More Connections
I have at least one more Dylan-based cameo on the way. And, having waded through Mr. Tenet's attempt at absolution-between-covers ("At the Center of the Storm"), some commentary on that doorstop is potentially also in the works.
Family connections to the "Show Me" state and connections through close friends to adjacent Kentucky partially explain my interest in the following items.
I found this news from Missouri very invigorating, especially given that this is not what you'd call one of our more enlightened provinces:
Talk about a nasty divorce. In an announcement last month that left Missouri politicos agape, state Sen. Chris Koster, a rising Republican star and chairman of the Senate's GOP caucus, abruptly declared himself a Democrat.
Not only did Koster join the marginalized minority party in Missouri, but he did so with a thundering speech that lambasted his former colleagues as ignoring the needs of their constituents and slavishly following the dictates of "religious extremists."
The former prosecutor denounced several Republican positions he had once supported, such as steep cuts in Medicaid coverage and subsidized family-planning programs.
But Koster reserved his harshest criticism for GOP efforts to overturn a voter-approved constitutional amendment that protects embryonic stem-cell research in Missouri."
The Republican desire is to criminalize early-stage stem-cell research in our state," Koster said in a speech he repeated three times as he hopscotched across the state. "Go to Boston for your Nobel Prize; come to Missouri for your leg irons. And the Missouri Republican Party not only tolerates this lunacy, but embraces it," Koster said.
Days later, one of his staffers updated his website -- by deleting a photo of Koster shaking hands with Vice President Dick Cheney.
Koster's decision stunned Republicans here in his district just south of Kansas City and across this quintessential swing state. "There's no precedent for it in the state of Missouri," said GOP consultant Paul Zemitzsch.
But the move sounded like deja vu just across the state line in Kansas.
Three prominent Kansas Republicans moved into the Democratic column in late 2005 and 2006, voicing similar concerns about the influence of social conservatives. One of those defectors was elected attorney general. Another -- who once chaired the Kansas Republican Party -- now serves as lieutenant governor.
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And I found this post by Bob Hill in the Louisville Courier-Journal very satisfying in a number of ways. He ogles the Big Sky. Who wouldn't! Who doesn't! Just don't inveigle trainloads more of visitors (I say as a sometime visitor myself!). And he strikes a refreshingly lighter and more amusing note on the Craig/Minneapolis Airport embroglio than I could have conceived of under the present circumstances. Wonderful:
The vacation gods had routed my return trip from Montana to Louisville through the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
On a complete whim -- and some are better left unanswered than others -- I asked two white-haired ladies in an airport information booth the obvious and timely question: "Which way to the Sen. Larry Craig Memorial Bathroom Stall?"
It was a busy Labor Day weekend, with some 15 million Americans agreeing to take off their airport shoes or sacrifice the occasional bottle of hand lotion to visit Aunt Gert or Uncle Bert.
As a result, I feared an even-longer-than-normal line outside the fabled stall, endless hordes of stranded Northwest Airlines passengers sneaking a peek, maybe even somebody screwing a plaque into the sacred door.
American history, I was thinking, has been created in even smaller rooms.
The white-haired ladies looked at each other and giggled. One said she couldn't divulge the location. The other couldn't wait to give it up: "Just down the corridor on the right … but be careful in there. …"
The ladies again looked at each other and giggled a little more. I wondered how many times they'd been asked about the stall. I also was in a hurry, as some of the gates at the monstrous Minneapolis airport are in separate time zones.
And yet … surely the travel gods had routed me through there … and on this particular weekend … for some good reason.
It had been a fine vacation. Montana doesn't come labeled "Big Sky Country" for nothing. It's high, wide and handsome. We saw bison, wolves, bears, elk, deer and a marmot. We saw geysers, glaciers, clear and cold streams and bubbly pockets of boiling yellow sulfur. We had a mountaintop snowball fight and traveled in a historic red bus up a steep, curling mountain road to visit the sun.
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Family connections to the "Show Me" state and connections through close friends to adjacent Kentucky partially explain my interest in the following items.
I found this news from Missouri very invigorating, especially given that this is not what you'd call one of our more enlightened provinces:
Talk about a nasty divorce. In an announcement last month that left Missouri politicos agape, state Sen. Chris Koster, a rising Republican star and chairman of the Senate's GOP caucus, abruptly declared himself a Democrat.
Not only did Koster join the marginalized minority party in Missouri, but he did so with a thundering speech that lambasted his former colleagues as ignoring the needs of their constituents and slavishly following the dictates of "religious extremists."
The former prosecutor denounced several Republican positions he had once supported, such as steep cuts in Medicaid coverage and subsidized family-planning programs.
But Koster reserved his harshest criticism for GOP efforts to overturn a voter-approved constitutional amendment that protects embryonic stem-cell research in Missouri."
The Republican desire is to criminalize early-stage stem-cell research in our state," Koster said in a speech he repeated three times as he hopscotched across the state. "Go to Boston for your Nobel Prize; come to Missouri for your leg irons. And the Missouri Republican Party not only tolerates this lunacy, but embraces it," Koster said.
Days later, one of his staffers updated his website -- by deleting a photo of Koster shaking hands with Vice President Dick Cheney.
Koster's decision stunned Republicans here in his district just south of Kansas City and across this quintessential swing state. "There's no precedent for it in the state of Missouri," said GOP consultant Paul Zemitzsch.
But the move sounded like deja vu just across the state line in Kansas.
Three prominent Kansas Republicans moved into the Democratic column in late 2005 and 2006, voicing similar concerns about the influence of social conservatives. One of those defectors was elected attorney general. Another -- who once chaired the Kansas Republican Party -- now serves as lieutenant governor.
-clip-
And I found this post by Bob Hill in the Louisville Courier-Journal very satisfying in a number of ways. He ogles the Big Sky. Who wouldn't! Who doesn't! Just don't inveigle trainloads more of visitors (I say as a sometime visitor myself!). And he strikes a refreshingly lighter and more amusing note on the Craig/Minneapolis Airport embroglio than I could have conceived of under the present circumstances. Wonderful:
The vacation gods had routed my return trip from Montana to Louisville through the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.
On a complete whim -- and some are better left unanswered than others -- I asked two white-haired ladies in an airport information booth the obvious and timely question: "Which way to the Sen. Larry Craig Memorial Bathroom Stall?"
It was a busy Labor Day weekend, with some 15 million Americans agreeing to take off their airport shoes or sacrifice the occasional bottle of hand lotion to visit Aunt Gert or Uncle Bert.
As a result, I feared an even-longer-than-normal line outside the fabled stall, endless hordes of stranded Northwest Airlines passengers sneaking a peek, maybe even somebody screwing a plaque into the sacred door.
American history, I was thinking, has been created in even smaller rooms.
The white-haired ladies looked at each other and giggled. One said she couldn't divulge the location. The other couldn't wait to give it up: "Just down the corridor on the right … but be careful in there. …"
The ladies again looked at each other and giggled a little more. I wondered how many times they'd been asked about the stall. I also was in a hurry, as some of the gates at the monstrous Minneapolis airport are in separate time zones.
And yet … surely the travel gods had routed me through there … and on this particular weekend … for some good reason.
It had been a fine vacation. Montana doesn't come labeled "Big Sky Country" for nothing. It's high, wide and handsome. We saw bison, wolves, bears, elk, deer and a marmot. We saw geysers, glaciers, clear and cold streams and bubbly pockets of boiling yellow sulfur. We had a mountaintop snowball fight and traveled in a historic red bus up a steep, curling mountain road to visit the sun.
-clip-
posted by Sir Gumbo at 10:34 PM
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