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Stumpage Reports
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Wednesday, December 11, 2002 :::
The font of creativity seems to have dried up. Just finishing papers and preparing for a final, I have less of a life than usual.
I wonder who got to my site through typing the words "gluteal crack" into the aol search engine.
In lieu of me actually having anything to say, an extended Quote of the Day. It may be a bit more than you all want to wade through and might be a tad self-indulgent. Hell, this whole blog thing is kind of self-indulgent. This is author David M. Potter describing the debates that led to the Compromise of 1850. The book is called The Impending Crisis, and I wish I could write like this. Actually, I wish anybody could write like this...
The story of these deliberations, and of the great debate which ran through them, has become one of the classic and inevitable set pieces in American historical writing. The gravity of the crisis, the uncertainty as to the outcome, and the brilliant effects of oratory in the grand manner all combined to create scenes of stunning dramatic effect. The stage was the Old Senate Chamber. The theme was a heroic one -- the preservation of the Union...Here, for the last time together, appeared a truimvirate of old men, relics of a golden age, who still towered like giants above the creatures of a later time: Webster, the kind of senator that Richard Wagner might have created at the height of his powers; Calhoun, the most majestic champion of error since Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost; and Clay, the old Conciliator, who had already saved the Union twice and now came out of retirement to save it with his silver voice and his master touch once again before he died...Calhoun stood visibly in the shadow of death and spoke audibly in a voice from beyond the grave; they would bury him before they voted. The Jove-like Webster never seemed greater than when he launched into his classic speech of the seventh of March: "Mr. President, I wish to speak today not as a Massachusetts man, not as a Northern man, but as an American...I speak today for the preservation of the Union. Hear me for my cause."
::: posted by tom at 9:03 PM
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