Fiat Lux

RIP JFK.

Don’t let it be forgot
that once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment
That was known as Camelot

Jacqueline Kennedy (as she was then called) said it best in the Life Magazine interview of her, the week after JFK was assassinated:

There’ll be great presidents again … but there’ll never be another Camelot again. Once, the more I read of history, the more bitter I got. For a while I thought history was something that bitter old men wrote. But then I realized history made Jack what he was. You must think of him as this little boy, sick so much of the time, reading in bed, reading history, reading the Knights of the Round Table, reading Marlborough. For Jack, history was full of heroes.

Alan Jay Lerner, who wrote the book and lyrics to Camelot and in whose autobiography I found the quote above, said that he was never able to watch a production of Camelot again afterwards.

On the weekend before Thanksgiving six years ago, I bought my first-ever car: a Saturn SL2. It’s a great car that has taken me safely through two nasty accidents, still gets 30+ MPGs on the highway, and is very reliable. I will probably drive it until it falls apart.

So to wake up to the news that the Spring Hill, TN plant where my Saturn was made is slated to be closed was a little sad. It’s been years since Saturn was the “different kind of car company” it started out as. These days, Saturns are made in a number of GM plants, have reverted to steel frames, and are generally Just Another GM Brand. When the day finally comes that I do get another car, it’s not likely it will be a Saturn.

I wish I’d been able to get to see the Spring Hill plant in its heyday.

Wow, I go out to study for a few hours and all sorts of stuff hits the fan in Israel.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will quit his ruling Likud ahead of snap elections and form a new centrist party.

[snip]

Sharon will tear apart the movement he helped found to break from the far-right Likud “rebels” who opposed his withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip and potentially free him to give up more land that Palestinians seek for a state.

But the 77-year-old’s gamble is possibly the biggest of a military and political career built on risk-taking and polls indicate it is uncertain he can turn the popularity of the Gaza pullout into electoral victory.

Dumping the hardliners and moving towards the center. Good move. I hope it succeeds.

It will be interesting to see how the tinfoil hat crew responds. So many of them are convinced that Sharon is some kind of evil puppet master; I wonder how they’ll spin this?