AGAIN
It is not at all unusual,here in Virginia,to experience a bit of leftover summer in January and we are in such a re-run stage at this point. This week we are having days in the sixties in the bright afternoons, but I haven't seen any buds popping out or bulbs showing so it must not be as summery as usual. We haven't had any snow at all here, but east and west of us they have done very well. The far west is having real winter, even the Great Lakes area, so we will get our turn as the weeks roll on.
The countryside is still looking well with some calendar-shot greens evident instead of grays,browns and blahs. The trees still retain some color,too, here and there. To check that I pulled a volume of these essays down from the high shelf and I happened to get one dated January 1997. We were having the same sort of hold-over summer then and into the second week of January.
There were other “same” thing, too,I found. I had put a new black ink cartridge in the printer on the 4thof January and I seem to have been surprised that it had been been made in China. Someone told me “Taiwan had gotten too expensive.” I also discovered that my “Florsheim” shows were made in India. Those discoveries of l997 certainly ring true today when it is difficult to find any thing not made in some foreign factory. We re now a global market people,I suppose.
On this very day in 1997 I noted that some people were talking about, then just-becoming Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as being potential presidential material for the Republican party. Here in January of 2005, we are hearing the same talk, as he eases back into public acceptance. He was up for a second term as the first Republican Speaker of the House in three-quarters of a century and was being compared to his predecessor Democrat Jim Wright,who had been set aside for ”ethical lapses”. The same sort of problem would confront Gingrich in due time.
You may have heard that there is some comment being bandied about concerning the extravagance of the Republicans in spending about thirty-five million dollars on the George W. Bush Second Inaugural festivities. I have, personally,fumed a bit about it being excessive but I find from things I wrote in January of 1997 that I was also upset when I found that a figure somewhere around 95 million dollars was to be spent on the Bill Clinton “2nd Ig Do.”
History, it seems,indeed, does “repeat itself” or, at least, our views of and comments upon our strange ways do so .
A.L.M. January 10, 2005 [c474wds]
