If you are one of the three or four stalwart Gryphon fans who still drop by, you might like to see my October 16th Business Week article, titled “Better Teachers: A Lesson Plan,” which is now available online.
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Marie Gryphon
Tom Delay just opined on CNN, “This country is still right-of-center.” Er, right of the center of what?
I can’t stop listening to Death Cab’s new album, Plans (Hmm, ring tones!) I suspect that this passion will have to run its course but welcome recommendations of other albums that have at least temporary distraction value.
For any spare Washingtonians who may still drop by, I am returning to town this weekend! Lane McFadden has graciously offered to plan a little shindig shortly thereafter to celebrate my return.
Candy stores and card shops are filled today with procrastinators fervently seeking the right message — one that captures the exact, idiosyncratic nature of their bond. They sort through missives so sweet as to be appropriate only for the married-or-nearly-so and cards that cynically suggest the sender is halfway out the door in a vain search for middle ground. Eventually, many will sigh with relief when they find that too-rare valentine devoid of verbiage.
Best wishes and good luck to all on this special day dedicated to the purpose of defining our romantic relationships. I’ve been a tad critical of V Day in the past. But it may be healthy, in this ambivalent era, to have an external impetus to consider how, exactly, we feel about those with whom we laugh, argue, kiss, cook, cuddle and romp.
To those who still drop by here from time to time, I’d like to announce that I am going to take a leave of absence from my PhD program this year, and that I have accepted the position of Director of Educational Programs at the Institute for Humane Studies. IHS seems very serious about letting me manage several smart people and a substantial budget. I’ll also get to help set the intellectual agenda for its various educational programs. I’m looking forward to the challenge, and to being in The District again! Sadly, this means I must leave Cato as an employee, though I’m hoping to remain affiliated in an adjunct capacity. I am making the switch at the end of February.
Oh, and I am rather hoping that taking time off from school will enable me to blog! Only time will tell, but it may make sense to check in here in March.
Joel Achenbach made me smile this morning with the diatribe below. Perhaps instead of waterboarding, interrogators should force Iraqi prisoners to become writers.
The two great challenges of writing are the things you haven’t written yet and the things you already have.
The not-yet-written material nags the conscience. You fret over all that you haven’t gotten around to including. You have notebooks that stare at you reprovingly. They say: What about us. Yo. Dude. Hey. Remember how you were jazzed about our notations. Remember how you exerted all that effort to excavate all this great material and waste the time of all those sources. We’re waiting. Have you decided you don’t need us, or, as we suspect, have you simply not gotten around to opening us and peeking inside?
So there’s that, the whining and mewling of the Unwritten. We all have unwritten stories, and in some cases, unwritten novels, unwritten poems, unwritten rock operas, unwritten letters to our children to open someday when we’re gone, unwritten bedtime stories we had promised to put down on paper, and so on.
The only good thing you can say about the Unwritten is that it’s not nearly as big a problem as the Already Wrote. Because the Already Wrote is usually terrible. As a professional writer I spend far less time dealing with the Unwritten than I do with the Already Wrote. The Unwritten at least has the potential, in theory, hypothetically, in an ideal universe, to be great; the Already Wrote hasn’t a chance.
The problem with being a serious writer is that you can tell the difference between literature and the stuff you just wrote. The ancient craft known as “rewriting” is similar to triage in a military hospital. There are passages that can be saved, and those beyond hope.
My favorite scary looking person just wrote to say that he has finished his work in Iraq. He’ll be returning to Baghdad by convoy tomorrow, and from there will fly to civilization (specifically, Germany). He hopes to be back in DC within a week, and sends greetings to everyone.
Harriet Miers has withdrawn her nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court.
I’ve been more encouraged by the events of the last three weeks than by anything else that has happened in politics in years. It is good to know that a group of thoughtful, principled advocates can still change history.
Addendum: Or, as Miers would say, “More and more, the intractable problems in our society have one answer: broad-based intolerance of unacceptable conditions and a commitment by many to fix problems.” Way to go, Ms. Miers. You did well today.
Texas officials paid Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers’ family more than $100,000 for a small piece of land in 2000 – 10 times the land’s worth – despite the state’s objections to the way the price was determined, Knight Ridder Newspapers reported Saturday.
The three-member committee that determined the price included Peggy Lundy, a friend of Miers, and property-rights activist Cathie Adams, Knight Ridder reported. They were appointed to the panel by state District Judge David Evans, who had received at least $5,000 in campaign contributions from Miers’ law firm…
he land – which was part of a large Superfund pollution cleanup site – was valued at less than 30 cents a square foot. But the panel recommended paying nearly $5 a square foot for it.
The price was later reduced from $106,915 to $80,915, but Miers has yet to return the $26,000 difference to the state, said the story by Jack Douglas Jr. and Stephen Henderson.
Tradesports shows futures contracts on the confirmation of Harriet Miers at 30.6 cents on the dollar in heavy trading this morning.
