lundi, octobre 15, 2007

The Righteous Sisters

Glancing back briefly at my recent 'blog posts, I am struck by their rather pious tone. It might sound to the reader like I couldn't figure out why those ignoramuses running Washington or moms driving their Explorers to pick up their kids from Little League just didn't get it-when "it" is so incredibly clear.

Blame it on my expensive prep school education, which taught us intelligence would rule the world. Blame it on my idealism, still buried under the skepticism of a writer who seeks to describe the eccentric and the unconventional so that the "normal" ones will somewhere find themselves. Blame it on the full moon.

But, dear readers, if I told you that that I don't have a slight streak of elitism and arrogance running through my personality, I would be lying like a rug. And it is little excuse that the Savanarolas in the Bush adminstration have evoked my not so latent hostility with such blundering skill.

I remember my beloved grandmother and her sister, signing petitions to stop the Vietnam War, feeding us cucumber sandwiches on peace marches, earnestly going to anti-nuke meetings-and somehow staying free of the acid of self-rightousness.

I wonder how Grandma Sarah and Aunt Jennie managed to convey certainty without pride, humanitarian passion with humor, vision without surrender. I wish I had more of what they had-or is that the fate of the descendants of extraordinary men and women-to parse what is lacking more than to praise what is there?

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