21 August 2024
I was awake by 6 and decided I needed to get my butt out of bed and do my morning walk. I’ve been hesitant for a while and I think indolence took over and kept me unmotivated the past week. I made the first morning walk since August 1st today and managed to do 0.9 miles. I could possibly have made a little more distance but discretion is the better part of valor – or so it is said.
My Tootsie Roll order showed up at the doorstep yesterday. I was a little taken aback by the size of the bags.
I misstated when I said 750 in each bag. What I didn’t realize when I ordered these is they are Party Size.
The Part Size is definitely smaller than the Mini size. I guess I’ll just have to eat twice as many. I wonder how the reception and nurses at the Cancer Center will react to the smaller size?
I used to be a big fan of political conventions. I would watch both Democratic and Republican. I remember the 1968 conventions – the fiasco of the Democratic in Chicago and then the Miami Beach Republican one where there were riots in Overtown. It was a contentious year. Twenty years ago, I remember watching the Democratic convention and heard this unknown speaker named Barrack Obama make a speech of a lifetime. After he got through speaking, I thought “He’s gonna be President one day.”
The one thing I still like to watch are the roll call votes of the states. I confess not watching the Republican convention this year and have only caught glimpses of the Democratic convention but I did watch the majority of the roll call vote last night. I enjoy how the states brag on their famous personalities and their sayings about their state. I never understood why New Jersey was called the Garden State until many years later when it dawned on me most of New Jersey in the west is farm land. I was disappointed Idaho didn’t acknowledge they were the gem state last night. Tradition has its place!
The roll calls are quite educational. You learn what state personalities are from (even if they don’t claim the state). You see President want-a-be’s announcing the delegate totals. Everyone who answers the roll call knows what they want to say and have rehearsed it ad infinitum and then they get carried away in the moment and still screw it up.
These days, conventions are mostly boring. I haven’t watched them in years and this year is an anomaly for me. Give me the conventions of 1968 and prior when there was back room dealing and sniping and back stabbing. It made for better television. Of course, that could be due to Chet Huntley, David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite. Today’s television hosts aren’t quite the same. Does anyone of a certain age really think John Kennedy wanted Lyndon Johnson on the ticket? He needed Texas.
It’s the same with the debates. Everything else kinda of pales to the Nixon-Kennedy debate. I watched that on black and white tv (it was recorded in black and white so that’s all you ever see). Who can forget the riveting topic of Query and Matsu at that debate?
I see the instant analysts praised the speeches last night. I didn’t hear any but I miss great speeches.
I watched live as Martin Luther King gave his “I Have A Dream” speech and later his “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” speech before his assassination. I saw Bobby Kennedy’s speech to a restless crowd after Martin Luther King’s death and how he calmed the crowd and turned it from angry to pensive. To really date me, I remember Nixon’s “Checker’s” speech.
I also remember Barry Goldwater’s acceptance speech at the 1964 Republican convention. You didn’t have to like his speech to realize it was a great oration. I still listen to recordings of Winston Churchill’s “We will fight them on the beaches…”or Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “a date which will live in infamy.” I’ll be curious as to how well Kamala Harris does. I probably will not watch it – remember, conventions are boring – but when she appeared the first night of the convention, I think she was a little taken aback by the size of the crowd and she didn’t quite know how to play to it.
I like to think the greatest speech in American history was William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech at the 1896 Democratic convention. And no, I did not hear him make that speech. He spoke without any amplification to a packed crowd. He simply projected his voice over the crowd. He wasn’t even running for President but his speech was so powerful, the convention ditched the announced candidates and nominated him. That’s a powerful speech. He was for free silver as currency and not basing the U.S. dollar on the gold standard. His most famous line ended his speech with “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”
Enough speechifying. Stay tuned!