The Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel dined with me, and I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that God spake to them; and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition.
Isaiah answer'd: "I saw no God, nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in every thing, and as I was then perswaded & remain confirm'd, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of God, I cared not for consequences, but wrote." —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Greetings from the far left coast where the holiday season is upon in all its festive glory! The Vote Forward campaign to get out the vote for the Georgia U.S. Senate runoff is closed. I can now devote full attention to the holiday cards stacked on the chair beside my dining/writing table.
Holiday season enjoyed a pleasant kickoff from Thanksgiving Day through the weekend. I baked whole wheat bread to anchor a modest decidedly nontraditional repast that kept me well stuffed through Sunday night. Saturday morning's nine-mile run was a highlight right up there with phone conversations with Trani (my brother) and email exchanges with family and friends. I am exceedingly fortunate and grateful to have my brother, sister-in-law, nieces, nephews, cousins, and some nifty friends and to still be able to enjoy those runs, bearing in mind, as my friend Bill Webb, Tulsa's running reverend, pointed out on Facebook recently that a twelve-minute mile is just as far as a six-minute mile.
Tulsa friend Greg Bigler posted a draft essay about repatriation and Harvard University at SSRN (The Social Science Research Network). The essay is to be included in his forthcoming book Stories from the Euchee Reservation. I found out about draft only yesterday, so have not yet read it. I have read another paper by Greg: "Traditional Jurisprudence and Protection of Our Society: A Jurisgenerative Tail," published in American Indian Law Review, Vol. XLIII, Number 1 (2018–2019), from which I learned how terribly little I know about the relationship between tribal governance and law and Federal and state law, and about the many challenges to preservation of tribal culture.
Bio note from the abstract:
Judge Bigler is a Euchee tribal citizen and a member of Polecat Ceremonial Grounds, a Harvard Law School graduate, longtime district court judge at the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. He co-counselled Indian law cases to the U.S. Supreme Court, mentored generations of Indian law attorneys, published law review articles.
And on November 20 Greg ran his fortieth marathon when he finished the Route 66 Marathon in Tulsa. Not too shabby for a young fellow of 63. I have enjoyed Greg's company on a number of Tulsa Runner group runs and hanging out with him at the store during my visits. It has been my great good fortune to meet many good, talented, and interesting people as I have bumbled through this life. Greg Bigler is among them.
Memo from the sports desk. The University of South Carolina (my alma mater) upset mighty Clemson (Trani's alma mater) 31–30 on Saturday, on Tiger home turf in Death Valley no less. Not only was Clemson one of the most highly regarded teams in the country, the Tigers owned in the intrastate rivalry in recent years with seven consecutive wins over Carolina and had a forty-game home winning streak. The expectation of Tiger faithful that these streaks would be routinely extended as a matter of course were cruelly dashed by the upstart Gamecocks.
It was an odd season for Carolina. Going into the final two games the team had posted a mediocre record of six wins and four losses that included a 38–6 stomping by an undistinguished Florida squad the week before Tennessee came to Columbia flying high, ranked fifth in the nation and considered a contender for the national championship. Carolina QB Spencer Rattler entered that contest with more interceptions (nine) than touchdown passes (eight) on the season and a measly average of 198 yards per game passing. Once mentioned in the conversation as a Heisman Trophy candidate before his career at the University of Oklahoma went south during his sophomore season, leading to a transfer to USC, Rattler put on a show as he torched the Vol for 438 yards passing and six TDs in a 63–38 trouncing that all but erased Tennessee from the championship playoff picture.
Despite that impressive performance the Gamecocks took the field at Death Valley with Clemson a prohibitive favorite, and deservedly so, its season previously marred only a loss to Notre Dame. Rattler got off to a shaky start with an early interception and Clemson rolled to a 14–0 lead in the first ten minutes. To my surprise SC kept coming back and finally took the lead with a field goal that closed out the scoring with just under eleven minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. Rattler finished the day with 25 completions in 39 passing attempts for 360 yards, two TDs, and two interceptions, one of those returned for a Clemson touchdown.
The victory over Clemson added a sweet touch to the weekend. I should note here that I happily root for Clemson any time they are not playing Carolina and especially when they are playing the University of Georgia Herschel Walker Dawgs.
Quote of the week. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) punctured Republican posturing over legislation to avert a rail strike with this deadpan quip: "Marco Rubio’s the populist — they’re there, man. They want to help workers. They’re, like, the Trotskyite party."
The changing of the guard in House Democratic leadership is a welcome development. It was nice to see Nancy Pelosi step aside graciously, with Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn following her lead. I would not be disappointed if Joe Biden were to take a cue from them. That does not appear to be likely.
Another change of the guard is taking place at the PBS NewsHour. The November 11 announcement that Judy Woodruff will step aside as news anchor at year's end was followed on November 16 by the announcement that Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett have been named the show's new co-anchors to succeed her. Nawaz is no surprise. She has assumed an increasingly prominent role on the show, serving frequently and always admirably as anchor when Woodruff was away. I am not as familiar with Bennett, who anchors PBS News Weekend, but have seen enough to be confident the NewsHour is in good hands going forward, carrying on the tradition and high standards set by their predecessors: Robin McNeil, Jim Lehrer, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Gwen Ifill, and Judy Woodruff herself.
Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson (1964–2022) stepped on a rainbow on November 17. Gerson was a speechwriter for George W. Bush during his presidency, a visiting fellow with the Center for Public Justice, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a familiar face on the NewsHour filling in when David Brooks was away as the conservative voice opposite Jonathan Capehart (and, if memory serves, before Capehart, Mark Shields) for the Friday discussion of the week in politics.
Gerson's colleague and friend Karen Tumulty, who herself sometimes fills in for Capehart as the liberal voice on the Friday NewsHour, paid him tribute in a column published on the 17th (Michael Gerson followed his faith—and America was better for it). One anecdote in particular deserves to be remembered.
Tumulty and Gerson attended semiannual conferences in Florida known as the Faith Angle Forum, where people gather to discuss religion and politics. At a meeting in 2014 the two sat next to each other at a session on religious conflict and the future in the Middle East where one of the speakers was Elliott Abrams, who had served under Bush as deputy secretary for Middle East policy. There Tumulty saw the mild-mannered Gerson "get angry—really angry" for the first and only time.
Abrams told the assembled group that he used to become annoyed when Bush would say that Islam is a religion of peace "because the real response to that is 'Where is your theology degree from?'" Tumulty writes that
As Abrams continued along those lines—at one point claiming the "average American" was justified in thinking "this is crap…because all these people who are doing beheadings are Muslims"—I could feel Mike grow tense in the chair next to me. He waited his turn to be called upon, and then he confronted his former colleague.
"We praise Islam, and every president from now on will praise Islam on religious holidays because there are millions of peaceful citizens who hold this view," Mike said. "It’s also a theologically sophisticated view, as opposed to what you’re arguing…every tradition, religious tradition, has forces of tribalism and violence in its history, background, of theology, and every religious tradition has resources of respect for the other."
He added: "That is a great American tradition that we’ve done with every religious tradition that comes to the United States, included them as part of a national enterprise and praised them for their strongly held religious views and emphasized those portions that are most compatible with those ideals."
Marjorie Taylor Greene plumbed new depths of inanity when she compared the situation at the southern border with the Russian invasion of Ukraine: "We had 5 million people cross our border illegally since Joe Biden took office. Let's compare that to how many Russians have invaded Ukraine. 82,000 Russians have invaded Ukraine."
Why was Electoral Count Act reform not a priority from the very beginning of the Biden administration? I mean, January 6 and all that, remember. Reform hangs in the balance as differences in House and Senate bills have yet to be reconciled. If this is not worked out in the lame duck session, how likely is it to happen in the divided Congress of 2023? And what does that portend for the 2024 presidential election? Is it unfair to presume that some Republicans in both chambers—Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Ted Cruz, "Crazy Legs" Hawley come readily to mind—will work to keep open their options to cause havoc if the Democratic candidate wins the election in 2024?
Oath Keepers founder convicted of seditious conspiracy for role in Jan. 6 attack (PBS NewsHour, November 29, 2022). Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
New blog post: Varieties of Heroism: Ada Wordsworth at the Przemyśl Train Station, November 29, 2022. I have a new hero. Her name is Ada Wordsworth. What I know of Wordsworth comes from an article she wrote that appears in the current issue (December 8, 2022) of the The New York Review of Books under the title Ukrainian Lessons at the Train Station…read more>>
Keep the faith.
Stand with Ukraine.
yr obdt svt
Pictured below: where stuff gets done
