Why Do I Live Here? It’s Cold!
Ice falling on widget (Jan. 18, 2011)
Today it is cold in Washington. I have seen colder,1 but the memory of cold days elsewhere doesn’t make today any nicer. On the other hand, memories of warm days in warmer places do cause me trouble. I grew up in Los Angeles. You know: balmy weather, arid beaches, and fuzzy brown air you can cut and chew. I wore shorts and bicycled to school year-round. The sun roasted a permanent farmer’s tan into my skin. I was comfortable, I was naïve. I had no idea what it’s like to go outside after a shower and have your hair freeze. If I wanted to see snow, say to ski, I went to the mountains. An ice storm in L.A. would provoke terror, riots, and religious conversion. They don’t handle breaks in the routine very well.
Should We Get a Dog? (Woof?)
The author with “Bravo” circa 1974
We are basically cat people. We have a great cat named Maia (in her mind, she has us) and would like to get another, but a dog or ferret or chinchilla is possible. (I don’t quite get my fourteen-year-old’s interest in a chinchilla, to me a cute but expensive plush toy—which Maia may think, too.) I’m cautiously tempted by the dog idea. I’ve never owned a dog, but I spent enough time with them as a kid to realize it’s a different sort of relationship from a cat or hamster, etc. There must first be consensus on what we do, and I’m not quite sure what my opinion is. I am not sold on the extra responsibility, expense, and, well, poop. (I am increasingly convinced that all pets poop.)
Whistling Dixie (Not)
Is the Civil War over? Here in Virginia, almost 150 years later, it is not.
Virginia was the heart of the Confederacy, Richmond its capital. How to commemorate our most uncivil war has always been a difficult question, but too often the conservative side has won out over reason. For example it was not until 2003 that Richmond greeted its first statue of Lincoln—with a protest. As a gesture to conservative voters, last year our governor issued a proclamation of Confederate History Month that incredibly neglected to mention slavery. True, to do so would have undermined the proclamation’s anti-historical insistence that Virginians stood united against northern aggression. The revisionist document (grudgingly revised after a national hailstorm of criticism) aptly illustrated the peculiar apologist agenda of even our uppermost state leaders. Many Southerners like me wonder why so many embrace the battle flag and stake the honor of the South, which has much to be proud of, to the stinking corpse of the Lost Cause.
That corpse resurfaced this month in the recall of the state-approved fourth grade history textbook, mostly because of its patently false claim that many blacks fought on behalf of the South.
Andrew Wells Douglass 