Seattle Is This Curious Liberal Island.

'dreams From My Father' Reveals More About Obama Than Is Usually Known About Political Leaders Until After They're Dead. Perhaps More Than It Intends, It Shows His Mind Working, In Real Time, Sentence By Sentence, In What Feels Like A Private Audience With The Reader.

Over Emphatic Negatives Always Suggest That What Is Being Denied May Be What Is Really Being Asserted.

One Of The Oddest Features Of Western Christianized Culture Is Its Ready Acceptance Of The Myth Of The Stable Family And The Happy Marriage. We Have Been Taught To Accept The Myth Not As An Heroic Ideal, Something Good, Brave, And Nearly Impossible To Fulfil, But As The Very Fiber Of Normal Life. Given Most Families And Most Marriages, The Belief Seems Admirable But Foolhardily.

Travel. It Was An Intransitive Verb. It Didn't Involve Any Destinations. It Was Going To The Going's Sake, To Be Anywhere But Where You Were, With Motion Itself As The Only Object.

Interstate Highways Dull The Reality Of Place And Distance Almost As Effectively As Jetliners Do: I Loathe Their Scary Monotony.