The GOP’s Genes

The end of the campaign has meant that I’m blogging a lot less on politics, but this article by Neal Gabler in the L.A. Times is worth passing along, both for its cogent historical analysis of the GOP’s recent history and for its insights into the current civil war within the party between the right-wingers and the righter-wingers:

The creation myth of modern conservatism usually begins with Barry Goldwater, the Arizona senator who was the party’s presidential standard-bearer in 1964 and who, even though he lost in one of the biggest landslides in American electoral history, nevertheless wrested the party from its Eastern establishment wing. Then, Richard Nixon co-opted conservatism, talking like a conservative while governing like a moderate, and drawing the opprobrium of true believers. But Ronald Reagan embraced it wholeheartedly, becoming the patron saint of conservatism and making it the dominant ideology in the country. George W. Bush picked up Reagan’s fallen standard and “conservatized” government even more thoroughly than Reagan had, cheering conservatives until his presidency came crashing down around him. That’s how the story goes.

But there is another rendition of the story of modern conservatism, one that doesn’t begin with Goldwater and doesn’t celebrate his libertarian orientation. It is a less heroic story, and one that may go a much longer way toward really explaining the Republican Party’s past electoral fortunes and its future. In this tale, the real father of modern Republicanism is Sen. Joe McCarthy, and the line doesn’t run from Goldwater to Reagan to George W. Bush; it runs from McCarthy to Nixon to Bush and possibly now to Sarah Palin. It centralizes what one might call the McCarthy gene, something deep in the DNA of the Republican Party that determines how Republicans run for office, and because it is genetic, it isn’t likely to be expunged any time soon.

Weird Walk

Today was a pretty nondescript day in most ways. I suppose the highlight was the Northfield Youth Choir’s “Gloria” concert at Carleton’s Skinner Chapel: excellent singing – and a packed house.

The girls and I took a nice walk in the morning, enjoying the above-average (and snow-meltingly warm!) temperatures. Looking back on our 90 minutes of wandering, I realized that it was studded with some weird stuff.

First, the bright blue sky was covered with jet contrails. At one point, we counted six of them. (Well, Vivi counted “yeleven” of them, but I think she was counting the sun five times.)
Contrails

Second, there was this pyramid in the middle of the neighborhood park. It was rather well constructed, but sitting all by its lonesome, unaccompanied by a snowman, a snow fort, or a snow-moai.
Mystery Pyramids

Third, in a tunnel on the playground in this same park, we discovered a few dozen perfectly shaped snowballs. Were they fashioned by the pyramid builders? No one could tell, and then the girls spent the better part of a half hour sending them down the slides and dropping them off the play structure.
Mystery Snowballs

Finally, back at home, I admired the strange wind-shaped wall of icy snow on our gutter, defying gravity and looking quite shapely at the same time.
Mystery Snow

The Most

As hard as the girls found it to believe, I spent the day at home today while Shannon had a great time at a psych conference. (The conference’s title was “Getting CEUs: Putting the ‘Psycho’ Back in Psychology.”) We had a good time, the three of us, though they were both recovering from their colds and I am coming down with one. The best parts of the day all included playing Christmas songs at high volumes, which induced a great deal of rather energetic dancing. I didn’t know “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” was so danceable. Maybe only when you’re two and four years old.

Big Sox on Campus

Today was perhaps my finest hour as a Carleton employee: I won the grand prize in the Outrageous Sox Contest held each year during the College’s December writing workshop. In past years, I haven’t even had outrageous and/or hideous holiday sox of my own to enter into the contest. This year, my attempts to buy my own sox failed miserably: nobody makes ugly holiday sox for guys with size-12 feet.

So I took matters into my own hands – or feet, as was the case = – by fashioning holiday sox from the regular dress socks I happened to be wearing today and, crucially, six foot-long pieces of “evergreen bough” from our fake Christmas tree. The result was both ridiculous and ugly, but in the Outrageous Sox Contest, that’s just what you need:

Outrageous Sox
Outrageous Sox

(Please ignore the dark mush-splatter marks acquired on the bike ride home.)

In presenting my sox for the consideration of the sole judge, the estimable dean of the college, and the entertainment of the assembled audience, I mentioned some salient features of the hosiery: reusable, perfectly sustainable, flexible enough to be used with any pair of sox, and so forth. It worked, and I placed first in the “Holiday Sox” category.

For my efforts, I won a rather sharp winter-themed travel mug. Not bad for a day’s work.

Coming Around

Listening to “Away in a Manger” this evening, Julia asked me why Jesus was called “the little lord Jesus,” when “It’s really God who’s lord,” as she learned from the children’s Bible she received from her Nonna and Boppa. I said, “Many people who believe that Jesus was special also believe that Jesus and God are the same person.” She actually laughed at this, then said, “But how can they be? God was around first to create the whole world, and Jesus wasn’t alive then. He was born later, from Mary! And God told Mary she would have Jesus! They can’t be the same person!”

Internet, let me tell you that my heart sang as my little heretic actually committed some reasoning about the craziness mysteriousness of Christianity. Today, Arianism; tomorrow (or next fall), kindergarten agnosticism!

Yule Fools

Friday and Saturday – colds be damned – the Tassavas put up their (artificial) Christmas tree. Over dinner on Friday, Shannon and I told the girls that I was going to put up the tree that night, and that we would then put on the ornaments on Saturday afternoon. We tried to explain the difference between “real” trees like the one we went out to buy in a snowstorm last year and the “fake” one we’d put up this year, but it was obvious the distinction made no difference.

After everyone was off to bed, I brought the tree box in from the garage, turned on an idiotic college football game, poured myself some bourbon, and set to work. Putting the tree together was a faster and easier process than I remembered, and I finished long before my too-late-to-work deadline.

When I brought Vivi downstairs on Saturday morning, she looked over at the bare green tree and exclaimed, “What is that?” – which comes out as “WoddiDAT!” She was interested in my explanation, but not interested in going over and investigating. When, an hour later, Julia came downstairs and saw the tree, she said, “Daddy, you did get a real tree!” I told her that no, it was artificial, but she went over and touched it and said, “No, it is real!” Talking to her, I realized that she thought I was going to put up a big picture of a tree – not an actual thing in the living room. Any 3-D tree is a real tree, at least to Julia. And that’s fine with me.

Later that day, after the requisite run to the hardware store for lights to replace the ones that were no longer working, the girls and Shannon had a blast putting on the ornaments, which took roughly half as long to do as it had taken me to put the tree up. Vivi and Julia steadfastly ignored our instructions to put each ornament on its own branch:

Crowded Branch
Crowded Branch

But after a little editing by the parents, we got that tree looking pretty good. Here’s the decorating crew admiring their work

Admirers
Admirers

and here is the work itself

Admired
Admired

Fa la la la la! I feel ever so slightly less Grinchy already.

Ski Skid

I skied around the “backyard”* for an hour this afternoon, having a grand time and feeling like I was actually doing some decent work. After about half an hour, I was deep in the zone when I heard a weird mechanical shriek. I looked up to see a rusty blue Acura Integra fishtailing as it came toward me down the road, then twisting itself into a long sideways skid that ended, thankfully, with a sudden stop in the middle of the road. Just about when I realized I’d stopped skiing to watch, the driver nonchalantly straightened out and went on his merry way.

* I put “backyard” in quotes because we share a few acres of green space with everyone else in our townhouse association, and this space is both like and unlike a real backyard.

Jesus Is the Wheezing for the Season

Julia’s fascination with the nativity story has profoundly screwed up wrought numerous long-term changes to our family’s imaginative universe. As I write this, for instance, the playroom is cluttered with 43 different partially- and fully-rendered nativity scene drawings, probably 90% done by Julia, 8% by me (for Julia), and 2% by Genevieve. Julia is adding new pictures right now, at the rate of about one every five minutes. Of course, she’s not actually “Julia” right now: she’s Mary, and I’m Joseph, and Genevieve is, of course, Jesus.

A feet away, Jesus/Genevieve is playing with our Playmobil nativity-scene toy; its sibling, the Little People set, is decorating the windowsill. While she plays, she’s wheezing and coughing from her cold, which emerged last night around 10. So far, she’s still letting me wipe her nose without a fight, but only if I ask, “Jesus, can I wipe your nose?”

Skiday

It’s Finnish Independence Day today, which is mostly unrelated to the fact that it was also my first chance to ski this winter. Last year, I skied for the first time on December 1, so I’m just about a week behind, but I can’t help it: my prayers to Ukko weren’t answered favorably. Perhaps I didn’t use the right kind of birch trees in the pyre on which I burned the reindeer skins.

Regardless of supernatural or meteorological reasons, we didn’t have skiable snow until this week, and only last night’s blowing and drifting made my “backyard” viable for a half-hour of kick-and-glide meandering over a 360-meter loop. I was equally surprised to find that I didn’t feel abysmal (no spasming shoulders! spasming feet only about 20 minutes in!) and that the grass, barely covered by the snow, provided a halfway decent kick for my rock skis.

Backyard Ski Tracks
Backyard Ski Tracks

Tomorrow, naps willing, the Arb…

Hopeful Thoughts

From the Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, Rune 30, “The Frost-Fiend”:

Frost, the son of wicked parents,
Hero-son of evil manners,
Hastens off to freeze the ocean,

On the first night of his visit,
Freezes he the lakes and rivers,
Freezes too the shore of ocean,
Freezes not the ocean-billows,
Does not check the ocean-currents.

When the second night Frost lingered,
He began to grow important,
He became a fierce intruder,
Fearless grew in his invasions,
Freezes everything before him;
Sends the fiercest cold of Northland,
Turns to ice the boundless waters.
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker,
Grew the ice on sea and ocean,
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper,
Fell the snow on field and forest,

Thank God for Memes

They save me from having to think up with something to write today. I have to go put up the Christmas tree now. (Thanks to Margaret for this one.)

1. Five names you go by
a) Christopher
b) “Chris”
c) Daddy
d) “Tass” (high school friends only)
e) Babe (spouse only)

2. Three things you are wearing right now:
a) jeans
b) zip-up fleece sweater (favorite winter clothing)
c) two pairs of socks

3. Two things you want very badly at the moment:
a) Someone else to put up the Christmas tree.
b) 16″ of nice lake-effect-type snow.

4. Three people whom I would like to see fill this out:
a) Shannon
b) Maybe Elise?
c) Brendon, mostly because it would be a great window into the Crazy

5. Two things you did last night (Thursday, 12/4):
a) attended Winter Walk
b) blogged about attending Winter Walk

6. Two things you ate today:
a) a strong Americano
b) a stale Twix bar

7. Two people you last talked to on the phone:
a) a program officer at scientific-research foundation
b) a program officer at a private charitable foundation

8. Two things you are going to do tomorrow:
a) help the girls and Shannon put ornaments on the tree
b) go for a run

9. Two longest car rides:
a) Upper Michigan to the Black Hills (900 miles – about 13 hours, 30 minutes)
b) Moorhead, Minnesota, to Hancock, Michigan (466 miles – about 10 hours, 22 minutes)

10. Two of your favorite beverages:
a) mineral water
b) black coffee

AND ANOTHER:

Pick a color for the things that you have done. Mine are in red letters.
I have…
1. Started my own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than I can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sung a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched lightning at sea
14. Taught myself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown my own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Skied a marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of my ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught myself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had my portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi concentration camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had my picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one

94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Ridden an elephant

Winter Walking

Tonight was Northfield’s annual “Winter Walk” festival downtown. Just like last year, it was a good time for all – even if Shannon was too sick to go and it was a good 15 degrees colder. The girls enjoyed seeing the two live reindeer, listening to any of the bazillion caroling groups, scarfing a holiday cookie, riding on a horse-drawn wagon, getting our picture taken, and having their faces painted (Julia: Christmas tree; Genevieve: snowman). Julia did not enjoy trying to look at the moon through a telescope set up by a Carleton astronomer on Bridge Square, however – something about it freaked her out. And though it might be crass to say so, my favoritest thing about the evening was the cost: $0.00. Northfield is great that way.

(Also great: Julia asking, each time we passed one of the two banks downtown, “Is THAT the bank Jesse James robbed, Daddy?”)