Tag: KcM

Red Skies and Bluegrass.

Hey y’all…busy weekend over here in these parts. Aside from a final orgy of TIME-reading to put an end to my summer research work, I also went to go check out the Creative Time fireworks show, where I spent most of the 4-and-some-odd minutes trying to prevent Berkeley from having a coronary (Lousy judgment on my part bringing him…I thought he might enjoy night in the Park, but he clearly thought he was back on Hill 243.) And I got to see St. Felix Station, my friend’s great bluegrass band over at Pete’s Candy Store in Williamsburg (and was delighted to find said candy store has a weekly trivia night…booyah.)

Entropy!

Sigh…the school year was kicked off this morning by my toilet spraying water all over the bathroom (the hose came loose in the tank) and my computer refusing to visit any Microsoft sites, including Slate, MSN, and, most importantly, Hotmail. So I spent a good part of the day playing around with my antivirus software, Internet cache, and configuration – to say nothing of listening to the on-hold-jingle at 1-800-Microsoft for a good solid hour – before I encountered this. Ah well…hopefully all will be rectified soon. At least the cable’s working…for now.

Candid Kauai.

Hello all…my intermittent cable woes continue over here, which is severely cutting back on GitM updates. (The Time Warner technician, having proclaimed that nothing is wrong on Friday, will be returning next Wednesday.) But, in the bright spot of connectivity this morning, I uploaded a sampling of the first wave of Hawaii pics, which you can see here: [1/
2/
3/
4]. As you can see, life there was good.

Oops.

There appear to have been some karmic consequences to my endlessly complaining about Kauai dial-up. After getting increasingly sporadic over the summer, my cable modem has died. Hopefully the friendly Time Warner technician (due over Friday, sometime between 1 and 6…sigh) will be able to rectify the problem quickly.

AuH20 + 1964.


“Let Scranton and Rockefeller make their token gestures at the ticket; let Romney and Rhodes snub it altogether. Nixon had been as nauseated by the [1964] convention — literally, he would claim in his memoirs — as any of them. Only he had swallowed his bile — and swallowed the rubber chicken, the back-room whiskey, and the church-basement juice, sitting in airports, sleeping in airplanes (or not sleeping, if it was a prop plane that rattled like the end of the world), gripping and grinning just as he had for his party every two years since 1946. Once more he would pack the bags, kiss the girls goodbye, and set out to collect the chits. It was a habit, strategy, a way of life.”

I did quite a bit of history reading over the vacation, and write-ups will follow in the orals prep subsection in short order. (In fact, expect that portion of the site to heat up over the next few months, since – other than TA’ing for Ken Jackson’s perennial “History of NYC” class – that’s all I’ll be doing for the rest of 2003.) But I’d be remiss if I didn’t hype Rick Perlstein’s Before the Storm here. Simply put, I was awed by this book – Covering the Goldwater movement of the early 1960’s (i.e. the birth of modern conservatism), it’s massively researched and amazingly well-written, and easily the best recent work of political history I’ve read in months. (I do have quibbles – I don’t think Perlstein is completely fair to Kennedy, for example. But they pale in comparison to the strengths of this tome.)

The book also made me realize that I – and most other progressives, liberals, and assorted other lefties – really need to be more of a joiner. As Perlstein’s book notes, much of the rise of Reagan in ’66 can be attributed to the organization of the Goldwater groupies through ’64. As such, I particularly recommend this book to folks out there who’ve already gone full-out for Team Dean, since Before the Storm seems a great primer on how to exploit the niches of the system in order to buck the party establishment. Very good stuff.

Start Spreading the News.

Hey y’all…after a massive amount of traveling, bill-paying, and errand-running over the past 48 hours or so, I’m now back home in NYC. While I’m a bit melancholy that three weeks of sun and fun are over, there is something to be said for having Berk at my side and the world at my fingertips again…no more dial-up, booyah. At any rate, I’ll post some vacation pics here once I get all my images organized…in the meantime, expect updates here to resume normal schedule.

Dispatch from Paradise.

Hello all…I’m entering my third and final week of my Kauai vacation, so updates here will continue to be intermittent for at least another ten days or so. There has been much swimming, hiking, snorkeling, windsurfing, and rejoicing over here, as you might expect (As per usual, though, my Gaelic complexion has resisted any and all attempts at procuring a tan.) I’ve also been derelict in taking pictures, but hopefully I’ll have a few to post some time after my return. ‘Til then, mahalo for continuing to stop by, even though I haven’t been posting much worthwhile.

Endless Summer.

Hello all from sunny and wonderful Hanalei. The good news is I’m having lots of fun here enjoying the sights and surf of Kauai. (Our 3-day hike along the Na Pali coast begins tomorrow.) The bad news is our resort here only has dial-up Internet access, which will no doubt compound my lack of blogging in the days and weeks to come. So, please keep checking this space, but don’t expect much in the way of timely info, at least for the time being. Sorry!