A City On A Hill

Super Giant Killer and I have been reading this eleven volume set of American history at bedtime for the last few weeks. We're almost finished with volume 2 which is about the establishment of the English colonies. To be honest I'm surprised she's stuck with it because she tends to be more science-oriented and will read about astronomy, geology, or geography before anything else. This is the only thing she could think of when asked what she wanted for her birthday:

Anyway, we got to the section on New England and she was really interested in that. As we read she kept making these deep sighs and saying, "Again with the religion!" Of course, you never can tell what exactly kids will make of something (Bill Cosby and Art Linkletter built careers on this, and I guess Linklater, too). So a few days ago, she gets on her mom's email account at work and fires this off to our pastor:


"Hey,Preacher! My Dad and I were reading about the Puritans and Quakers. Do you know anything about them? Well, a man had been away for 6 yearsand he kissed his wife in church- AND THEY THREW HIM OUT IN THE STOCKYARDS!!!!!!!! Whoa,they were REALLY religous! Also, a babysitter namedTituba made three girls be witches! Really true!!!!!! That's em'Puritans for 'ya!!!"

Ah, how little has changed since then... or as Ségolène would say, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

Pour an Parachutage, l'Atterrissage Est Réussi

Well, this Sunday is the big day. No, not the 118th anniversary of the Opening of the Unasssigned Lands to Settlement. Not Earth Day. No, it's the Élection Présidentielle Française de 2007. Since you're wondering why I'm so interested in the French elections, I'll just come out and admit that I have a huge crush on Ségolène Royal.

I'm not exactly sure how or when exactly I developed this crush, and I've tried reconstructing it, but hell, it really doesn't matter. It was probably the name that first hooked me. I love several French female names that Americans don't hear alot. Around here, it seems you can add "ette" on to any male name and voila! shee ees Franch. You'll occasionally see an "enne" or two. The ones I like are Clotilde, Sandrine, Blandine, and now, of course, Ségolène. Plus, I love the irony that a Royal could be president of France.

Then, yes, OK, I will admit I think she's beautiful and graceful and charming and I shouldn't objectify and all that. But a) I'm not voting in this election, 2) let's face it, it's not everyday you see a beautiful socialist (ever seen Emma Goldman? ok, she was technically an anarchist) and d) I'm new at this; I've never had a crush on a presidential candidate before.

And then, she's got a sexy bio as well. Born in Senegal to colonial parents, she later sued her father for not adequately supporting his family, especially his daughters (it's more complicated than that, but shows how tough she is).

Today's polls say it's too close to call. I really hope she wins, though. What I'd be interested to see is if her election would have an impact on ours. It might actually help Hillary if people saw that the French, who can be even more chauvinistic than we are, would accept a woman president. Although, if that happened our countries' relations could get even worse since Ségolène recently approached Hillary and suggested they work together and she got the brush off.

I just hope Lisa Loeb takes it well when she finds out about my crush on Ségolène.

Speaking of France, they have an official national logo. I wish we had one of those. The French one looks really cool. Although, it probably wouldn't work because we don't have a good analog to Marianne (the eagle just doesn't do it for me and Lady Liberty is just a copy of her) and somehow e pluribus unum doesn't rally nearly as well as "liberté, égalité, fraternité". We're so sectarian and politically correct, we could never pull it off.