June 3, 2007

Memorial Weekend Musings…

During this past Memorial Day weekend I was blessed with three mostly golden days. I did a shockingly small amount of office work and a surprising amount of work around the house.

I gave myself the time to sit out on the deck with the pile of magazines I have collected in the last month, beginning to make a dent in them before consigning them to the recycle pile.

Television watching is usually a busmen’s holiday for me; I started to catch up with the programs in my DVR. The weekend flowed by, a gentle stream of time after a very chaotic week.

My friend and legal eagle, Mary Ann Zimmer, sent me an article from The Progressive which I read and found concerning enough to make copies and send off to my Congressmen. It points out, in a story I haven’t heard anywhere else, that recently President Bush has taken on the responsibility for the continuity of constitutional government should we be attacked or suffer a natural disaster. It almost sounded like after a 9/11 or a Katrina, the President could assume powers not intended by the Constitution. Now I just don’t think I want any President taking on that kind of power and so am going to investigate more in case I need to squawk – squawking being one of the imperatives of democracy.

Speaking of the Constitution, I did my Stage II CINE judging this weekend. One of the films watched was an educational documentary on the Constitution, reminding me of the intelligence of those founding fathers – and their humanness. Their work is so clever and succinct it has lasted over two hundred years [our much beatified Ben Franklin gave the document only about ten years before it would need more serious revision]. Their work has become one of those “sacred” texts of history, just like the Magna Carta.

On Saturday I indulged in one of my best pleasures: listening to WAIT! WAIT! DON’T TELL ME! on NPR. It’s a comedic contest looking back at the foibles and follies of the week. This past Saturday the special guest was Representative Dennis Kucinich, the perennial Democratic candidate for President. He is widely praised on Capitol Hill for his ability to talk like Donald Duck. For our amusement he did the first lines of the Gettysburg Address in the Donald voice. It was, quite simply, adorable.

While we are on the subject of Congressmen, I watched Rep. Ron Paul on Bill Maher who is running for the Republican nomination for President. I don’t think he’ll get it. For one, he’s speaking sense and not demagoguery and for another, I doubt he will be able to raise the millions and millions of dollars it takes to get there. However, I am really delighted for his voice, questioning the current jingoism of most of the candidates from both parties.

While we are on the topic of Bill Maher, one of his guests that night was actor Ben Affleck, for whom I have no great admiration. However, intelligence showed through and I realized he was certainly more than “Bennifer” and that his college education wasn’t completely wasted.

Off in Russia, Kasparov, former chess champ of the world, is busy attempting to keep Russia a nascent democracy by utilizing the internet to get out his side of the story, since virtually all the media are under the thumb of the Kremlin. The internet, the strange electronic community is, perhaps, a great equalizer.

It was a weekend of enjoying media pleasures, good music on the stereo and discovering new programs like “The Riches”, a very well done dramedy with Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver as two grifters suddenly ensconced in and coping with respectability and the legal system. If you haven’t seen it, add it to your DVR list.

I listened on the radio to reminiscences of veterans of all the wars of this last century through our current adventure, especially touched by stories from World War II and from Iraq, including the young man and his wife who described his troubles re-adjusting once home from Baghdad.

It was the kind of weekend I rarely have and desire more of, a casual freedom to enjoy and cogitate – experiencing the world around me, reflected in our media.