Weekend Journal

I’m a bit tapped out right now and not quite in the mood for another blog post.

I’m working on a blog that will accompany an Introduction to American Government textbook, and all my creativity went there this evening. I think the blog is only for students, so I’m not going to link to it yet. We can’t have you guys intimidating the young, fragile minds.

On Saturday, I used a Get Out of Jail Free card and took off for the city. It was a last minute plan, so I couldn’t rally the usual suspects for shopping and drinking. Instead, I went on my own to the Met to see the Turner exhibit and the Jeff Coons statues on the roof garden. Museum viewing is a perfectly acceptable solo activity. In fact, it’s sometimes better that way.

The Turner paintings were good. I’m not a huge fan of landscapes, but Turner has a flare for the Apocalypse. Burning parliament buildings and floods. I first saw his paintings at the Tate Gallery in London, when I did the impoverished, college backpacking trip through Europe. I was probably nodding off in the gallery back then, since we spent a lot of time sleeping on trains, so I thought I should check out this exhibit for a well rested viewing.

I’m not sure if Jeff Coons’ work should really be called art, but it’s always good for a laugh. And the enormous balloon doggie looked fab on the roof over looking the park.

Then it took me nearly an hour to get from 86th Street to Times Square. Gotta love the smelly undersock of a subway. It took the same amount of time to get from Times Square to my house in New Jersey. Hello, Mayor Bloomberg. It’s very hard to get this leftie/urban/elitist all hot and bothered about mass transportation when I had to smell armpits for an hour.

Today, we made a point of all of us going to church together. Ian is such a royal pain in the ass in church, that we’ve been taking turns going and only taking Jonah with us. But it’s not good for Ian to only let him do what’s easy for him, so he was packed up today, too. He did great. We’ll give him an A-. He lost some points for saying loudly in a quiet part of the mass, "Jesus stinks!" Ian’s not a fan of the incense burner.

Well, I’m going to do my best on this blog to try to turn the discussion back to policies. Let’s get away from identity politics and election dirt. Harry B promised us an education policy post and I want to link to something he wrote on Teach For America.