How does it happen? How do we get so busy with our lives, so stuck in routines, that we surrender our autonomy and sometimes our integrity, and become not much more than robots going through the motions of life but with pretty anemic vital signs.
Beer, Bratwurst, and Bombast
People are always surprised that I’m lukewarm about the Fourth of July. For the first twenty years of my life in tights, I usually wound up somewhere reciting the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July, but in more recent years I have ignored the big day the way Jefferson tended to ignore Christmas.
Jefferson: The Reluctant Politician
Checks and Balances, Jefferson, Checks and Balances
The Death of Decorum in the White House
Erasing the Past
A KKK hood over Jefferson’s head at one of the premier academic institutions of the United States? Columbia, I thought you taught your students to think, to discuss, to reflect, to ponder, to debate, to imagine, to explore rather than merely to posture in righteousness. Really, the students of Columbia are now joining the new American Culture of Outrage? I thought Columbia was above cliché.
A Word or Two Before You Go
Whither American Character?
Order a Pizza, Tie my Shoes, Sing in the Shower, Overdraw my Checking Account, Change a Printer Cartridge
Jefferson’s early biographer James Parton famously said the third president could “Calculate an eclipse, survey an estate, tie an artery, plan an edifice, try a cause, break a horse, dance a minuet, and play the violin.” When I actually paused to read Parton’s statement carefully the other day, I realized, all over again, what a remarkable man Jefferson was.
Republicans in Buckskins
Countdown to the Eclipse
Our Gardens
Good News for America
A Cul-de-Sac and a Bucket of Piss
The Most Jeffersonian Thing in America
And So Once More to the Breach
The Lewis & Clark trail begins at Monticello and ends at the mouth of the Columbia. But the best part of the whole transcontinental trail lies between the confluence of the Judith and Missouri Rivers in eastern Montana, and Orofino, Idaho, on the Clearwater River on the other side of the Bitterroot Mountains.
