Why didn’t I think of that?

NewMexiKen’s grand nephew, The Bandit, is six today. He is quite insightful beyond his years however, as this conversation with his mother about the Tooth Fairy shows — Why didn’t I think of that? | The Quill Sisters.

Joe Posnanski has a “little essay on getting old” that any adult who is older today than they were yesterday should read — Joe Blogs: The Captain and Denial. It has a sports framework but tells universal truths and Joe is always good.

I know personally that I still feel like 35, but my body can’t keep up.

The Atlantic Wire has been running a feature “asking various people who seem well-informed to describe their media diets.” Today it is Jennifer Egan, who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. Jennifer Egan: What I Read – The Atlantic Wire.

For more Media Diets: Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Glassner, Joe Weisenthal, Andrea Mitchell, Anna Holmes, Eric Schmidt, Nick Denton, David Brooks, Andrew Breitbart, Gary Shteyngart, Tom McGeveran, Megan McCarthy, Bret Stephens, Joseph Epstein, Dave Weigel, Christopher Hayes, Chris Anderson, Lewis Lapham, Reihan Salam, Peggy Noonan, Joe Randazzo, Jay Rosen, Neetzan Zimmerman, Clay Shirky, and many more here.

Today’s Photo

I know, this one is everywhere today, but it does sum it up nicely. Taken in Times Square by Michael Appleton for The New York Times.

The left is right

“A Hamilton College class and their public policy professor analyzed the predicts of 26 pundits — including Sunday morning TV talkers — and used a scale of 1 to 5 to rate their accuracy. After Paul Krugman, the most accurate pundits were Maureen Dowd, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. ‘The Bad’ list includes Thomas Friedman, Clarence Page, and Bob Herbert.”

Poynter

Front page news

LBJ told a story about a man who stopped by a newspaper vendor every morning, paid for the paper, glanced at the front page and then threw the paper back on the stack and walked away. The vendor was happy to be able to sell the paper twice, but finally his curiosity got the better of him.

“Mister,” he asks, “how come you pay for the paper, but just look at the first page?”

“I’m looking for an obituary,” the man replies.

“But mister,” the vendor says, “the obituaries are inside the paper.”

“No,” the man says as he walks off, “the obituary for the son-of-a-bitch I’m looking for will be on the front page.”

And so it is.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

If it were your Harry, mother, or your Willie, that were going to be torn from you by a brutal trader, tomorrow morning,–if you had seen the man, and heard that the papers were signed and delivered, and you had only from twelve o’clock till morning to make good your escape,–how fast could you walk? How many miles could you make in those few brief hours, with the darling at your bosom,–the little sleepy head on your shoulder,–the small, soft arms trustingly holding on to your neck?

So wrote Harriet Beech Stowe in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, describing the scene as Eliza runs with her son, Harry. Reading this classic has somehow escaped me all these years, but I am enjoying it now, and can see — in the early going — why Lincoln reportedly said on meeting Mrs. Stowe, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.”

The book came out in 1852; proportionate to the population, it is one of the most popular novels ever.

And it’s fun and interesting to read.

U.S. Grant

UCLA historian Joan Waugh appreciates Ulysses Grant and thinks we should too — How the “Lost Cause” poisoned our history books. Worth your click.

Waugh praises Grant’s Memoirs and so do I. They are superb history, enjoyable and readable. (And free for Kindle.)

The essay includes this famous Grant quotation from the Memoirs, which sums up the American Civil War as well as any one sentence can:

“I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the down fall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”

Idle thought

You know that chart they have in many doctors’ offices with the one-to-ten scale for pain and the smiley face and the frowny face?

Well, I’m having some back problems the past few days — it’s a chronic condition with occasional acute flareups — and I just learned that the chart is graded on the curve AND I HAD NO PREVIOUS IDEA WHAT A 10 COULD BE.

I only hope I know now, because this is frowny face enough for me.