Hmpf.
So you’ve read Kris’ announcement that she’s hanging up her spurs at the end of this session. Sure — it may be the right decision for her. But — in the spirit of the Toby Keith song that we proclaimed as the Politicians’ National Anthem — what about me? She’s leaving me high and dry.
Issue 1: The George W. Bush Memorial Nickname Project. There are 45 members of the House Democratic Caucus. We’d started coming up with nicknames for them, but had only gotten around to three that are suitable for printing in a family blog: Princess Margaret, Prince Albert, and Dear Leader. What about the rest of them — not to mention the new crop of a dozen or so that we’ll be electing in November?
Issue 2: Eating Up the Miles. We have this agreement: every time one of us is on our way to or from Richmond on I-95, the other one will fill the boredom of the drive with telephone conversation — gossip, political plotting, kvetching, whatever is at hand. We measure the gift in distance rather than time: “Okay, I’m good for 25 or 30 mile markers, but then I have to get to work.” Sounds trivial, but it kept us in business: the tedium of I-95 Hell was enough to send at least one predecessor into retirement.
Issue 3: The Blog. Seriously: Can you imagine a blog titled “3-1/2 West”? This whole New Media thing doesn’t come naturally to folks in our age bracket — when you think about it, we’re not a lot younger than Ted Stevens. We’ve worked long and hard to build our readership into the high single digits, and I’m not certain I’ll be able to find another co-conspirator who gives lectures on “What I Learned About Blogging From Britney Spears.”
The author of the Great American Novel claimed, “There are no second acts in American lives.” I have a feeling Kris will prove him wrong.
Feh.
Very sorry to hear that Kris is leaving. She’s one of the General Assembly’s class acts.
BTW: Fitzgerald’s “no second acts in American lives’ may be the single stupidest sentence written in the English langauge for which I am not personally responsible. The amazing thing about American lives is how many of them have third, fourth and even fifth acts. In a country with a divorce rate of 50%, there’s a lot of second acts.
This is really sweet. But we are a LOT younger than Ted Stevens. And I agree with Steve about the Fitzgerald quote, which for a girl who went to college in St. Paul is pretty much like admitting to heresy.
Actually, I think Fitzgerald’s “the rich are different from you and me” is at least a close second in the AmLit Vapid Sweepstakes. But he redeemed himself with this: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made . . . .”
My very favorite Fitzgerald quote. Applicable to so many people one meets in this line of work.