pail by comparison

I have no bucket list.

It isn't that I am a man with no sense of curiosity or adventure --the kind of guy who doesn't care what he does before his hall pass expires.

If you have read these pages for any time at all, you know I am not a person to pull an Achilles in my tent.  I enjoy getting out in the open.  If not on the edge.

My problem with bucket lists is that I am not a very consistent list tender.

Let me give you an exapmle.  Several years ago, I decided to read a biography of each of the 43 men who have served as President of The States.

The goal made sense.  After all, the life of each president presents a little slice of American history.  And I always discover some new dispute I knew little about.  Or something I knew about, but can now examine from a different perspective. 

Think of Spielberg's treatment of the Thirteenth Amendment in Lincoln -- culled from a new biography.  Old issue.  New vantage point.

That is the beauty of biographies.  No matter how well I know the subject, there is always some new treat to be discovered.  And, in the process of learning more about the country, I learn more about myself.

I am currently reading A. Scott Berg's Wilson.  The similarities between Wilson and the current president are impossible to ignore.  If Wilson bequeathed us anything, it was a set of foreign policy principles with which we still grapple.

When I finish off Wilson, I will have read 17 of the stated goal of 43.  I suspect I may have read biographies on at least two of the presidents on the list.  But, as I told you, I am a lousy list tender.

At the rate I am going, I should be finishing up number 43 just as we have elected our 50th president.  I doubt my hall pass has that much time remaining.

Here is the list.  (I am not anal enough to include the biographer names.)

George Washington	X
John Adams	X
Thomas Jefferson	X
James Madison	X
James Monroe	X
John Quincy Adams
Andrew Jackson	X
Martin Van Buren
William Henry Harrison
John Tyler
James K. Polk	X
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Abraham Lincoln	X
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses S. Grant	X
Rutherford B. Hayes
James A. Garfield	X
Chester Arthur
Grover Cleveland
Benjamin Harrison
William McKinley
Theodore Roosevelt	X
William Howard Taft
Woodrow Wilson
Warren G. Harding
Calvin Coolidge	X
Herbert Hoover
Franklin D. Roosevelt	X
Harry S Truman
Dwight D. Eisenhower	X
John F. Kennedy
Lyndon B. Johnson
Richard Nixon	X
Gerald Ford
Jimmy Carter
Ronald Reagan	X
George Bush
Bill Clinton
George W. Bush
Barack Obama