilities would occupy the White House […]

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