there's no business like --

If I had been in charge of World War Two, the Allies would still be waiting to invade Normandy.


I mentioned in when is a sunset a sunrise?, at the end of October, that I was considering changing a small part of my moving to Mexico plan.


You all know the basics. I am planning on retiring around the end of March and heading to Melaque to take up residence in late April or early May.


The outline is the same, but I am thinking of altering a very important detail. I may not retire. Or, more accurately, I may retire, but take part of my job with me.


If I were to forgo retirement, I would be working on one large project during 2009. The project still needs to be done, and most of it could be completed through telecommuting (a really ugly word).


I have not presented my full plan to my boss -- yet. And the details may not work out. But I thought it would be an interesting transition from working full-time to working part-time while living in Mexico.


Of course, by next month, I will have modified my plan -- again. At this rate, we should be in Normandy somewhere around the summer of 2022.

between a rock wall and a hard place

This weekend I mentioned in mistemper'd weapons that I have been spending far too much time dressing up a rock garden that I will never see mature. I managed to let cotoneaster run amok and shade out most of my rock garden plants.


Looking at my alternatives, I took the William Tecumseh Sherman approach, and marched through the full wall with a scorched earth policy. The cotoneaster had risen in rebellion; it fell in ignominy.


The top photograph shows the rebellion in full force. I rather liked its "natural" garden look -- until I saw its effect.


The photograph below shows today's battlefield. Please note that even the sun shines on my work.

I need to add some compost to what remains of the soil. Then I will plant some new bedding plants that will do well in the wall. My goal is to pick a limited number of colors that will bloom from late winter to late fall.


I am not certain why I have decided to play farmer in the dell. Maybe I have spent enough time on Jonna's web site listening to her plant choices that I just needed to get back in the game.


On Saturday I will take a trip to the nursery to see if I can find just the right mixture of tender plants to survive the winter. And then the garden will be on its own -- to be raised by wolves.

driving my lincoln

I saw it on the book table at Costco -- and nearly walked on by. Another Lincoln book? What more is there to say about the man?


But James McPherson hooked me and reeled me in with his claim that his was an entirely original approach: to view Lincoln's presidency solely through the prism of his role as commander-in-chief during the Civil War.


It sounded novel. Thus I bought and read Tried by War over this last weekend.


If I had given this impulse buy some serious thought, I would have realized that almost every biography of Lincoln deals with Lincoln as the commander of generals. The trick would have been if McPherson, a noted Lincoln scholar, had produced some original approach to understanding Lincoln. You will find none of that in this very small book. Every tale, every point appears in other Lincoln biographies.


Lincoln came to the White House with the reputation of a peacenik -- one of history's great ironies. Even though he had spent a few months as a soldier in the Black Hawk War in 1832, he was best known as an opponent of the war with Mexico when he was in Congress. When the Civil War began, he crammed to learn military policy, strategy, and tactics, and learned along with his generals.


In doing so, he invented the notion of an activist (some would say imperial) presidency where the executive branch became supreme over the other branches in the prosecution of the civil war and its termination of civil liberties -- for the betterment of other liberties.


This is where McPherson disappointed me. He is a very good writer, and he tells this tale well. But, the book is not so much a critique of Lincoln as commander-in-chief as it is a hagiography of America's greatest commander. Sadly, McPherson simply wants us to believe, and that leaves Lincoln sounding less like a mortal learning his lessons well, and more like a flawed demigod exiled from Olympus.


I give McPherson credit for not indulging in the anachronistic practice of continually trying to drag contemporary affairs into the context of 19th century history. And McPherson does a good job of acting as a professional historian almost all the way through the book.


Here is an example that would have caused most writers to slip into hackery.


In his role as commander of the Department of Ohio, General Burnside issued an order, based on a Lincoln executive order, that anyone who committed express or implied treason would be arrested and tried by a military tribunal.


Clement Vallandingham, an anti-war Democrat running for the Ohio governorship, put the order to the test challenging the constitutionality of the war, emancipation, the draft, suspension of habeas corpus, and Lincoln's tyranny. Burside arrested him, and a military court convicted him, and sentenced him to prison for the remainder of the war.


McPherson dispassionately described how Democrat leaders in Ohio and New York characterized Burnside's -- and Lincoln's actions:

Such action was "a palpable violation of the Constitution," which "abrogates the right of the people to assemble and discuss the affairs of government, the liberty of speech and of the press, the right of trial by jury and the privilege of habeas corpus . . . aimed at the rights of every citizen of the North."

A hack, of course, would have turned the traitorous Vallandingham into a noble civil libertarian campaigning against foreign invasions -- merely to score points with a modern reader.


But, having dodged that bullet, McPherson tacks on an entirely unnecessary epilogue with starts very professionally:

Whether these violations of civil liberties constitute a negative legacy that offsets the positive legacy of the Union and emancipation is a question everyone must decide for himself or herself.

And then trails off into anachronistic irrelevance:

The crisis of the 1860s represented a far greater threat to the survival of the United States than did World War I, World War II, Communism in the 1950s, or terrorism today. Yet compared with the draconian enforcement of espionage and sedition laws in World War I, the internment of more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans in the 1940s, McCarthyism in the 1950s, or the National Security State of our own time, the infringement of civil liberties from 1861 to 1865 seems mild indeed.

So much for professional detachment.

If you love Lincoln without blemishes, are willing to read anything published about the Civil War, or simply do not know anything about Lincoln as commander-in-chief, buy the book.


However, if you have something better to do with your life, don't bother.


I am happy to have read it, but it now goes into my pile of books that will find a new life at the used book store.

col. cotton's lonely parody band

The house is aswing with music tonight. Not the type of music you would expect for a late middle-aged guy. No smoke-infused tones of Miles Davis or Stan Getz.


Billy Joel sings of his Uptown Girl -- you know, the one who did not last for The Longest Time. Anne Murray glides through Snow Bird. John Travolta misses Sandy.


What human purpose -- other than some madly-secret cult -- could bring together that lot?


Well, Steve is on another song parody kick. It happens every time he sees the Capitol Steps.


But this time I am actually working on a commission -- of sorts. Our Attorney General is retiring. I worked with him for years on his ethics committee. This year, some of us committee alumni are going to roast him. Thus, the 60s Beatles picture -- and the reason why "When I'm Sixty-Four" is blazing through my speakers.


Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know I told you all that I had hung up my parody hat. But I lied. I would share the lyrics with you, but they suffer from being both hackneyed and half-baked.


Besides, like most roastings, they really do not make much sense unless you know the roastee.


So, Mr. AG. Be patient while I attempt to light this match under your goose.

a tear for fall

I was flipping through my photographs taken during my dog walks this weekend. I particularly liked this one.


One of the last leaves on my Boston ivy during a brief bit of sunlight. Nice textures and color. And a bit of wistfulness.

dogging my steps

I received a few email recently asking how Professor Jiggs is doing. This picture should answer that question. I took it yesterday on our walk between Oregon autumn downpours. He is begging me to allow him to cross the street to extend our walk.


September and October were not very good months for him. He would have good days, and then the next he would spend almost a minute trying to struggle to his feet. I was almost convinced that the time had come to consider putting him down.


But he had no trouble eating. He was alert and with no obvious signs of pain. My one concern was that he showed little interest in going for his morning and evening walks.


He recovered from his lethargia after his steroid injections. This month, he is once again his old -- but aging -- self.


I have given up planning on whether he will be able to accompany me to Mexico. For the moment, I will simply enjoy the pleasure of his company.

mistemper'd weapons

Now and then I hear a story about someone who, when told he has six months to live, goes out and does something prosaic -- like roofing his house.


I have less than six months to live -- in my house in Salem. But you would think I was siege-proofing the place.


I have never been much of a gardener. When I took possession of the property, it had a well-planned rock garden that would start blooming in January and end in November with waves of color.


It took very little maintenance. And that was convenient because I had little interest in investing my time in flowers -- especially when everything seemed to be taking care of itself.


Well, this is life. Nothing takes care of itself. Nature has its eventual way. I first noticed that the California poppies had disappeared. Then whole areas stopped blooming. If I had paid attention, I would have noticed that the cotoneaster had spread from a small ground cover to a tangled thicket. As a result, most of the smaller plants had died from lack of sunlight.


Now that I have decided to put my house in the hands of a sitter, I could simply ignore the jungle on E Street. That is not going to happen. Seeing a challenge, I need to intervene with my surge forces.


I have managed to clear out most of the ground portion of the cotoneaster. I am now ready to go in search of bedding plants.


As I was finishing up my trimming, a friend showed up. We started chatting. First, he laughed that this was the first time he had seen me working in the rock garden. He then asked what I felt about the election. He was elated. A life-long Democrat, he had been a big supporter of Gore and Kerry. But, like so many, his support for Obama was ecstatic.


He then surprised me when he said he was a little disgusted with his fellow Democrats for their continued attacks on "Sarah." I wasn't sure who he meant, and then I realized he was defending Governor Palin. He said he had just heard Barney Frank say that she was more tolerant of him than he is of her.


As he talked, I realized he was making the same argument that Peggy Noonan made before the election and has made after the election. We need to start treating one another civilly. As a nation, we voted for a candidate who offered hope and change. We now need to start behaving toward one another in that same fashion.


I have every hope that we can. If we can get the thickets of cotoneaster out of the way, we can get to work on the bedding plants.


Will we have common goals? Certainly. Will we disagree on how to get there? You betcha. But we can do it all realizing that we are one nation. And with God's forbearance, we may even do it as if we were cousins -- instead of the Montagues and Capulets.