Late Saturday

I'm sitting in the living room. I was just in the bathroom, talking with my daughter. She's a little apprehensive, and though she says that she's worried that a clenched feeling in her gut is some kind of physical ailment, we think it's more likely that she's apprehensive about the start of school on Monday. Not that she dislikes it -- she's been looking forward to it for about a month -- but we've noted that any change, pleasant or not, takes her a little while to get used to. She asked my wife if she would call for a medical exam, and my wife gave her a rational answer (they're closed now, only emergencies, and so forth), but after she left I went in to give her an emotional one, telling her that she might well be right, and it was a good thing for her to tell us; if it continues, we'll definitely want to have that medical exam scheduled. Which comforted her, which was what I wanted.

I did some more reading in Team of Rivals this evening. Its really fascinating. Like a lot of people, I grew up with the standard facts of history (Lincoln was a better speaker than Douglas, slavery was a big question, Seward had something to do with Alaska, I think). What this book gives me that I haven't had before is the sense of this being real; these weren't people reading scripts, their actions foreordained; these were serious, major questions being debated by real people who were as interested in their careers and how to advance them as they were about the questions themselves. This wasn't abstract to them; it was their lives. They kept a wary eye on each other, doing an elegant dance to and fro, sometimes in concert, sometimes in opposition. The questions of the day were opportunities for demagoguery, but also for statesmenship. They were fascinated and consumed by those questions, and I'm beginning to see why.

Lincoln's story about Ethan Allen and the English outhouse was pretty good, too. Don't recall hearing that one in school.