What I’m Blogging

Tagged by GirlZoot

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions

Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest, then tag three people.

Consider yourself tagged.

My problem is that I never put anything away, I just put it down when I’m done. It seems to be a genetic thing in my family, we spent three days cleaning out Grandma’s house and a similar amount of time in Great Aunt Margaret’s. When I go, i imagine it will take weeks to clean out the accumulation of stuff I have. In any event the closest book I have happens to be the last that I read.

Harpur, Tom. 2005. The Pagan Christ: Recovering the Lost Light. Walker & Company. ISBN 0676975739.

[Link to post]

Samson in Hebrew means “solar”, and he is plainly a sun-god figure (as the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church suggests and Kuhn affirms). Delilah, whose wiles eventually stripped him of his prodigious strength, is linked by Massey with the feeble, waning aspect of lunar light - the dark of the moon - a sign of the sun’s weakening each month. In the saga, she shears off Samson’s hair, symbolizing the sun’s loss of its halo of powerful rays.

On this day in 1814, the British captured and burned Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812. British officers dined at the deserted White House. Reconstruction began a year later and was finished in September 1817, whereupon James Monroe moved into the new White House.

One of the joys of owning vehicles that are older than my children, is the knowledge that I saved a bundle on the purchase price. One of the drawbacks, however, is the randomness of impromptu repairs… like say after a late evening Little League game, in the parking lot, with a flat tire… and me without a clue.

…the universe, however threw me a bone…

These things always seem to happen on summer vacations. They never seem to happen when the time is allotted to our capitalist overlords.. er I mean “work”. These things also always happen when you are completely unprepared. No jack, no tools to release the spare from the undercarriage of the van, and worst of all no portable air compressor. I have two, one for each vehicle, and where were they both? Yep, in the other car. Don’t ask me why, I don’t have sufficient training in quantum physics nor psychology to explain it with any accuracy.

So what to do? RING-RING. “Honey, can you come and rescue me and the boy? Bring the air compressors, pretty please? Yes, I broke the van again.” It also only breaks when I drive it. How’s that for summer fun?

The better half arrived, compressor fixed - if only temporarily - the slow leak, and she and the kids took off in her van so I wouldn’t have an opportunity to break it more. I got to drive my old beater home alone in the dark of night. Could it get any worse? The universe, however threw me a bone. In the glove box of my car was a cigar. I had the night, Jazz on the radio and a semi-fine smoke. Sometimes things do work out after all.

It was on this day in 1974 that Richard Milhous Nixon went on national television to announce that he was resigning the office of the president. He was the first American president in history forced to resign. During Nixon’s second election, a group of men wearing rubber gloves were caught breaking into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Office Building. Nixon wasn’t the first U.S. president to tap phones or to use the FBI to spy on his political opponents, but Nixon was the first president to be investigated for such activities, and he tried to use his power to stop the investigation. The Washington Post as well as congressional investigators kept digging. At first, it appeared that no one could prove that Nixon knew about any of the misconduct, but then a former White House official named Alexander Butterfield mentioned that Nixon had secretly taped all of his White House conversations. The tapes were disastrous, since they showed that Nixon deliberately tried to cover up the Watergate scandal from the beginning.

…I have never been a quitter…

Congress drafted articles of impeachment, and Senate republicans informed Nixon that if he were impeached, he would be convicted. So, on this day in 1974, Nixon went on television and announced his resignation. He said, “I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president I must put the interests of America first.” More than thirty of the men who were closest to him went to jail for their roles in Watergate.

His policies as president had been surprisingly liberal. He began arms control agreements with the Soviet Union and eased relations with China. He established the Environmental Protection Agency, expanded Social Security and state welfare programs, and he tried to create a national health insurance system. Historians believe that if Nixon had just been more confident in his ability to beat George McGovern in the election of 1972, the Watergate scandal would never have occurred.