The Partly Cloudy Patriot

God, I love books. I love reading. Good thing, too, since that's about all I've had to keep myself occupied. Really though, I love good books, the kind where they have you reconsidering dinner invitations and staying up until it's starting to get light outside and your eyeballs are burning.
I imagine the way I feel about hitting a lucky streak in the book department -- which is to say, running across two or more good books in a row -- much the way a gambling-crazed granny in Las Vegas feels about several consecutive pay-offs from a one-armed bandit.

My recent lucky book streak has been comprised of the following: The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger, Drop City by TC Boyle, and The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell (contributor to This American Life and just, well, a very funny and smart woman.)

Because I am a book geek of the highest caliber, when I am finished with a (good) book it is riddled with little folded-over corners -- little, because as a bibliophile I respect the sanctity of books and don't want to do any unnecessary damage -- noting any particularly funny or prescient passages, or words I want to look up the definitions of, or mentions of other books, artists, cities, and so on that I'd like to research more about.

While I recommend all of the three books above, Vowell's included several passages I liked enough to write them down for posterity, and then to blog about.

p. 41 "On the first day of school when I was a kid, the guy teaching history -- and it was almost always a guy, wearing a lot of brown -- would cough up the pompous same old same old about how if we kids failed to learn the lessons of history then we would be doomed to repeat them. Which is true if you're one of the people who grow up to run things, but not as practical if your destiny is a nice small life. For example, thanks to my tenth-grade world history textbook's chapter on the Napoleonic Wars, I know not to invade Russia in the wintertime. This information would have been good for an I-told-you-so toast at Hitler's New Year's party in 1943, but for me, knowing not to trudge my troops through the snow to Moscow is not so handy day-to-day."

p. 76 "[historic map salesman] Graham Arader's America is a prettier picture than mine. And he believes in it...His is an easier picture to sell. But it's also a lovelier, less sarcastic one to buy. I want to buy it. I like the telegraph and the railroad and the Brooklyn Bridge. Graham's map of America has an elementary school quality that I admire. How many times have I wished to go back there, to live once more in the country I thought I lived in as I stood on the stage of the second-grade Thanksgiving pageant, singing 'This land is your land' in a cardboard turkey suit?"

p. 120 [in chapter on everyone claiming they're "like Rosa Parks"]

"A California dairy farmer protesting the government's milk pricing system poured milk down a drain in front of TV cameras, claiming that he had to take a stand, 'just like Rosa Parks had to take a stand.' [...] I would also like to mention the rocker, marksman, and conservative activist Ted Nugent, who in his autobiography [...] refers to himself as 'Rosa Parks with a loud guitar'. Call me picky, but [...] being subject to unfair dairy pricing, and not being able to mime (or lap dance), though they are all tragic, tragic injustices, are not quite as bad as the systematic segregation of public transportation based on skin color. And while fighting for your right to [do these things] is a very fine, very American idea, it is not quite as brave as being a middle-aged black woman in Alabama in 1955 telling a white man she's not giving him her seat despite the fact that the law requires here to do so. [...]

I was [...] watching a rerun of the sitcom Sports Night on Comedy Central. Dan, a television sportscaster played by Josh Charles, has been ordered by his network to make an on-air apology to viewers because he said in a magazine interview that he supports the legalization of marijuana. He stands by his opinion and balks at apologizing. His boss, Isaac (Robert Guillaume), agrees but tells him to do it anyway 'because it's television and this is how it's done.' Dan replies, 'Yeah, well, sitting in the back of the bus was how it was done until a forty-two-year-old lady moved up front.' A few minutes later Isaac looks Dan in the eye and tells him, 'Because I love you I can say this. No rick young white guy has ever gotten anywhere with me comparing himself to Rosa Parks.' Finally, the voice of reason, which of course was heard on a canceled network TV series on cable."