Obama on the Titanic

Barack Obama spoke in Springfield, Illinois, today. Addressing the Illinois General Assembly, he spoke eloquently of the need for “a better politics”:

“When I hear voices in either party boast of their refusal to compromise as an accomplishment in and of itself, I’m not impressed,” Obama said. “All that does is prevent what most Americans would consider actual accomplishments, like fixing roads, educating kids, passing budgets, cleaning our environment, making our streets safe.”

I waited for some overt discussion of my state’s budget impasse and its catastrophic consequences for social services and public higher education. But as with Bruce Rauner’s State of the State address, the subject of the budget was barely there. Obama’s reference came only in passing, as the ship continues to sink. I had high, and perhaps foolish, hopes about this trip to Springfield. And now I am deeply disappointed.

You can watch and listen to the speech at YouTube. The reference to the budget comes at the 49:41 mark, thirty-three minutes into a nearly hour-long speech.

A related post
Illinois’s higher-ed crisis

[Yes, Obama, too, was dropping -g s.]

Sink redux

Bernie Sanders last night: “They’re throwing everything at me except the kitchen sink, and I have the feeling that kitchen sink is coming pretty soon as well.”

See also 2008, February and October.

Parking at Coney Island

A recurring scene from childhood: pulling up to the gate of the parking lot at Brooklyn’s Coney Island, my dad behind the wheel, my (maternal) grandfather sitting next to him.

(That must mean that there were four people sitting in the back: my grandmother, my mother, my brother, me. It was a big car, a Plymouth Savoy. And we were all varying degrees of small .)

Anyway — I remember my dad and my grandfather vying, again and again, to pay for parking, my grandfather reaching across to the attendant, my dad trying to block the attempt. Let me pay. No, I have it. They were men of honor.

I learned from my mom just a few days ago how much it cost to park at Coney Island: ten cents. So it was a game. They were men of honor and men of play.

Overheard

[On a phone, loudly .]

“The question is whether I stay stuck in this uncomfortable seat or get up and take all my stuff, which is also a pain in the neck.”

As a fellow bystander said to me, “So dramatic.”

Related reading
All OCA “overheard” posts (Pinboard)

Mary Shelley: “a godlike science”

A creature learning a language:


Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).

[The phrase “articulate sounds” may be an echo of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Frost at Midnight”: “falling on mine ear / Most like articulate sounds of things to come!” Elsewhere Shelley unmistakably echoes a phrase from the poem: Coleridge’s “the sole unquiet thing” becomes Shelley’s “the only unquiet thing.” Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner figures much more prominently in the novella. Our household’s Four Seasons Reading Club (formerly the Summer Reading Club) is happily trekking through Frankenstein .]

Small-town crown

What it can be like to live in a small town, or at least in our small town:

Elaine lost her crown (dental, that is). At seven this morning, she called our dentist’s office. They start early. “Are you dressed?” Yes. “Can you come in right now?” Yes.

There was no charge.

Our dentist, now eighty-seven, has been our dentist for the past thirty-one years.

A related post
Dentistry at dawn

1992 : 2016 :: 1968 : 1992

From The New York Times :

Mr. Clinton seemed especially irritated that New Hampshire, after lifting his 1992 bid for the Democratic nomination and handing [Mrs. Clinton] a comeback win in 2008, would now abandon his wife.

Time is relative: we hear half-century-old music playing in the supermarket and think nothing of it. But the idea that Bill Clinton’s 1992 success in New Hampshire should have anything to do with a 2016 election seems to me quite bonkers. It’s like thinking about Bill Clinton’s first presidential bid in relation to somebody else’s 1968 primary.

Besides, it’s not “New Hampshire” that votes. It’s individual citizens, many of whom are feeling the Bern. Some of them weren’t even born in 1992.

The Lettermate

For anyone who has trouble addressing an envelope in straight lines: The Lettermate.

Thank you, Rachel.

Related reading
All OCA letters posts (Pinboard)

Letters and vultures

Jean-Dominique Bauby writes that he receives many letters. Some discuss “the meaning of life” and “fundamental questions.” But not all:


Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly , trans. Jeremy Leggatt (New York: Vintage Books, 1997).

Related reading
All OCA letters posts (Pinboard)
Sunday TV (Also from this book)

Sunday TV

Jean-Dominique Bauby, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly , trans. Jeremy Leggatt (New York: Vintage Books, 1997).

This luminous book, written, or composed, against all odds, may be read in an afternoon. It will be an afternoon well spent.