What I Did For Money

A CAREER – OF SORTS

Turning 65 is long behind me. For me, there was no gold watch, institutional eulogies, or golden handshakes. Fact is, I never lasted longer than 4 years in any job. I think the Minnesota Preference test imploded when I took it. Freedom 55? Hah!

But this is not a look-at-poor-little-old me story. A wealthy retirement may not be mine but look what is: Health (5 years clear of throat cancer), love (wife and friend of 43 years, 2 wonderful daughters, 3 challenging grandchildren), friendship (a wide circle that has lasted with humor, goodwill, and honesty for over 40 years), and the hope and joy that comes with every new day.

And what a ride that ‘career’ was. Maybe I should have skipped reading Hemingway’s ‘In Our Time’ at a young age because my working years were spent diving into every new venture and task that came my way (save anything involving heights or power drinking). For whatever reason jobs were either discarded because I was bored, had developed a strong antipathy toward them, or economic factors took the job out from under me. I was not a so-called unskilled worker - although I believe that description is one that should apply to effort and not education or training - with high school, university, and a professional accounting program under my belt– but none of it led me to the stability of an extended career at any one place or organization. In fairness, too, it all might have been a lot rockier if it weren't for my long-suffering and understanding wife who took me as I was.

So for any of you young people who might be despairing of long-term damage resulting from ‘career indecision’ and a wretched labor market, listen up. Commit to enjoying the voyage you’re setting upon, try your best, don’t be afraid of hard work, laugh at idiots and the peddlers of meanness, keep your honesty, remember your bias, and trust yourself to muddle through, no matter what. Giving up may be the biggest sin but quitting when you have had enough seems only sensible to me. Just don’t quit because you don’t think you have what it takes or the job is still unfinished. Unhappy with your resume? Try this one on for size:

1. Washed windshields at the drive-in theatre
2. scraped ice in between periods of hockey games
3. washed pots and pans in an army hospital
4. poured sidewalks with a wheelbarrow
5. built sidewalks with treated fir and a hammer
6. operated a steam roller
7. pruned lettuce for a grocery store
8. drove a delivery VW van
9. cleaned up puke in a reserve army officers quarters
10. cut grass with a scythe
11. drove an ambulance for the infantry
12. set type for a small printing company
13. delivered 80 lb. cement bags to oil service rigs
14. made caramel popcorn in a candy store
15. wrote seven 500-word essays in three weeks on the same subject (Christian culture) for bonehead English students
16. drove a moving van for 3 summers
17. unloaded bananas at a rail depot
18. washed cars at a car wash
19. worked as a teller in a bank
20. did the accounting for an insurance company
21. sold insurance, door-to-door for another company (topping my list of

odious jobs)

22. handled accounts payable for a oil well drilling company
23. worked as a partner in a camp construction firm (success story! Sold company for huge sum, became vice-president at age 29, was fired at 30 – Peter Principle lived!)
24. sold op-ed articles to newspapers
25. helped a large community spend their community chest monies
26. wrote and delivered political satire commentary for national radio
27. helped another camp construction company get back to profitability
28. acted as leasing agent and building manager for office tower (#2 on the odious list)
29. helped promote rock concerts
30. became part-owner of a dance hall
31. collected rents from a slum apartment (#3 with the added fillip of extreme danger)
32. punched meal tickets and managed student workers at a university mess hall
33. mopped floors and cleaned toilets
34. evaluated real estate portfolios for wealthy ‘players’
35. helped set up a high-end restaurant
36. acted as lawyer for a warm and wonderful Ukrainian clan who loathed and mistrusted lawyers (go figure)
37. did business plans for a patented golf accessory, a summer resort horse rental business, a big-game outfitter, an outdoors writer who wrote for the Nordic market; a rancher, a day-care, a service station, a janitorial firm, a landscaper, an office supply firm, a wholesaler, a trucking company, and a roofer
38. drove used cars to new markets
39. wrote a book of short stories, two novels, and a memoir of life in Dubai.
40. wrote sales and accounting manuals;
41. managed an accounting software company (#4 on odious list, only because senior partner who hired and fired me was seriously unhinged; company had great product and might still be around if it had listened to me (had to get that in – I was good at turnarounds)
42. computerized and modernized the systems of an ngo AND helped bring it out of debt. (An interesting postscript to two of my turnarounds was that upon reaching profitability the principals immediately began to ignore my advice, forged ahead blindly in new directions and promptly went back into debt. Sigh …)
43. helped a marketing firm manage its funds
44. sat on the boards of three service agencies
45. delivered milk in -30 temperatures
46. bought and sold a property in reverse order (you had to be there and, no, I am not proud of it)
47. worked a turnaround for a real estate company
48. speculated in the stock market
49. became a teacher of cost accounting at a large technical college
50. later a teacher of computers, math, and business at an Arab Men's College
51. worked as an oiler on a backhoe on a pipeline (after working with a pick and shovel smoothing out the pipeline ditches)
52. helped the elderly keep their money safe from money marauders (read large investment firms)
53. carried 15 thousand dollars in cash (small bills) 20 miles through a city in the back seat of my '59 Beetle to pay an army regiment its bi-weekly pay
54. with 2 helpers and a skid, moved upright pianos down steep hillside
55. peeled potatoes in an army kitchen
56. speculated in rural land deals during oil booms
57. bought property in Scottsdale sight (site?) unseen
58. worked (briefly) in a tire shop
59. rented mobile offices to oil companies
60. ran a one-night casino (quite illegal and, as it turned out, unprofitable – we couldn’t spot cheaters fast enough) for drunken construction workers
61. wrote and directed a television commercial (the principal said he was happy and that it helped sales – I seriously doubt it)
62. wrote puff pieces for trade magazines (hell hath no fury like a pea-brained business owner who’s purchased a full page ad and wonders why you can’t be more effusive about his godawful product)
63. shoveled grain
64. mopped floors at a law school
65. sat in a private dining room of a downtown hotel and, over wine and dinner, accepted an envelope containing one hundred thousand dollars in share certificates (at the time, a 3-bedroom bungalow in a new district ran under $30,000
66. sold beer to freshmen
67. taught accounting over the phone (the first distance learning university)
68. lectured seniors graduating from a college on careers in manufacturing
69. helped build service rigs (#1 in job satisfaction; when I arrived, the small plant couldn’t produce one rig a month and was losing money; in a year we were building 3 a month and making fistfuls. The secret? Pay

good people well and keep them in the loop)

70. tried out for Jeopardy (passed the q and a, failed the charisma test)
71. became a tax consultant
72. worked as campaign manager in civic/provincial elections (thankless and a discouraging encounter with venality)
73. delivered truckloads of potato chips from railspur to warehouse (Nice work if you can get it)
74. shot at a gopher with a sub-machine gun to keep my boss, an army lieutenant, happy. (75 rounds, 9mm, 25 yards – missed)
75. worked as a short-order cook
76. sold travel trailers

I never worked for a government.

Keep smiling! Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Robert Alan Davidson

Naked Leadership

Naked Leadership

Remember the fable about the king wearing no clothes? If you don’t, it told of a vain king who believed he was wearing the most opulent outfits when, in fact, he was wearing nothing. He would parade around his kingdom in the altogether and his subjects, afraid to tell him the truth, would applaud his choice of garments while chuckling behind his back.

For some reason, I see this fable having relevance to today’s political/economic environment in the U.S. Those who proclaim to be leaders in these fields are presumably proud of their achievements and success and are generally lionized by an ever-accommodating media. But . . . . Don’t you get the feeling that they, too, have ‘no clothes on’ - that they believe they are doing a job of leading the nation but are, rather, empty of ideas, morals, consciences, any hint of real leadership qualities, and self-awareness? Now I don’t know if things were ever really different but I’d like to think they were and that one of the reasons we progressed as far as we have (until 1980) was in part due to responsible leadership. And I know there must be several happy exceptions to today’s cadres of incompetents. But . . . .

What, really, constitutes leadership qualities? This is trickier than what first might appear. Usually, our first thoughts revolve around the great leaders of history – Alexander, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Henry V, Lincoln, and Gandhi. We all think we know why they were leaders. It’s funny, we all think we know a leader when we see/hear one? And we probably do. They lead for reasons of strength of character, will, intelligence, passion, vision, and moral fibre. Yet, excluding Gandhi, it seems to be more difficult in this era to reach any sort of critical concensus as to who might have been a genuine leader. The main reason, of course, is that we know so much more about those who would have us believe they are leaders. The Big Lies that underpin any military or political campaign find it harder to take root amongst a more critical and analytical public. Arguably, one would have to go back to the Second World War to find much agreement on calling anyone a real leader. We’ve spent almost all the last half century dissecting our so-called leaders and finding them wanting to some degree. It’s the real world’s version of ‘No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus’. God knows we’ve bought in many pretenders and from experience alone I can only think of three who may have measured up– Lyndon Johnson, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and Jimmy Carter, respectively for reasons of strength of character, intelligence, and moral fibre. In my estimation, there’s no one else even close (although I admit to ignoring – for reasons of ignorance – Ho Chi Minh). It’s an odd feature of the modern age It’s easier, for a start, to examine some of the types we are led to believe are leaders and by looking closer, discover they’re really something else entirely

We’ve had 3 years of Barack Obama and discouragingly little has happened. The medical plan was ostensibly a step forward but it is seriously flawed and it’s hard to find anyone jumping up and down to proclaim its virtues. The economy is still in the toilet, Congress is grid-locked in shallow partisanship, and the ship of state has no idea where it is headed.

So how can the country get back on track? The truth is that it will take a special person or, ideally, several special persons, working independently, to lead us out of this downward spiral. Committees, associations, and clubs won’t do it. Grassroot movements must lead the way and, through it, we will find the leadership we need. Political parties of today seldom cultivate real leaders. The inner circles are caught up with finding candidates who are malleable. Leadership is, by its nature, individual. ANY organization that has been around long enough (what constitutes ‘long enough’ is, in most cases, discouragingly short) finds it intrinsically difficult, if not impossible, to recognize and reward a true leader. Vested interests and the inevitable turning of vision inward to deal with the future of the organization rather than focusing on what it was originally set up to do, poisons the selection process and we end up with the George Bush’s of this world; corporate CEO’s who refuse to think beyond this year’s bottom line and University presidents who think listening to the corporate world is more important than providing a real education.

Many of us thought Obama had the potential to be a true leader (it would be interesting to know what he thought he had achieved when so many real people put their faith in him because he behaves like his taking of office was nothing more than being selected by some mysterious committee), but he has proven to have surprisingly little substance. For all his flowery oratory he certainly SEEMS to be amenable to agendas we don’t see or understand. But it’s not only him. Looking over at the current political/economic horizon, is like peering into a Bosch painting, madness personified. Character warps of astonishing mediocrity cavort in corrupted system and thumb their snouts at the notion of a responsible democracy. Theirs is a world of entitlement, venality, cockamamie theorizing, and insensitivity. For all their faults, the founding fathers would have jailed most of these brigands and scofflaws.

Where does this wretched situation leave you and me? Well, we can start looking for real people to follow; start believing in all that Hallmarkian cliche about believing in yourself (Such truths have no business being peddled via greeting card – they belong in the school curricula). Which means thinking for yourself. Which means evaluating what you hear and see – independently. And if you find someone, don’t be so quick to try to tear them down. We’re all imperfect. We can cooperate. Remember, this isn’t a struggle to get people to agree with you as to the path we take; it’s a struggle to let civilized debate take preference over selfishness, narrow-mindedness, puritanical screeching, and institutionalized deception. Take responsibility for yourself as a citizen. Be your own leader. There are no other solutions.

Robert Alan Davidson

California Dreams

Within the short span of four weeks, Patti and I packed up our Grand Vitara (dog included), crossed the border, driven 1500 miles to Indian Wells, California, taken up residence in an older gated community, established our residency in the US, bought furniture and a car and a bike, and taken up a new life as snowbirds in California. 

 So how is it to this point?

Pretty seamless, discounting the big corporations who literally enslave you to their legal overkill way of doing business. If there's a rule they haven't discovered, it's probably somewhere out past Pluto. They leave nothing to chance, and will cover the same ground ten times over to make certain you are not out to take advantage of them. Even a simple exercise like using your debit card to pay for groceries is enough to wear a millimetre off your molars. How are you paying? There are at least 10 options - 10! and don't ask me what they are. Do you want cash back? Are you sure? Is the total correct? Are you sure? Swipe your card. Are you sure you want to do this? And so on. There's two schools of thought here. One, the overkill keeps the store from having to extricate the stupid customers from situations they can't maintain a thought for for more than seven seconds. The second, closely related, is that most of their customers are stupid and can't be relied upon to know their own minds. Either way, it's discouraging. Curiously, the small contractors with whom we've dealt have all been efficient, reasonable, and prompt: a reminder that big corporations are not our friends and never will be and, I suspect, are terribly inefficient when looked at closely. Only limited fields of competition allow these bloated scavengers to exist.

But back to Indian Wells. Although mid-day temperatures are well over 100 in September and our trips outside the home are generally limited to the market and back, the mornings and evenings are spectacular, refreshingly cool, redolent with the smell of flowers.  It doesn't hurt that a small brook ambles by our house and is given to soothing babbling.

We've met several neighbors and look forward to seeing more of them. Many of them like to walk their dogs early in the morning. Our community, Los Lagos, makes it easy for walkers to make a circuit (Tahoe Circle) in 15 or 20 minutes. Our dog, Stanley, loves company and will sit down in the middle of the road to wait for whoever he sees coming up the street. If he's lucky, another dog will be accompanying the walker(s). Our neighbors on the left are Mexican. he works for Time-Warner and they are renters, we hear. We've met the mother (Esperanza)and daughter (Iris) who is 8 and loves playing with Stanley. Unfortunately, they have two unfriendly dogs, one of which is a pit bull. The neighbors on the right are a father and daughter (David and Suzanne). He is 95 and she is 55. They are both very nice people.

Los Lagos is startlingly beautiful with mature trees, well-tended flower beds, 4 swimming pools, bougainvillea everywhere, and the piece-de-resistance, the brook running through the entire complex. The compound is relatively quiet now but we expect residents to be arriving in October.

Not for one second have we regretted making this move to California and hope that we will have many visitors. It IS that nice a place.

Alberta, I Cry For You

ALBERTA, I CRY FOR YOU

Dismal times are nothing new for practising democracies. Like wieners, we accept them without really wanting to know what goes into their makeup. In North America, democracy is practised with an ignorant electorate, a self-serving plutocracy of wealth, a compliant media, and, most discouraging of all, a feckless education system geared to providing that plutocracy with a steady supply of unquestioning drones. All this has been said before, of course, and to little effect.

But one jurisdiction excels above all others as a gathering of myopic souls totally undeserving of any right to vote. The jurisdiction is Alberta, a province of roughly 3 million people situated just north of Montana. It's a beautiful province, with the Rocky Mountains on the western edge, magnificent foothills leading away from the mountains, fertile farming and ranching country throughout most of the southern half and extensive forests and lakes in the northern half. It has much to be proud of.

But not its politics. When I was an undergraduate political science student at Spokane's Gonzaga University in 1962, the dean of the department, a Father Twohy, pestered me to bring any written material I could regarding the Social Credit party, at that time the party in power (for 27 years and counting) in Alberta. He was disappointed that I, who was born and raised in Alberta, knew so little about my governing party. All I could tell him was that my father had been a lifelong Liberal and summed up pretty much any discussion of the Social Credit party as a bunch of morons who were lucky to find oil. I knew this was something of an overstatement, him perhaps bitter from being trounced in a 1955 provincial election, and oil not being discovered until the SC had been in power for 12 years. There has to be more to them than that and here I was 20 years old before, at Father Twohy's insistence, beginning to examine the party more closely.

Not so easy. I uncovered all the old positional data concocted by Major C. H. Douglas, a stance he called 'Practical Christianity', a melange of marginal economic theory, monetary policy, and antiestablishment vitriol. This wasn't much help because the politics I saw being practiced in Alberta were, although distinctly fundamentalist in makeup, exceedingly orthodox (in the North American sense). I opposed them because of their religious views (fundamentalism can tear a community apart) but had to concede they weren't steering the ship of state into an iceberg.

Political theory was hard to come by in personal interviews. The general response was about as pragmatic as you could get - 'We'll try anything that works'.

Father Twohy shook his head. I think he was hoping for something more bizarre and the 'we'll try anything that works' summation could only leave him shaking his head. I told him how lopsided provincial elections were, how compliant our daily newspaper was (1955 headline - 'God Gave Us Ernest Manning', the then premier), how the government gave everyone 20 dollars in 1952, and how scandal of any type managed to elude the party in power. Father Twohy was unimpressed but I began to question just how our provincial government worked and how distant it seemed from public involvement.

The intervening 47 years have not been as enlightening as I might have hoped. The bare facts are that Social Credit was finally ousted in 1971 by the Progressive Conservative party which has ruled since -38 years (and counting) versus 36 years.

Here I sit, well over the age of retirement, an almost lifelong resident of a land I love and it's 'democratically-elected' government has changed ONCE. ONCE. Very few tyrants survive for over 30 years, much less one 'democratically-elected' government. Add to this astounding anomaly the equally indigestible fact that scandal has never rocked the current government. Oh, there was the little matter of a government-paid party house back in the 70's but that's it. Think for a moment what this means.

A government which, under the first-past-the-post system, garners considerably less than 50% of the vote, but with zealous gerrymandering controls over 70% of the seats in the legislature; presides over one the richest oil deposits on the planet (and has done so since 1947); campaigns on a platform that would be nonexistent if it weren't for the words 're-elect' and 'trust us'; habitually delivers a roster of mental midgets the like of which is seldom seen outside of a remedial math class; and yet, YET, has NEVER come under serious scrutiny for misconduct, malfeasance, misfeasance, conversion, dereliction of duty, or gross stupidity.

If you think that such a egregious abuse of democratic responsibility is impossible to fathom, we would agree. If you likewise accept that it all, nonetheless, is true, we also agree. But here we are. And the electorate, such as it is, shows no sign of maturing. I think I have some idea of how a parent must feel when a beloved child, for whatever reason, turns out badly. Your love is strong but the object of your love is so screwed up you have to look the other way. That's how I feel about Alberta.

So why are the voters of Alberta so lemming-like? Surely, this is the stuff of several doctoral theses, but are there one or two theories that might help? Perhaps, but every time I think I'm onto something, I contrast us with Saskatchewan and Manitoba and the theory dissolves. Like our populist background. An anti-east bias, born of decades of real and imagined slights emanating from Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal, is surely an integral part of the Alberta mindset, one that led it to embrace nonmainstream ideas like Social Credit. Our brief and mainly untaught history, if nothing else, absolves the voter from any generational loyalty to old political affiliations. But these things are also true for the other two prairie provinces and they change their governments regularly. Why is Alberta unique? Maybe it is the oil. It surely is today, what with siege mentality surrounding the tar sands and pipelines. But isn't this too simplistic? Aahh, maybe that's the word - 'simplistic'. Maybe this whole subject is no more complicated than admitting the province is nothing more than a bunch of self-absorbed materialists, grubbing for next year's pickup truck and ATV and too 'busy' to consider either the future of this province or why they think the way they do. I hope not.

The Not-So-Elusive Moron

We're a tolerant society. We really are. We'll put up with almost anything, except common sense, wisdom, or vision.

Maybe it's time we practiced a little less tolerance and began to let people know that we think they're being silly/stupid/infantile/boring/thoughtless/shallow. Consider Davidson's First Law of Human Behavior - the odds are 3 to 1 that the next person you have to deal with will be a moron. This is an independent probability .

A moron? Well, this is a person who -

1. Will try to extract money from you, usually under some form of false pretense.

2. Will ignore you when you ask them a question.

3. Will assume you're only there to help them with their problems.

4. Will have developed their emotional senses from watching soap operas and their
prime-time emulators.

5. Last voted for the candidate with the nicest hair.

6. Will always leave a mess in a public washroom.

7. Firmly believes that his/her personal appearance is more important than their
mental health.

8. Is a civil servant without civility.

9. Believes reading Coles Notes is as good as reading the novel.

10. Like the mutated thieves they elect to public office, believe the only crime is
in getting caught.

11. Pull up to stop lights and empty their ashtray onto the street.

12. Don't think it's important that their children read.

13. Drive stupidly and have a preference for Chrysler products.

14. Slap their kids in the supermarket.

15. Think it's okay to tell a 14 year-old kid that he has no future in the sport
of his choice because he is too small.

16. Profess to like Garfield.

17. Think getting a degree is more important than learning.

18. Own a dog that needs to be chained up.

19. Walk store aisles as if they are the only person in the store.

20. Can't tell the difference between socialism for the rich and socialism for the
poor.

Morons cut across economic and educational lines. Their common thread is an amended aphorism of Socrates, 'The Unexamined Life IS Worth Living'. In Canada, they're likely to be glum boobs harboring grudges, while in the U.S. they will be aggressive dolts with an unnatural love of firearms and loud noises, usually their own voice.

So, the next time you encounter a moron (odds are it will be later today) let them know. Wear a smile as you try to enlighten them as it may well help to defuse their anger at being told something they knew in what passes for their hearts was true.

To a better day!

P.S. If, by some misfortune, you should find yourself guilty on one or more (four or more puts you in the congenital moron category and you probably can't be saved) of the above points, promise yourself to change and - like absolution at confession - you may proceed with a pure heart and with a new self-righteousness as your ally.

Rain Gods - James Lee Burke

How interesting to have my favorite 'crime' writer, James Lee Burke, pen a novel that eerily parallels a similar novel by my favorite 'serious' writer, Cormac McCarthy. The similarities between 'No Country for Old Men' and 'Rain Gods' are amazing - both are set in soutwest Texas; both have an especially spooky bad guy; both have a young couple (He of ex-military service) on the run; both have an aging sheriff exuding honor and experience; and both have an array of lowlifes that keep everything moving along.

I found myself imagining Mr. Burke announcing that if 'Mr. McCarthy is going to intrude on my field, I'll would show him how it's done'. Does he succeed? Yes and no.

Anyone who thinks they can imitate McCarthy is set to fail. No one can polish a sentence, create a mood, or spur the imagination like he can. He is, quite simply, the best writer in America. So, where does this leave James Lee Burke after he has written a 400-page novel that quite markedly echoes the earlier work by the master?

Well, not badly off, in my mind. Burke is a consummate story-teller with a love for flawed characters and the physical America. 'The Rain Gods' is an excellent read. I thought perhaps there were a few too many characters but this never impeded the flow of the story. His 'bad guy' is no Ghigurh, easily the most fearsome villain this reader has ever encountered, but the 'Preacher' is no slouch at spreading fear and loathing. Both writers understand man's depravity but Burke allows for a little more light at the end of the tunnel, fatal comeuppance the lot of those who would transgress against law-abiding citizens. Both can draw exquisite portraits of the country, small towns, seedy lives, and honorable people.

All in all, having a chance to read 'The Rain Gods' and 'No Country for Old Men' has to be a treat for any reader.

I will go further and suggest that it is time James Lee Burke is no longer referred to as a 'crime' writer but as one of America's great writers.

Bush Library

So George Bush has raised 100 million dollars for his presidential library. This so underlines the insanity of the modern economy that I am tempted to a) rob a bank, b) use the money to buy George's donor list and c) ask these wretched dupes if they wouldn't mind funding my latest pet project - a perpetual motion machine (it involves infinite gear reductins, neutrinos, gravity, and four teams of oxen). 2 billion dollars ought to do it.

Or perhaps I might use this list to track these donors down where they live and simply follow them around for a day or two, confident that anyone that careless with their money will surely be leaving a trail of unneeded $100 bills. Such folly has not been witnessed in this world since, . . . . .well, I guess it hasn't been that long,. . . . hint, hint, Madoff investors.

A huge question arises. Assuming such a library is built, what would they fill it with?

We've been told that Dubya's reading habits are nothing if not desultory and we have no trouble believing that. Still, rumor has it he still possesses the first book he was given at the tender age of 17, 'Little Black Sambo'. Told later that it was a most politically incorrect tome, he is said to have replied, 'But it was a gift from my greaser nanny!'

Bush has announced some of the volumes he will be donating adding that each one is made of paper. The list includes:

1) Crawford phone directory - 1979 through 1985
2) Men to Admire Series, volume 22, Peewee Herman
3) Dick and Jane Look For The G-spot
4) Rand McNally 'Backroads of El Paso'.
5) White Trash Cookbook
6) Hilroy Exercise Book (Lined) - 1 entry, dated Sept. 2, 1965 'Holy Sh - -, I'm
tired already .. . '
7) Your New Amana Refrigerator User Guide
8) Hekyll and Jekyll Fly to Poughkeepsie
9) The Wit and Wisdom of Gilligan
10) Dick Cheney's "Better to Blow Out The Candle AND Curse The Darkness"

Questions have arisen about the library's pretensions to mainstream bibliography. Bush spokesmen are adamant it will be no different from, say, the Bonner's Ferry General Library. Said one: "Patrons can borrow a book for two weeks. Any longer and a 10-cent-a-day fine kicks in. Run up too high a fine and we confiscate your passport and introduce you to a bench and a pail of water."

The library will have special sections for Dubya's favorite subjects: The History and Value of Wiretapping, The Ignoring of Civil Rights, Fourth Grade Spelling, and How to Conduct a Press Conference While Waving and Walking.

Finally, the ex-President hoped that history would judge him kindly but that 'it didn't really matter because I don't plan to read any books or papers anyway. I plan to spend MY retirement standing around looking stupid. I'm good at it, you know.'

So say we all.