The sun is showing today in very small patches and strips, but the ground is still muddy and my laundry, which has been hanging on the line for two days already, is still damp. It's early February, and after weeks of bitter cold, the coldest of which seemed to take place during our trip to Krakow, it has warmed up into what must be the low 50s.

Whenever I become fed up with the state of things in America, the first impulse is always to wipe away and start from scratch, to expunge and bleach the temporary condition and head back to the start, when the system and the government and the people were fresh, before too much arbitrary sediment had accumulated (see Hawthorne's The Custom House). I doubt that is ever an impulse in Europe, except for those countries that are just reemerging after being subsumed under totalitarian states, and even then the urge is not to scratch everything and start from nothing. The urge is instead to return to how things would have been, how they had been before WWII, or WWI, or however far you have to go back in order to find the golden age. For the Czech Republic, it's between the wars, because that was their only time of independence, a little golden age between the Hapsburgs and the Germans, later to be handed over to the Soviets. For the Balkan states, you have to go further back, and even then you might not find the golden age, because for them it was the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs arguing and alternately conquering and reconquering them for centuries, and probably, if I knew my history a little better, I could say that it was the Romans before them.

Self-determination. Something that Americans rarely think about, because for almost the whole history of our nation, we have been self-determined. In fact, it is the act of declaring self-determination that we mark as our independence day, not anything to do with the actual fighting or winning of the war. We are, so we think, impervious to external attack and external influence, and we aim to keep it that way. Am I just hung up on the people vs. government issue? I keep coming back to that, have been for years. I keep getting angry at how those in control, whatever their party affiliation, embrace the noble lie, making sure the people have just enough to eat and just enough to hope for to keep them happy in their regular lives of eating and working and screwing and making babies and trying to retire. When things are too bleak there is revolution, or if not revolution, then unrest and political shakeups and uncertainty. This is not what we want. It is in the best interest of the politicians to make sure that times are calm and uneventful, that there are no crises. People react and vote you out of office when crises arise. From what I can tell, the political parties differ only in how much they want to make the people happy. For the Republicans (ignoring the rhetoric and looking just at their actions), business and war-making are the top priorities. For the Democrats, at least health care and job security make it somewhere on the list of priorities.

Maybe this is the wrong way to approach it. For the people who make the rules, it's not an issue of people vs. government. I'm looking at symptoms and trying to deduce the policies that produce them, which is only possible when every policy is single-minded and 100% effective. And, at least to some extent, I do understand the need for various noble lies. The truth is that we do need to spend a decent amount of money on the military and on national defense. The truth is that the world is somewhat Hobbesian, that in some ways it is a zero-sum game when it comes to international relations. The truth is that most of the citizens of this country cannot or do not want to spend their free time debating the merits of multilateralism versus unilateralism. So they watch reality TV and politicians appoint and reappoint each other to and from various boards of directors and take care of the messy details with which we do not want to concern ourselves. You get the government you deserve, I have heard said.

C. is talking more and more these days, and doing a good deal of researching as well, about aiming to go into translation in one way or another. She's been writing to translators and asking how they got started, what kind of education they see as essential, and so on. She's gotten a number of responses, and has I think gotten some good advice, both on the feasibility of the endeavor in general, and of the specifics that are necessary to make it happen.

One of the best schools for translation, says almost everyone who's responded to her email queries, is Georgetown in DC. It's convenient that my plans may take me there as well. While improbable that I'll make contacts in the liberal politics sector of DC while working for the country's biggest mortgage company, who knows what can happen. I would love to keep my eyes open for an opportunity like that. Just a chance to learn some things and occasionally work on my long term project of making liberal goals sound appealing to middle-of-the-road people, instead of just sounding like the rantings of the lunatic fringe. What's so lunatic fringe about a little health care and education? What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

I read an interesting article about George Bush in a magazine that our coworker Mike brought back for us from the States. The magazine was called Texas Monthly (and looked laughable at best) but had at least two interesting articles in it, both of which were written by apparently nonpartisan journalists about how the George Bush who had been governor of Texas had changed so drastically since assuming national power. There was a reference in there to his repealing the estate tax. Did I hear about this? Where was I? It is said to have happened before Sept. 11, 2001, which was when I was at SJC and oblivious to the goings-on in the outside world. It makes sense that I would have missed it. The article was right to point out that the estate tax served as one of the last lines of defense against the rise of an established aristocracy in the US.

I should be sitting down to read the last 50 or so student essays from last semester, but I just can't bring myself to return to the task of being a teacher. This break has been very nice, and I don't at all feel that my life is lacking a thing during the paid break from teaching. If I wasn't sure at the end of the semester, I am definitely sure now that I was not made to be a teacher. I am not looking forward to the return of daily classes and preparation, though I think a number of factors are cooperating, if not conspiring, to make this semester much more bearable than last. For one thing, I am teaching 3 different courses instead of 7. For another, I can from the beginning be putting to use the dos and don'ts I learned last semester. Lastly, I plan to assign only page-long-or-less writing assignments. It'll be doable, and not much more.

It's now 5:00 pm and I should go get dinner started (lox, brie, and roasted garlic on crackers--more of an appetizer than a meal, but we enjoy it immensely) so we can go see 21 Grams, which is playing as part of the film fest in town this week.