Daily Archives: November 2, 2014

Running

The phone keeps ringing off the hook. The mail box is stuffed to the limit. Lawn signs have popped up like weeds. TV commercials tout candidates like cars, all shiny and powerful, except they also describe the competition as total wrecks. It must be election season! This may not be a Presidential election year but it’s one of the hottest, with an unusual number of Congressional and Gubernatorial seats in contentious races. It’s hard to turn off the incessant intrusion into our daily lives. What a perfect time to park in a quiet corner with a good book – about politics. You’ll see that the more things change the more they stay the same. Here are some recommended novel and non-fiction reads:
How to Win an Election – Quintus Tullius Cicero (64 B.C.)
The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli (1532)
Democracy – Henry Adams (1880)
The Last Hurrah – Edwin O’Connor (1956)
All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren (1990)
Washington, D.C.: A Novel – Gore Vidal (2000)
The Boys on the Bus – Thomas Crouse (2003)

Don’t forget to cast your ballot. Your vote is as important as everyone else’s – unless you don’t vote; then your vote is less important than everyone else’s. Your absence simply gives your power to the opposition who does vote. If you don’t like any of this cycle’s candidates, vote for the least objectionable. Then, begin the day after the election to find and support one you do want to vote for in the next cycle.

Quotable

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it. – Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War

The ballot is stronger than the bullet. – Abraham Lincoln

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues. – Thomas L. Friedman

Recommended

If you’re going to be in Los Angeles November 13th-15th, you have a last chance to join in the Centennial celebrations honoring movie legend Tyrone Power. Since May, celebrations have occurred around the U.S. to great response. For more information about events (and some photos of me with the Power children in Ohio), visit Movie Memories Foundation.

Collector’s quality limited first editions of Romina Power’s moving memoir/biography, Searching for My Father, Tyrone Power are now available. Please send an email to request a special order while quantities last. In film historian Matthew Hoffman’s book review of this beautifully produced book, he says it is “… a work of love that his fans will certainly love. Considering that Power himself was an avid collector of first edition books, this was a nice homage to him. Though it took years to see the light of day in this country, I can tell you that it’s been worth the wait. This is a beautifully written and compiled book for the global fans of Tyrone Power.”

This week’s Booked webcast re-broadcast (starting November 3rd) will take your mind off politics as I talk with Shobha Sharma, editor of Bridges and Borders, a thoughtful anthology by women from various backgrounds, experiences and views of our world. You can catch the show on U-Stream and in the archives of the Booked website.