1. I like to get waste left over from the remodel project off ours and Christy and Everett's premises as soon as possible and I like to keep our garbage cans half or a quarter full up until they are collected, when I'm fine with them being full. So, today, I gathered up cardboard, leftover trim, a bag of empty beverage cans, a can of grass clippings, and a few bags of garbage from both our place and Christy and Everett's, loaded up the Sube, and made a trip to the recycle center up the street and then out to the transfer station. I got back home and felt a palpable sense of relief and satisfaction that this stuff was gone and that things looked a little better around our houses.
2. Emma, a new ukulele friend of the Deke's, came over to the house so they could strum and sing together and I grabbed Elizabeth Drew's book Washington Journal and headed to what I like to call the Hill St. Depot reading room. My hope was that the Hill St. Depot would be kind of quiet on a Sunday afternoon, that I could settle in at a table by myself, order a beverage, and continue to study Richard Nixon's efforts to sow confusion in his staff, the Congress, the courts, and the electorate in his efforts to subvert and throw into chaos the traditional processes of oversight, investigation, and governing in our three branch system.
I am understanding better than I ever have that these processes are intended to put constraints on power and that Richard Nixon, who on the outside seemed a very patriotic and country loving man, despised these constraints, and, in turn, despised the traditional means by which the government he headed worked (or, for him, didn't work). As the possibility of losing his office became more likely, he intensified his attacks and subversions on the institutions of the USA's government: the courts, the Justice Department, the Special Prosecutor, Congressional investigative committees, and the law of the land itself. Elizabeth Drew wrote the dispatches in this book as the events occurred and brilliantly captures the confusion and crisis and sense of fatigue Richard Nixon's fight for survival engendered in the government, in reporters, and, for those paying close attention, in the electorate. And, right now, I have only read as far as November, 1973. There's much more wearying and exhausting confusion and fighting for survival to come.
3. The Deke prepared a great family dinner tonight. She served us each an avocado halved, the cavity filled with cottage cheese and topped with finely sliced fermented radishes. For our main course, she prepared roasted Brussel sprouts seasoned with balsamic vinegar and bacon and fried Kiolbassa beef sausages. For our pre-dinner cocktail, the Deke juiced lemons and made a stevia-based simple syrup which she combined with whiskey to make whiskey sours. We got caught up on Carol's plans for the early summer as she prepares to retire from the State of Idaho, but not from working; we also began to get a better idea of what Christy's needs will most likely be when she has and recovers from knee replacement surgery in two weeks.
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