Humming

If I had a lot of money, one thing that I would for sure do is arrange for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to do an album of tunes like The Theme from F Troop, and The Theme from The Addams Family, and The Theme from The Munsters. Absolutely. And probably some Beach Boys stuff, and maybe a little Simon and Garfunkel.

I guess the world is lucky that I'm not wealthy, hmm?

Some interesting stuff in today's paper. One very long article in the Times is about amazingly talented and achieving girls -- fluent in Spanish, classical guitarist, 3.5 GPA, track team -- and how no matter how well they do, they feel that they're not quite good enough (well, sure, I can do all those things, they'll say, but I can't paint worth a damn!), or that the level of competition has risen dramatically because there are so many girls performing at that level these days. I'm interested in the article, for obvious reasons, but I did notice years ago that so far as education is concerned, there's a recurring theme about kids -- if boys tend to do better than girls, then its a crisis and we are abandoning our daughters; if girls tend to do better than boys, then its a crisis, and we're forgetting about our sons; and if they're doing about the same, well, shucks, its just so hard to stand out these days. Its an interesting topic, but I'd like to see something more insightful.
Years ago -- decades ago -- a woman whose husband was, I believe, editor of the New York Times used to periodically poke her husband and insist that the paper do an article about garbage collection in New York City. The greenest, rawest recruit would get the assignment, and an article would get written, which would keep her happy until the next time. Until the day that the newest recruit happened to be a supremely talented individual who went all out, writing thousands of words about it -- where does it come from, why is it a problem, what are we doing, what aren't we doing, who's involved, what's the attitude in other cities, other states, other countries -- by the time he was done, he'd covered the subject so intensely that she never asked again. I'd like him to write about the state of education.

Another interesting article, also in the Times, is about a fellow who switched from the Democratic party in the late nineties and was very active in the effort to get George Bush elected in 2000 and again in 2004. He likes Bush, and what he says, but he's come to the conclusion that Bush has failed in what he is doing and in what he has said he would do. Its a very well written article. Obviously, I am predisposed to like it, but what I am particularly impressed by is that he does not say Bush is bad, or stupid, or ignorant, but rather that he has become insular -- inbubbled, I think he called it -- and has lost touch with what people are telling him about their feelings regarding the economy and the war. He's not even saying that he thinks Bush is wrong, though he apparently does; what he says is that someone whom he still likes is taking the country in the wrong direction, and that because he was so active in getting Bush elected, he feels it's incumbent upon him to be active in telling people that he was wrong. He says that he now feels that an election that just wins 51% of the vote isn't right -- it should bring the country together in a sense of common purpose. At which point I looked up at my wife, to whom I'd been reading parts of this, and said 'Yes, what we need is a President who's a uniter, not a...'

Demetri Martin is a pretty funny guy....

More later, perhaps...