Presidents Day is past, and America did not do an especially good job of honoring its presidents. The Chester A. Arthur 19 cent piece, for example, remains but a twinkle in the eye of the caretakers of the Chester A. Arthur Historic Site and Birthplace. The working men of this land, of whom President Arthur was frequently aware, continue to be forced to pay for purchases that cost $1.19, such as a bottle of soda, with the laborious combination of a dollar bill, a dime, a nickel, and four pennies - and that's the best case scenario. (God forbid the dollar bill be replaced by four quarters.) Where is the Ronald Reagan Negative One Dollar Bill? We owe the American worker a better way to tell his fellow man that his fellow man owes him a dollar. Slapping down a Ronnie will do just that. Above all else, when will the new national justification, "That man tried to kill my daddy", take its rightful place on our currency? If we don't love our presidents, they will go away, like the dolphins in that one book - or perhaps it was the whales, and perhaps it was actually Star Trek IV.
As for the upcoming election, I am throwing my initial support behind Rep. Dennis Kucinich. He is not a handsome man, but he is an eloquent and intelligent speaker, and I think that if being allowed to call him "President Kooch" were a condition of his being elected, he would go along with it. Also, he went so far as to include links to his favorite bowling alleys on his congressional website. How could the nation go wrong? How, indeed.
(interview) Interviewer: Your characters don't seem to have personalities.
Burrows: This was a novel of ideas. I didn't go into personal relationships.
Interviewer: You have people speaking in paragraphs, using words like "indeed" in casual conversation. After your protagonist, Joan Milton, watches the planes hitting the World Trade Center, she turns away in horror and says to her friends: "What an almost unbelievable tragedy! It will take a great resolve to overcome this terrible blow." My question is, have you ever heard real human beings speak?
Burrows: This is the way I speak. In my circle, I am regarded as a fascinating conversationalist. I have a dinner group that has been meeting for maybe 30 years. I admit that may be a little limiting.
Interviewer: Your only black character, who is named Jesse Jackson Jones, expresses his concurrence by saying, "Right on!"
