Sunday In Seattle, Sunny Side Up

Today I had the kind of Sunday tired couples look at me longingly – and I really relished being single. I finished with a meeting this morning and got lunch at a local pub. It was sunny out and I ordered a Mojito, a Cuban sandwhich, a copy of the NYTimes (which had been previously rifled through but still complete – meaning, the ink wasn’t fresh and didn’t wear off in my hands) and had the table all to myself! omg, pure bliss. Throw in an accomodating a flirty waiter and I was in heaven.  None of that “what do you want?” “I don’t know, what do you want?” or “What are you going to have?” “I don’t know, what are you going to have?” - Not to say there aren’t great and fulfilling relationships out there and that I hope to be in one one day, but I  just was, and it was nice.

This Sunday’s articles that made me laugh out loud +/or think:

- Frank Rich had a good opinion piece: McCain Can Run, But Bush Won’t Hide starting with a priceless reference to the Godfather which almost made me inhale my drink as well as the most apt comparison of Nixon campainging for Ford -  

“THE biggest gift President Bush has given his party this year was to keep his daughter’s wedding nearly as private as Connie Corleone’s. Now that his disapproval rating has reached the Nixon nadir of negativity, even a joyous familial ritual isn’t enough to make the country glad to see him. The G.O.P.’s best hope would be for both the president and Dick Cheney to lock themselves in a closet until the morning after Election Day.”

-Normally I read The Book Review and get one maybe two suggestions, sometimes just 1 or 2 ads pique my interest. This week, the entire section stood out.

• Bag Man stood out, the review was so well written you practically felt as if you went to high school with Tonello and the intro hooked me from the start…”

“The end of the world just inched a little nearer: an eBay seller has written a memoir. About handbags.”       ‘nough said.

• Netherland seems like a Scotish version of Ian McEwan…and not just because McEwan is referenced early on he is described similarly:

“O’Neill, who was born in Ireland, raised in Holland and now lives in New York, seems incapable of composing a boring sentence or thinking an uninteresting thought, whether he’s writing about dating (“We courted in the style preferred by the English: alcoholically”) or the darker stuff that keeps us awake at night, like the nuclear plant just up the river (“Indian Point: the earliest, most incurable apprehensions stirred in its very name”).”

One passage in particular got to me and makes me want to read the book:

“There’s a moment in “Netherland” involving a father, the son who has been taken from him, and Google Earth that’s among the most moving set pieces I’ve read in a recent novel. The father hovers over his son’s house nightly, “flying on Google’s satellite function,” lingering over his child’s dormer window and blue inflated swimming pool, searching the “depthless” pixels for anything, from thousands of miles away, he can cling to. O’Neill’s novel is full of moments like this: closely observed, emotionally racking, un-self-consciously in touch with how we live now.”

The thought that technology as guardian vs predator, that people hover over loved ones’ locations like guardian angels, really touched me. The other point made in this review made me reflect back on the opinion page (Isreal’s ‘American Problem,’ a little differently) 

“All people, Americans, whoever, are at their most civilized when they’re playing cricket,” he explains. “What’s the first thing that happens when Pakistan and India make peace? They play a cricket match. Cricket is instructive, Hans. It has a moral angle. … I say, we want to have something in common with Hindus and Muslims? Chuck Ramkissoon is going to make it happen. With the New York Cricket Club, we could start a whole new chapter in U.S. history. Why not?”

• Counselor also looks good and was commented on in an interview by my favorite biographer, Dorris Kearns Goodwin.

Sorensen describes himself as a Danish Russian Jewish Unitarian who grew up in Lincoln. His beloved father, C. A. Sorensen, was the attorney general of Nebraska and a noted Republican progressive, who raised five children almost on his own after Sorensen’s mother was disabled by mental illness.After law school, Sorensen was drawn to public law and Washington. “I picture myself stepping off that train, greenhorn that I was: I had never drunk a cup of coffee, set foot in a bar, written a check or owned a car.” A year and a half later, at 24, he began the long association with Kennedy that was shattered in Dallas.“Counselor” tells many stories about Sorensen’s post-government work as a global troubleshooter for the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, dealing with leaders like Mandela, Sadat, Mobutu, Ben-Gurion, Arafat and Castro. After his stroke, he learned to live with almost no sight, even resuming, remarkably, his practice of walking to work in Manhattan.”

• The Language of Loss for the jobless was an interesting piece – rather tame from the WSJ’s case studies on families who had suffered and are suffering the layoffs of the mid 90s. Still, it’s always nice to give prompts on how to behave among those who have lost jobs. I’ve seen some pretty tactless situations. Though, I gotta say, sorta inappropriate to have that article smack in the middle of the society style and wedding section.
• Lastly, but not least: On Obama by Obama. I was really impressed with his approach, his discipline, his eloquence and his ability to reach out. Not only has he been effective in communicating on a national platform, he did it himself. Never before have I caused, discussed issues in such depth with people of both sides, donated to a campaign – and he’s gotten be to do all three, with the hope of seeing a turning of the tides in November. This country has the ability to be great again.