My ranking of Presidents, revisited

 On January 20, 2009, while the country was inauguating another President, I wrote the following (updated, rearranged, recast to include Biden, Obama, Trump): 

Presidents of my lifetime, ranked in terms of which ones I would most like to have dinner with: Biden, Nixon, Reagan, Bush II, Ford, Johnson, Bush I, Obama, Carter, Kennedy, Clinton, Eisenhower, Trump.
Vice Presidents that did not become President, ranked same way: Pence, Rockefeller, Cheney, Gore, Quayle, Humphrey, Harris, Mondale, Agnew.

President I would most expect to:
Leave a fat tip: Bush I
Leave no tip: Johnson
Understand Atlas Shrugged: Reagan
Misunderstand Atlas Shrugged: Trump
Have read the Bible: Kennedy
Have a well worn and tattered Bible on their desk: Ford
Write a hot check: Trump
Have a bad drug habit: Carter
Change his own oil: Bush II
Be a closet Communist: Eisenhower or Obama - tie
Have a glass of grape koolaid in his hand: Bush II
Have a gun in the glove box: Obama
Pass gas and blame his VP: Kennedy
Pass time as a short order cook at Denny’s: Ford
Cut me off in traffic: Eisenhower
Cut in line at Disney World: Clinton
Leave Denny’s with a pocketful of Sweet N Lo: Nixon

Best and Worst Presidents of my lifetime: Ford and Trump

Second Best and Worst Presidents of my lifetime Reagan and Carter

Best and Worst Vice Presidents of my lifetime: Pence and Agnew.

Some of these were close calls. Both Bushes had some wonderful accomplishments, as certainly did Clinton, Johnson and others. As for the dinner list, it had nothing to do with who I liked the most, more of who would I learn the most from and/or change my perspective on things. No one has seen more than President Biden. 

I am writing this on day 51st of the war with Iran, so my perspective on the Trump Administration is tainted by a series of negative events. He has mocked my Saviour. Killed people in the Middle East. He has ridiculed the Church that Christ founded, the Catholic Church. 

On the other hand, the stock market has reacted favorably to all this calamity and my personal wealth has increased a bit, which cannot help but tilt my greedy human view favorably his way. 24 hours from now this can all change, the tenor of the market is always unpredictable. The word of the President is also quite unreliable. While I am ashamed of this president as you likely are as well, I also feel sorry for him. A man deep in quicksand that he seems to like. So unhappy. No friends, isolated, without love. A miserable existence. My America is much better. 

Some of my friends become better people as they age and some become worse. Surely he was a better man at age 7 and age 9 than at 79. May the Lord have mercy on us both. 

That time I described my life history to an alien being

 Today  I am on Little Rock, America and am pondering how to describe my existence should an alien being approach me and ask about my life. 

I was created 69.5 years ago. I do not recall this nor how it was that I came to be. The ones who created me cared for me until I was of the approximate size and intellect that you see today. This took about 20 years. 

After this period my human creators (not my divine or ultimate creators, that is another story) bid me farewell. I traveled a far distance from where I lived to come to this same city. I walked into an old building and met a female human (we have two kinds. I am male). We met many times. As I write this I am standing on a sidewalk outside that same building. 

I told her I had amassed powers of persuasion and could bend other humans to my will, particularly in commercial transactions. She told me she had the power to create small humans. My assistance would be required, which she would allow in exchange for an extended period of support in the form of shelter, food, money and other materials that she might require. 

I was skeptical but agreed, having difficulty shaking a spell she had cast upon me. She employed her creation power three times over the following twelve years. As these small humans grew larger she required greater support in the form of material goods. I provided this by exchanging knowledge I had acquired into money. This I then converted to cars, clothing, baseballs, bandaids, and larger shelters. This project took over 30 years until we finally bid the youngest human farewell. (Over time these created even more humans, five so far.)

We have now rested from this work and spend our days in play with the newer humans and traveling to distant lands sharing our story. No one believes us. 

Everything I know about The Brothers Karamazov

 Just finished this the 718 page paperback version of this famous novel by Dostoyevsky. 

The Russians have several names and include a surname, patronymic and diminuitive. Thus keeping track of all the characters is hard, as everyone is refered to by at least two names. 

Once upon a time there were these three brothers. One was a monk, or studied to be. One of the brothers was Alyosha not to be confused with another character Ilyusha. 

The brothers sometimes got along and sometimes didn't. A priest that one of the brothers admired died. 

They didn't like their dad. Bad guy. One was accused of killing him and found guilty. The defense tried to pin the murder on a servant who had committed suicide. There was some stolen money involved. The dad and one of the sons were in love with the same woman. 

After the trial the convicted brother planned an escape from jail. Not clear if that happened. 

The youngest brother runs into some old childhood friends at the end of the book. They promise to stay in touch. 

The end. 

I still write letters on paper and pen

 I have something at my house that the current generation will not have. Love letters. Specifically the ones from my wife. The generation of marrying age, late teens to late twenties, have abandoned marriage and have abandoned writing love on paper. 

I have something at my house that the current generation will not have. Letters from their grandparents. My grandchildren are an exception of course. Children have stopped writing to their grandparents the big news of their lives, and perhaps they never did it much. In college I wrote letters to my grandmother and grandfather. They wrote me back. My grandfather only made it to third grade, my grandmother to the eighth. My grandmother wrote letters quite often, especially to far flung loved ones, like her daughter Audrey, my mother. My grandfather almost never wrote to anyone, thus the two letters I have from him are particularly treasured. 

A hundred years from now your great -grandchildren may have an old email or two that someone told them was from you. How will they really know. My grandchildren, ages 4-11, five of them, all have a lot of letters from granddad. The ones who live close and the ones that are far away. So do my grown children.  

One of the failings of this age is the depersonalization and coding of our communication into an electronic form. Go ahead, send your grandkids or kids a nice email. It will look just like the ones I have sent. Exactly. Identical. But my letters are known. They recognize the handwriting. How it is folded, The coffee cup stains that show up from time to time. How I switch from  print to cursive as they get older. A lot of them will survive this century. 

Recently my wife and I read some of those old love letters, From 1978 and 1979 I kept most of hers and she kept a few of mine. Dozens of them. They speak of events and family and a wedding and money and jobs and car repairs and babies yet to draw a breath. They dream of a future that turned out in a way that would would have amazed them. The real was better than the imagined, in many ways. I know this because I have a written record. 

I also have letters from my brothers in their teens, when I was away at college. One is dead and the other very much alive and well. It is good to revisit our lives back then. The things brothers share only with each other. I have letters from my parents and they are the type of letters a parent should send. Mom chiding me about bad grades and Dad giving me some practical advice about job hunting. One was task oriented, the other more forward looking. Mom and Dad. 

I have a letter from my Dad. He was responding to the news that I was engaged. "Please send me her home address, I want to write her a letter". 

Travels of 2025

Nice year to get out and about. Places where I spent the night in 2025. : Victoria, MN, Webster Groves, MO, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, Montego Bay, Jamaica, Colon, Panama, Roatan, Honduras, Belize City, Belize, Cozumel, Mexico Minneapolis, MN Chattanooga, TN, Anchorage, AK, Skagway, AK, Juneau, AK, Buffalo, NY, Steubenville, OH, Danville, IL, New Albany, IN, Johnson City, TN, Roan Mountain, TN.

Books read in 2025

Listed below are the books I read last year, in the order that I read them. All of those marked with an asterisk I would read again. The others were good, just not worth a second reading. 

Unlike other years, there were no bad books. None that were a waste of time in reading. The Great Gatsby was the most disappointing. It is considered one of the great novels of the last century but I just did not see what was so compelling about it. Nice story but one I will not pick up again and is already on it's way to Goodwill. 

The Executioner's Song was among the best. A long book that I could not put down. A thousand pages that passed like a couple of hundred. The Caretaker and Fight are also in the pageturner class. 

Gone with the Wind - Mitchell*
The Evangelicals - Fitzgerald
The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914 - McCullough
A Wrinkle in Time - L'Engle*
Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant - Grant*
Anna Karenina - Tolstoy*
Sonny Boy - Pacino
Three Nights in August (2nd reading) - Bissinger
Footfall - Niven and Pournelle
A Gentleman in Moscow - Towles*
The Victorian Internet - Standage
King's Row - Bellaman*
What It Takes - Cramer*
Winston Churchill: The Last Lion Vol 1: Visions of Glory 1874 to 1932 - Manchester*
Executioner's Song - Mailer*
The Saint Monica Club - Green (5th reading)*
Winston Churchill: The Last Lion Vol 2: Alone 1932 to 1940 - Manchester*
Winston Churchill: The Last Lion Vol 3: Defender of the Realm 1940-1965 - Manchester and Reid*
Old Mother West Wind - Burgess
Paris Mitchell of King's Row - Bellaman and Bellaman
Irish Fairy Tales and Folklore - Yeats
The Life of St. Gemma Galgani - Germanus*
The Turmoil - Tarkington
The Magnificent Ambersons - Tarkington
The Midlander - Tarkington
The Great Gatsby - Fitzgerald
The Caretaker - Rash*
The Return of the Prodigal Son - Nouwen
Jesus and the Jubilee - Bergsma
Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma - Ott
Roses - Meacham*
Zbig: The life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet - Luce*
Purgatory is for Real - Broussard
Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House - Allen and Parnes*
Last Call - Powers
Confessions of a Mega Church Pastor - Hunt
The Years of Lyndon Johnson Volume I - Caro (2nd reading)*
The Years of Lyndon Johnson Volume II - Caro (2nd reading)*
The Long Loneliness - Day