Playing The Worst Team In The NFL, The Cowboys Were Struggling, Until …. — November 19, 2023

Locator: 46104Rosalyn.

Cowboys lead 17 - 10 early in fourth quarter. Dallas will win but they don’t look like a championship team. [Three minutes later: color me "wrong"! Dallas just scored a touchdown (Pollard run) and then a "pick-six" and now lead 30 - 10.

Rosalyn Carter has died.

 

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The Book Page

The book:

• Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening, Douglas Brinkley, 2022.

I picked up this book earlier this year when I was out in Portland, Oregon. I had read the first 110 pages before I moved on to something else. Now that I am back in Sophia's Bat Cave where I can more easily find my books and read them at my leisure.

The sub-title (John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening) highlights the big personalities covered by the author. I was too young to really follow JFK's early political history and so all of this -- Cape Cod -- is particularly interesting. 

Rachel Carson: a chance to get to know her better. She's the "Rosa Parks" of environmental reawakening and I know not much about either except for the headlines and the memes.

I would assume, but do not know, Stewart Udall and Lyndon Johnson should get a lot more credit. That's where I will start -- with Stewart Udall. 

Stewart Udall: Secretary of the Interior -- 1961 - 1969.

Wow, overlaps with my entire public school education -- graduating from high school in 1969 I must have been in 5th grade in the spring of 1961. Of course, I was oblivious to all that. As an aside, John Kerry was a lieutenant in the US Navy, from 1966 to 1970. During this period, he served in Vietnam for only four months but earned one Silver Star, one Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. 

I have an "innate" / "natural" dislike of John Kerry, but his biography is fascinating. 

A bit of trivia:

His father was raised Catholic (John's paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants who converted to Catholicism) and his mother was Episcopalian. He was raised with an elder sister Margaret, a younger sister Diana, and a younger brother Cameron. The children were raised in their father's Catholic faith, and John served as an altar boy.

I would have passed over (pun intended) that bit about his Jewish grandparents had I not read The History of Jews In America. This was a very, very familiar story. This might be a good time to review the meanings of converso and marrano.

Wow, what a digression. All I can say is what I've said many, many times: never stop reading. 

Back to Stewart Udall. We begin with JFK and his first presidential campaign.