Meri's Musings

This weekend I took an excursion to the dry side of the state for a little family time. It's way different there,  both in geography, climate and culture. Besides growing lots of apples and some pretty fine wines, the region produces a bumper crop of Republicans. (On the wet side of the state, we tend to have a more moderate climate and grow more Democrats and Independents.) Notwithstanding the dry side's affinity for R's, there's a little architectural oddity alongside I-82 that makes allusion to one of the dark moments in a Republican presidency almost a century ago. Remember Warren Harding and the Teapot Dome Scandal? In case you've forgotten that period of American history, there was some hanky-panky in the selling of leases of federal oil reserves in Wyoming. It rocked the Harding presidency and landed  the Interior Secretary Albert Fall in prison. Talk about a fall guy. So architect Jack Ainsworth designed this dandy little gas station that was built ...

It's been out a few months, but it recently opened at our local independent non-profit film venue. Given that I'm a history junkie,  it was time for a field trip to see this Academy Award-nominated documentary. This film about Daniel Ellsberg  and the infamous Pentagon Papers is a fascinating look at American political and legal history arising out of one man's change of mind and heart and his crisis of conscience.  What do you find so compelling a principle that you'd risk career and prison? For most people, the answer is nothing.