Monday 08/25/2025
Went for the standard walk starting early, out the door by 7:30. Joanne had the car until noon so to kill time I started thinking about something from a recent podcast. Joanne had me listen to it, an interview with David Brooks, NYT columnist, in which he said this,
I would like to see Americans who oppose Donald Trump create a mass movement in the way Israelis created a mass movement against Netanyahu’s judicial reform, in the way Filipinos created a mass movement against Marcos. I think that would have an enormously positive effect on the body politics. For those of us who oppose Donald Trump to have to articulate our principles, to organize, to create a civic structure across class, a civic structure to come up with an alternative vision that’s better than the elites who betrayed you.
I think that would lead to American renewal. That does not seem to be happening because the leaders of our major institutions, whether it’s corporations, universities, and so on, are basically laying low.
I wasn’t familiar at all with the Israeli incident, and could barely remember the Philipine “People Power” rebellion of 1986, so I started reading about both. Interesting stuff. Bears more thought. In both cases, the population rose up in a non-violent way when an asshole dictator over-reached.
Joanne texted that she was back about 11:30, so I came down and got Fred and went off to FOPAL. Only 3 boxes of donations, a nice change, and three “high-value” books. One was A Programming Language by Kenneth Iverson, used copies of which are currently going for over $120 on Amazon. Funny thing, I used to work on APL (Iverson’s computer language) back in the stone ages.
Afterward I put gas in Fred, and then I didn’t like how dusty he was so I got him washed. Then, Joanne had picked up new floor mats from the Subaru dealer, they were lying in the back, so I installed them and disposed of the old ones.
Worked on some very frustrating and confusing stuff related to the upcoming Broadway concert. I meet with Jerry tomorrow to try to make sense of the videos, and who’s doing what.
Codgerville 