Monday, October 28, 2013

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

 

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