My wife and I watched most of the French Presidential debate between Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene Royal last week, and although I can’t say we understood all (or even most) of it, we were struck by how different the Sarkozy/Royal debate was to the Presidential debates here in the U.S. Seated across from each other at a table, with a running clock to ensure both had the opportunity to speak […]
Yet another old picture, this one of me and my college roommate, Scott Honsey, and his wife Julie, in Des Moines in 1981 at my friend Boyd’s second wedding: This took place in the winter of 81-82, and I drove to Des Moines from Ithaca with my girlfriend Nancy in my very deficient 1976 VW Dasher (remember those?), leaving in the early evening and driving all night. Nancy was driving […]
I was looking through an old book the other day, and stuck inside was this, a picture of me and Dennis Fitzgibbon, taken in 1974, at the Rettenmaier trailer north of Burlington, Iowa, when I was seventeen: It is hard for me to comprehend that I was only 3 years older in this picture than my oldest son is now. He’s just a kid, and I was so mature and […]
I just can’t get too fired up over the latest ‘scandal’ involving the forceable ouster of several U.S. Attorneys. Although I think it was a bad idea for a number of reasons, the bottom line is that the replacement of political appointees for political reasons just doesn’t fire me up. Nor does another example of the incompetence of the Bush administration. I do believe that point has been more than […]
France has a unique 2-stage Presidential electoral process. All candidates from all political parties participate in the first stage, with the top two vote-getters advancing to the second stage. In 2002, this system resulted in a second-stage meeting between the popular, centrist candidate (Jacque Chirac) and the far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, with the the large Socialist Party unrepresented. This year a similar possibility exists. Although the two main candidates […]
One of my favorite bands, Son Volt, is playing a show at the Mystic Theatre in Petaluma on March 31. The main creative force behind Son Volt is Jay Farrar, formerly a member of the influential “alt-country” band Uncle Tupelo, whose other main creative force, Jeff Tweedy, later formed the band Wilco. Jay Farrar’s solo albums are more acoustic (they are categorized as “Americana”, although I’m not exactly sure what […]
This has been a tough, tough year for Hawkeye fans. The football team, after starting out gangbusters, went 2-6 their last 8 games, then lost to Texas in the Alamo Bowl. The basketball team never really got on track, losing non-conference games at home to Northern Iowa and getting blown out on the road at Drake (bonus points for any native Californian who can tell me where Drake is located). […]
We’ve had this week some of the nastiest, rawest weather I can remember in Sonoma County — four days of consecutively colder wet, windy, blustery, raw days. Yesterday while driving to work in a wind-whipped downpour (big drops that seemed to have semi-solid cores), the temperature gauge in my car said 34 degrees. Now I know Midwesterners and Easterners may laugh at that, but having lived both places, I can […]
The Sunday NY Times editorial pages had a large number of graphs, showing the changes in the American publics’ attitudes and habits over the last 25 years or so. Most the the graphs were mildly interesting, but one was striking: The number of Americans who say they read a newspaper daily has declined over that time from about 70% to about 40%. As someone who reads not one but two […]
Following an effective appearance on national television last week, the Socialist Party candidate, Segolene Royal, has pulled even in the polls with the center-right (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, or UMP) candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, according to this article in Le Figaro. Sarkozy had previously held a solid 8% to 10% lead before the appearance. Royal came across on TV as more likable than Sarkozy according to this article, although Sarkozy […]