Less than a week after the passage of a landmark health care bill into law, the pundits appear to be sure of one thing: this will be used heavily by republicans in the November elections. The most interesting thing about this prognostication isn’t how universal it is, but how very likely it is completely wrong.
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Yearly Archives: 2010
Rising Water
The Mississippi is still rising in Saint Paul, generating a wave of “Flood Tourism”. People come down to look at the yawning river that now stretches into what was once solid ground. It’s about as exciting as waking up in the morning, which is really all that the Mississippi is doing for the year. Spring has returned to Saint Paul. It becomes important, however, when you see how close we live to this wild and untamable creature that wakes up in a similar mood to any of us.
Sweaty and Tired
As political sports, the passage of a Health Care bill was something we haven’t seen in a long time. All day there were updates on the radio relaying the status of the debate and what the latest deals were in Washingtoon. It came down to a pair of speeches in the well between Bonoir and Pelosi, with shouts and applause breaking and highlighting their pace like the UK House of Commons. Then, there was the vote.
Magnificat
This Sunday, 21 March, is the 325th Birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach. If that seems like a long time ago, it was. Long enough, in fact, to take a very lively and real person and turn his work into a kind of holy writ and the man himself into a deity. But this personality who can speak to us through so many centuries was, like so many legends, even more than his myth – he is an example. His birthday is as good a time as any to understand the simple gifts he keeps giving us.
St. Patrick’s Day
This piece is a repeat from two years ago – I don’t have anything to add. The re-run gives me more time to enjoy the day. Sláinte!
Good people go to Heaven, but the Celts went everywhere. There isn’t a corner of the globe where you can’t find us if you look hard enough. Nations as far flung as Canada and Australia are largely Celtic in origin, and the majority of those Celts came from Ireland.
Our people have wandered the earth like almost no other, and for one day we all return home with the help of a hyphen. Many of us become Irish-Americans or Irish-Canadians on Saint Patrick’s day when any other day American or Canadian would be enough. We drink up well in pubs, cheer on the bagpipers, and think back to what our ancestors must have gone through to get us where we are.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 