Entry 12:

Dear Che,

Michael Bolton was thankfully not in my office, merely in the product of my office ("The Reliable Source"). But I feel peevish because the pain is self-inflicted. Often when I read a song title I can't get the tune out of my head, especially when I particularly hate the song. So in my moments of mental drift, on this glorious day, I have several times found myself humming "Love is a Wonderful Thing." (You know what this feels like; often I catch you singing that miserable Backstreet Boys song, you know which one). One time it was "Rock and Roll Ain't Noise Pollution" (or "Is Noise Pollution," can't remember). Anyway, it lasted a whole week.  It was torture. (This is the opening of some Anne Tyler novel, Breathing Lessons I think, where the wife can read the husband's thoughts because he unwittingly hums his subconscious--Vivaldi if he's happy, Wagner if he's not, etc. I never finished it, but I think they end up divorced.)

Now, on to the Rumsey Band. Although you are too modest to point this out, I will note that your gambling obsession has produced a wonderful piece in this week's New Republic about the very subject you discuss, gambling in California, as controlled by a tiny tribe strangely called the Rumsey band. I have mixed emotions about these guys. Generally, these gambling types are petty swindlers, like the band of crooks in South Carolina. But the California story involves a bunch of ex-migrant workers who transform their lives. Once the state's poorest dependents, they are now a political force, as you point out. Where are the villains here?

About Vermont, I have only good thoughts, as it's the blissful state where (as you know, I pause for the reader) we were married and visit often still. Never a lovelier state there was, and never a lovelier people. So I choose to disregard the ugly quotes from Vermonters in today's Times, quotes like "something as ill and as foul as same-sex partners." Can you imagine any of your farmer neighbors up there saying such a thing? Of course not.

And of course, I romanticize. I think these town-hall meetings are the proving ground for the Alan Wolfe theory. Vermonters, like Americans, are infinitely tolerant and unwilling to judge their neighbors. Unless their neighbors are gay.        

I have a guess on what Al Gore meant by "unstable." My guess is he was referring to the guy who has left messages on my voice mail 20 times today, complaining about some story I once wrote on the pope ("the agent of Satan" he calls him) and offering me impromptu lessons on the Inquisition. Must change beats.

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