Where Have I Been?

Wow, July. What have I done since then. Well, nevermind. One thing I know for sure is that life is long and memory is short. I'm still very active in my Pasadena discussion group. This week I was in the office 4 days. Seems none of the other ladies knows how to print labels using mail merge. Or merge information into letters going out to our members. It's nice to be able to offer something unique. This fall term I attended two groups.

The first one read Updike short stories. Karen and I agreed long ago that we do not like that man. So fixated on sex and running around on his wife. But my friend Susan was leading the group and she assured me that there is more to Updike than that. There is. He does write well. Or he uses a lot of lovely adjectives and descriptors. But just about every story involved some guy's wandering eye and raging hormones. Oh, and Updike is confirmed anti-gay and probably has issues about race. But never mind. The company was good. I've met even more nice ladies who I will enjoy spending time with next time we talk about fiction.

Then there is my non-fiction group of the season. The book was written by Jim DeMint, godfather of the Tea Party movement. (And I can't remember the name. Sure I could look at the picture at the beginning of this post, but that would mean reading more DeMint.) They do love that man and this book sorta tells why, if you can read it. I met more nice people in that group. All of us had difficulty reading this simplistic and fundamentally misguided book. But the discussions were great. Our last group was yesterday afternoon. I asked one of the ladies, as we were walking to the house, what words she writes in her book as she is reading. We always do a lot of underlining and making notes in our books so we can talk at the meetings, referring to the correct page. She wrote the same words in her book that I wrote in mine. We laughed a lot about that. She said her family would be surprised. I told her mine wouldn't. I asked her what she was going to do with her book when the group was over. In fact, the whole group discussed what they were going to do with their books when we were done. Burning was mentioned often. I was going into the office, so I figured shredding was a good alternative.

One of the big problems with the book was that he states facts, but doesn't say where he got them. There is no index and the only footnotes relate to resources written by him or some other people's speeches. Most of us read the book with a computer on our laps or in our hands. We did the research he should have done. And maybe if he had done it right, we would not have been as beholden to Wikipedia. And he's disingenuous. People he can't stand are always good people, but wrong. He had great hope for Obama, but lost it in one day. I had great hopes for Bush, but gave him a lot of chances before I gave up completely. After all, whoever is President is responsible for all of us. Right? If he succeeds we all benefit. Right?

Anyway, going to that group made me more aware of the man. Cain wants him in his cabinet. DeMint's name is in the news every day. I hope that all changes soon. Or at least by this time next year.