Monthly Archives October 2024

A note from “Kamala Harris for President” among my emails this morning, under the subject line: “Is there ANYTHING we can say?”

“We are writing to ask—humbly—if there is anything at all we can say to convince you to make one more contribution to Kamala Harris’s campaign before our final FEC deadline ends. Please give us a chance to try: What if we told you that as you read this, we are getting outspent and attacked in several key battleground states? What if we told you that if we were able to increase our budget by just a bit, we’d be able to reach and turn out a lot of persuadable Democrats who don’t vote frequently—and that that could be the margin of victory?”

Another a couple of hours later from Hakeem Jeffries:

“I need to pull back the curtain and explain where things stand right now: There are 33 Red-to-Blue seats that Democrats are poised to win in November. Let me be clear:

– These 33 dist...

I don’t remember the exact moment I discovered Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” but I do remember just wearing that record out after landing upon it in my early 20s. I then kept the album it was on close by my turntable through that tumultuous decade of struggles and thrashings for identity, vocation, love, the meaning of life and my place in the world.

Kristofferson died this week at a much older age (88) than he had anticipated reaching in his younger years. He was a gifted man in multiple ways—artistic, intellectual, physical—but none of those gifts allowed for escape from the struggle to discover and give form to his life’s work.

In his case, that struggle included climbing out from under a domineering father who leaned on him to pursue a military career and later on, at least an equally domineering drinking habit that nearly derailed his very life through the 1960s-’70s.

Kristoff...