dual personalities

As I mentioned, I re-read The Searchers by Alan Le May last week. It is a terrific book in the western genre. General Sherman is mentioned at one point in reference to his visit to Texas in 1871 on an inspection tour where he narrowly avoided being part of the Warren Wagon Train Massacre. So I thought I would look in his Memoirs to see what he had to say about it. As it turned out, he didn’t have much to say about the Indians in the West.

I think by this time in his career, he was winding down, at least in terms of what he was willing to write about. He brings his memoirs to a close shortly thereafter:

This I construe as the end of my military career. In looking back upon the past I can only say, with millions of others, that I have done many things I should not have done, and have left undone still more which I ought to have done; that I can see where hundreds of opportunities have been neglected, but on the whole am content; and feel sure that I can travel this broad country of ours, and be each night the welcome guest in palace or cabin; and, as “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” I claim the privilege to ring down the curtain.

Spoken like a true Episcopalian.

I also have been reading Things that Matter by Charles Krauthammer, which the boy gave to the OM for his birthday back in July. It is a collection of Krauthammer’s “essential, timeless writings.”

Krauthammer died in June of this year and I  miss him.

“Delta Airlines, you might have noticed, does not run negative TV ads about USAir. It does not show pictures of the crash of USAir Flight 427, with a voice-over saying: “USAir, airline of death. Going to Pittsburgh? Fly Delta instead.” And McDonald’s, you might also have noticed, does not run ads reminding viewers that Jack in the Box hamburgers once killed two customers. Why? Because Delta and McDonald’s know that if the airline and fast-food industries put on that kind of advertising, America would soon be riding trains and eating box-lunch tuna sandwiches. Yet every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country—and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.”

What are you reading?