Yu Darvish 2

It was two weeks ago that I was riding the Brown Line back downtown and passing near Wrigley Field I came upon that poster for Marquee with Yu Darvish hurling in the background.  I had just looked up from an old paperback I was perusing about LBJ and that set me to thinking about Vietnam, the cataclysm of my youth, and then trailing through Ford and Carter, the gentle (in retrospect) decline of Reagan, the gentle incline of Slick Willie, and then bam, 911, and the mideast war, the cataclysm of my middle age, then that (in retrospect) little glimpse of hope with Obama to the cataclysm of my old age, Trump, and right on his cloven heels the cataclysm of my even older age,the corona.  I was impressed by an article about impeachment in the New Yorker and presented it to The Institute.  It was written by Jill LaPorte, and being impressed with the article I went out and bought a book she wrote about the whole country, from Columbus's tippy toe to the current cloven heel, though not as far as the corona.  Eight hundred pages.  It took awhile.  But I finished it up a couple days ago, and I have begun on that old paperback (LBJ And The American Dream, Doris Kearns, for those who wish to add it to their library).

I've read it before of course, right when it came out in 1976, Ford defeated, Jimmy Carter taking the stage for his uneventful reign, Vietnam fading into the background and the mideast beginning to take the stage with The Ayatollah,  I have been fascinated by LBJ ever since as the fellows of The Institute know well,

In the prologue Doris speaks of herself as a young woman, working in the domestic affairs section of the White House, but being anti-war (she was part of a group that wanted to dump Johnson for a more progressive candidate, knowing that this would split the dems and the reps, seeing this split, would dump Nixon to take advantage of it and nominate a more progressive candidate.  She ruefully adds that that was before she realized that political knowledge was more important than purity of motives) and having spoken out against the war had expected to be fired by Johnson, but instead he had taken a kind of liking to her, and years later after he had given up the presidency had invited her out to his ranch where he was sitting around waiting to die, in the hopes that she would help him write his autobiography.  The autobiography never happened, but the Doris Kearns book did.

After the intro the book starts with LBJ's boyhood in the dirt poor hill country of Texas.

But I haven't time for that now, I have to get packed up for this morning's train trip.  I'll have my book and my newspaper and the city sliding by in stately silence, all the while thinking deep thoughts which I will share you in the morrow. D