Random Notes from a Crank

The word on my Word-of-the-Day calendar on Monday was "claque," which is a noun meaning "1. a group hired to applaud at a performance 2. A group of servile flatterers." 

The second definition is a good word to describe the GOP and its complicity in what Moscow Don is doing. 

The Athletic had an article about the use of "torpedo bats" in MLB. It'll be interesting to how pitchers adjust to these bats. Here's an article by the AP: "Torpedo-Shaped Bats Draw Eyes after Yankees Hit Team-Record 9 Homers in Rout of Brewers." 

I wonder whether metal bat manufacturers are going to experiment with similar designs. 

At work I noticed a packet of Domino's red pepper flakes lying on the stairs I climb every time I come into work. It's been there for at least two weeks. I'm waiting to see how long it takes for someone, the custodian or someone else, to pick it up and throw it away. It's like an ad hoc sociological experiment. 

The folks at Existential Comics are doing some great work. Check out "The Frog and the Scorpion from a Rational Point of View." 

Hit the link and follow them. I look forward to their new comic every Monday. 

I watched an old documentary about Thomas Jefferson on my local PBS station last night. It's the second episode. He takes office as President, so it covers his two terms. 

It also brings up the speculation about Sally Hemings, and a number of historians in the documentary say that Jefferson probably didn't have sexual relations with her. 

Time has proven them wrong. Monticello does history right with the site's "The Life of Sally Hemings." 

Two summers ago the Nasty family visited Monticello and Charlottesville after spending a great deal of time taking in the sights of Washington D.C. We visited Mount Vernon on our way there, which was a lot of fun also. 

If you're into American history, I highly recommend visiting Monticello. In retrospect, I should have bought some of the site's seeds that come from the mountaintop mansion and grounds. Jefferson was obsessed with gardening. 

Random Notes from a Crank

On Monday evening when I picked up my daughter from dance class, I observed a simple conversation between two people who were also there to pick up their daughters. I happened to notice as one speaker asked a question and the other replied and the conversation went on for a bit that they never looked each other in the eyes. They talked to each other as they stared at their iPhones. No eye contact -- just talking while looking at their phones. I don't even think they knew they were doing it, and I'm not sure if they would care if they knew. 

Also on Monday, I had to deal with a tremendous headache. I don't know whether the headache stems from going back to work after the holiday or because I'm somehow mimicking what I've been reading about Thomas Jefferson, who suffered from debilitating migraines. 

And after reading about the various accounts of what Aaron Burr might have been up to after he lost the presidential election and killed Alexander Hamilton, I had to order David O. Stewart's American Emperor: Aaron Burr's Challenge to Jefferson's America. But I'm also wondering if there's ever been some "what if?" fiction written about Aaron Burr winning the 1800 election or being successful with whatever he intended to do in New Orleans or Texas or Mexico or elsewhere around 1807 and 1808. Someone could write some serious dystopian historical fiction if they wanted to. If you do take this idea and run with it, you owe me. 

Stay Positive: Biographies

I've gotten into biographies again. This week I finished Joe Klein's Woody Guthrie: A Life, which by most critics' accounts appears to be the definitive biography of that troubled bard. I've always enjoyed his lyrics, but I had little knowledge about his life story. He was a typical example of the genius type who people quickly recognized as a powerful artist, but God he was a horrible father and husband. 

One quotation from Guthrie that Klein uses at an opportune time in the book is this one: "A man's most basic character, most basic wants, hopes, and needs come out of him in words that are poems and explosions." 

Now I'm on to Jon Meacham's Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. While I'm only about a third of the way through the book, I wish Meacham would have provided more details about his work in the Virginia House of Burgesses and his ill-fated tenure as Governor of Virginia, but I realize that the author only wrote a one-volume biography. If he gave me the kind of detail I'm hankering for, I would probably need to read a multiple-volume biography of Jefferson. 

As founding fathers go, I've always been drawn to Jefferson. Over a decade ago, I read the entire Notes on the State of Virginia and selected letters in a large volume edition that collected a big chunk of Jefferson's writing. I've found it interesting how people from various political stripes interpret Jefferson how they want to interpret him. 

For the left, he's a protector of individual freedoms, especially his various statements that lean toward a strict separation between church and state. He valued reason above everything else, a man of the Enlightenment to his bones. As he wrote his nephew, "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear" (qtd in Meacham p. 169). Since Jefferson was essentially a deist, he was friendly with Thomas Paine after that fellow published The Age of Reason, a book that showed Paine as an apostate. 

As much as folks today take umbrage that Jefferson owned slaves, considering that he was part of the wealthy planter class in Virginia in the 18th century, I think it's highly improbable that he wouldn't have owned slaves considering his position and means of wealth. It's not like he tried, as a Virginian no less, to root out slavery through various moves early on in his political career, all moves that didn't work at all. In 1769 in the House of Burgesses, he tried to make it legal for individual slave owners to be able to free slaves. They put the kibosh on that idea quickly. He also tried to persuade leaders for gradual emancipation and deportation back to Africa (an idea Lincoln considered heavily if I remember right), which was a very progressive position for its time, but that didn't happen. Of course, if anyone has read the early drafts of the Declaration of the Independence, he didn't have good things to say about the peculiar institution of slavery and slave owning (and also made similar statements in Notes on the State of Virginia) and laid the blame on England and George III. They cut all that out of the Declaration, of course. Later on he fully supported the Ordinance of 1784, which would have terminated the expansion of slavery into new US territories, but the bill didn't pass because a Congressman from New Jersey didn't vote because he was sick.  

Of course, there's his relationship with Sally Hemings that we can mostly speculate about. And it's a shame we don't know more about it. Jefferson burned a great deal of the  correspondence between him and his wife, so it's no surprise historians don't have much to go on about the Jefferson-Sally Hemings relationship other than that she traveled with him to France and back and all that DNA evidence. But there's also the creepy fact that Sally Hemings was his wife's half-sister. I'd have to drink a lot of Madeira wine, Jefferson's favorite, to make that seem right. Even with such lubrication, I still don't think it would. 

With all that out of the way though, I'm looking forward to reading about his work and arguments with Hamilton during Washington's presidency, his disputes with his friend John Adams (who was painted a little more positively than he deserved in the HBO series for my liking), and his trials and tribulations as President. 

Vote Jefferson in 1800.