Steven P. BarrettNOT TOO LATE FOR SUMMER READING, ETC, LIST -- UPDATED
August 7th 2008 03:37
By Steven Barrett
Here's a short posting. First I'm actually too tired to type, much less do a lot of thinking after a long day of volunteering at a local church on what had to be the worst possible day of the entire year to volunteer.
Vacation Bible School -- hundreds of kids all over. Lots of stuff, bags and assorted messes to pick up in addition to the Wednesday bottle sorting job. Then it's heavy cans from the Food Bank's drop off of USDA canned goods, plus another delivery and set up of the pantry itself and clean up of the VBS for the day. So my mind's mush. Nevertheless I can still think of a few good reeds to read.
Tom Clancy's international war game thrillers. Start off with his Red October, Patriot Games, Sum of All Fears and move from there.
“Man of the House,” by the late (and great) Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Speaker of both (Massachusetts) and U.S. House of Representatives. Perhaps one of the greatest books about politics as it should be conducted. The Epilogue alone, should be on every pol’s bookcase. O’Neill also cited one of Hubert Humphrey’s greatest nuggets of wisdom given during the latter’s final speech before a Joint Session of Congress: I quote it in full:
See now … there’s no mention of that word: “accountable.” If today’s misers (who are no damned different than something out of a Charles Dickens novel (or their anti-New Deal predecessors), despite all their modern “packaging,” want to keep pushing that “accountability” schtick, let ‘em, just like Cain, when he gave the GOP its all-time most honest platform statement by asking God if he was his brother’s keeper.
“The Last Hurrah” by Edwin O’Connor. (For the post-baby-boomer generation readers or those not so sufficiently tutored about Massachusetts politics, it’s about the legendary James Michael Curley, Boston’s “Mayor of the Poor.”… Yes, the man was an old-time “boss,” but his heart was always in the right place more often than not. He’d never allow any child to remain sick or poor because it was “fiscally prudent” according to the diminished social/civic “standards” of today’s “fiscal accountability” penny-pinching SOBs.)
(O'Connor also includes a speech delivered by "Mayor Frank Skeffington" about his young opponent that could just as well describe another young aspirant to high office.)
Thomas Cahill’s “How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe.” Cahill should write a follow up book called “How the Irish Built and Civilized the British Empire for England: And How The WASPs Lost It In Less Than A Century!”
James Carville’s and Paul Begala’s “Take It Back: A Battle Plan for Democratic Victory” … oh hell, anything by those two guys. You’ll get a damn good laugh even if you think they’re full of it.
William F. Buckley, Jr.'s "God and Man at Yale." Long before it became "cool" to be "politically incorrect," Bill Buckley managed to remind Yale professors that they weren't the final authority on all matters intellectual, (or otherwise.)
For an emotional epilogue to God and Man at Yale, get a copy of Buckley's "Nearer My God." (1995)
"Gesundheit!: Bringing Good Health to You, The Medical System, and Society through Physician Service, Complementary Therapies, Humor and Joy," Adams, Patch, MD; with Mylander, Maureen. Sometimes Adams veers off into New Age Land, but by and large I agree with him about health care.
“The Journey to Peace: Reflections on Faith, Embracing Suffering, and Finding New Life” by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.
“Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America,1789-1989,” by Michael Beschloss.
“The Approaching Fury: :Voices of the Storm, 1820 – 1861; The coming of the Civil War told from the viewpoints of thirteen principle players in the drama,” by Stephen B. Oates.
"No Ordinary Times" by Doris Kearns Goodwin (about the Roosevelt family during the Great Depression and Second World War.) Wonderfully warm book.
I'm going to update this later, but at least it's a start.
UPDATED LIST
Here's a book by a political author who's not "ordinary" by any means and for any time: none other and no less than Orble's S.L. Bradish, author of "Political Journey," her political biography and a compilation of her best posts on Orble.com. You can purchase this book through the giant internet publishing firm, Lulu.com (www.lulu.com)
S.L.'s story isn't much different than what I've have probably come across when meeting seriously minded politically energized people who aren't afraid to stuff envelopes in addition to postulating so and so's position. She's not into politics because it suits a certain phase in her life. (But it's never more important than her family life.) And no matter how many degrees S.L. has to her name, I could never imagine herself being so brash to her package herself (as one feminist liberal Democrat professor did in a post-mortem article on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign) in this fashion, no matter what party she belongs to.
S.L. is a conservative Republican, albeit much less disabled by a self-inflicted case of extreme hubris as demostrated by this professor-feminist-Democrat who said, "Highly educated Democrats, who happen to be the ones I know best, tend toward idealism and a certain squamishness when it comes to power."
Hmm, this coming from a woman who just published an article about Clinton's run and self-admitted daughter of Leonard Woodcock, a one time labor leader prominent in JFK's campaign 40 years ago.
I've been fortunate to know both kinds of women, and in both parties. Rest assured, you'll seldom find the "highly educated" doing the dirty work, though they talk the most about the need for getting their respective troops all ready for election day. For S.L., politics is a serious matter, not something that belongs in the hands of amateurs who play it like a toy. Politics isn't merely an ideological salon hot item: it can represent and touch upon matters of life an death.
I'm an easterner and S.L.'s a westerner, and she's a Republican and I'm a (conservative) Democrat. But we find far more in political kinship than I could ever find with the present "leadership" of "highly trained" men and women here in academia land who purposely speak only to themselves because they're too full of their own pride to find out what people really want.
S.L.'s "Political Journey" will make the diletanttes squeamish, particularly those who aren't squeamish in their disambiguous displays of obfuscation when simple truth would do wonders. She's led and continues leading a life as a full woman involved in politics wheras so many windbags in academia can only talk about such experience in wistful tones. Hard not to understand why. You really can't get too involved in the meat n' potatoes of real politics when you're too damn busy reading about it in some college libraries or shamelessly blabbing on about your "intellectual qualifications" to bear witness to even the slightest truth in an form of politics and at any level.
Here's a short posting. First I'm actually too tired to type, much less do a lot of thinking after a long day of volunteering at a local church on what had to be the worst possible day of the entire year to volunteer.
Vacation Bible School -- hundreds of kids all over. Lots of stuff, bags and assorted messes to pick up in addition to the Wednesday bottle sorting job. Then it's heavy cans from the Food Bank's drop off of USDA canned goods, plus another delivery and set up of the pantry itself and clean up of the VBS for the day. So my mind's mush. Nevertheless I can still think of a few good reeds to read.
Tom Clancy's international war game thrillers. Start off with his Red October, Patriot Games, Sum of All Fears and move from there.
“Man of the House,” by the late (and great) Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Speaker of both (Massachusetts) and U.S. House of Representatives. Perhaps one of the greatest books about politics as it should be conducted. The Epilogue alone, should be on every pol’s bookcase. O’Neill also cited one of Hubert Humphrey’s greatest nuggets of wisdom given during the latter’s final speech before a Joint Session of Congress: I quote it in full:
“The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”
See now … there’s no mention of that word: “accountable.” If today’s misers (who are no damned different than something out of a Charles Dickens novel (or their anti-New Deal predecessors), despite all their modern “packaging,” want to keep pushing that “accountability” schtick, let ‘em, just like Cain, when he gave the GOP its all-time most honest platform statement by asking God if he was his brother’s keeper.
“The Last Hurrah” by Edwin O’Connor. (For the post-baby-boomer generation readers or those not so sufficiently tutored about Massachusetts politics, it’s about the legendary James Michael Curley, Boston’s “Mayor of the Poor.”… Yes, the man was an old-time “boss,” but his heart was always in the right place more often than not. He’d never allow any child to remain sick or poor because it was “fiscally prudent” according to the diminished social/civic “standards” of today’s “fiscal accountability” penny-pinching SOBs.)
(O'Connor also includes a speech delivered by "Mayor Frank Skeffington" about his young opponent that could just as well describe another young aspirant to high office.)
Thomas Cahill’s “How The Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe.” Cahill should write a follow up book called “How the Irish Built and Civilized the British Empire for England: And How The WASPs Lost It In Less Than A Century!”
James Carville’s and Paul Begala’s “Take It Back: A Battle Plan for Democratic Victory” … oh hell, anything by those two guys. You’ll get a damn good laugh even if you think they’re full of it.
William F. Buckley, Jr.'s "God and Man at Yale." Long before it became "cool" to be "politically incorrect," Bill Buckley managed to remind Yale professors that they weren't the final authority on all matters intellectual, (or otherwise.)
For an emotional epilogue to God and Man at Yale, get a copy of Buckley's "Nearer My God." (1995)
"Gesundheit!: Bringing Good Health to You, The Medical System, and Society through Physician Service, Complementary Therapies, Humor and Joy," Adams, Patch, MD; with Mylander, Maureen. Sometimes Adams veers off into New Age Land, but by and large I agree with him about health care.
“The Journey to Peace: Reflections on Faith, Embracing Suffering, and Finding New Life” by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.
“Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America,1789-1989,” by Michael Beschloss.
“The Approaching Fury: :Voices of the Storm, 1820 – 1861; The coming of the Civil War told from the viewpoints of thirteen principle players in the drama,” by Stephen B. Oates.
"No Ordinary Times" by Doris Kearns Goodwin (about the Roosevelt family during the Great Depression and Second World War.) Wonderfully warm book.
I'm going to update this later, but at least it's a start.
UPDATED LIST
Here's a book by a political author who's not "ordinary" by any means and for any time: none other and no less than Orble's S.L. Bradish, author of "Political Journey," her political biography and a compilation of her best posts on Orble.com. You can purchase this book through the giant internet publishing firm, Lulu.com (www.lulu.com)
S.L.'s story isn't much different than what I've have probably come across when meeting seriously minded politically energized people who aren't afraid to stuff envelopes in addition to postulating so and so's position. She's not into politics because it suits a certain phase in her life. (But it's never more important than her family life.) And no matter how many degrees S.L. has to her name, I could never imagine herself being so brash to her package herself (as one feminist liberal Democrat professor did in a post-mortem article on behalf of Hillary Clinton's campaign) in this fashion, no matter what party she belongs to.
S.L. is a conservative Republican, albeit much less disabled by a self-inflicted case of extreme hubris as demostrated by this professor-feminist-Democrat who said, "Highly educated Democrats, who happen to be the ones I know best, tend toward idealism and a certain squamishness when it comes to power."
Hmm, this coming from a woman who just published an article about Clinton's run and self-admitted daughter of Leonard Woodcock, a one time labor leader prominent in JFK's campaign 40 years ago.
I've been fortunate to know both kinds of women, and in both parties. Rest assured, you'll seldom find the "highly educated" doing the dirty work, though they talk the most about the need for getting their respective troops all ready for election day. For S.L., politics is a serious matter, not something that belongs in the hands of amateurs who play it like a toy. Politics isn't merely an ideological salon hot item: it can represent and touch upon matters of life an death.
I'm an easterner and S.L.'s a westerner, and she's a Republican and I'm a (conservative) Democrat. But we find far more in political kinship than I could ever find with the present "leadership" of "highly trained" men and women here in academia land who purposely speak only to themselves because they're too full of their own pride to find out what people really want.
S.L.'s "Political Journey" will make the diletanttes squeamish, particularly those who aren't squeamish in their disambiguous displays of obfuscation when simple truth would do wonders. She's led and continues leading a life as a full woman involved in politics wheras so many windbags in academia can only talk about such experience in wistful tones. Hard not to understand why. You really can't get too involved in the meat n' potatoes of real politics when you're too damn busy reading about it in some college libraries or shamelessly blabbing on about your "intellectual qualifications" to bear witness to even the slightest truth in an form of politics and at any level.
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