Recently, finally I canceled cable. For several years I went without it. Then I was tricked into getting it by two evildoers. It’s an expense I can dispense with. Not to mention, the tab was only supporting a too many hours a week Law & Order habit. That one really crept up on me. Harmlessly, from an hour or two a week, to bam, every day I was watching two, three, sometimes four episodes! Now cable is gone again, and now I leaf it to Netflix to satisfy moving pictures on the homestead small screen needs.

The HBO docudrama about John Adams arrived. I’ve been glued to it tonight and last. Fascinating lives, his and Abby’s. I wonder if I should add reading their papers to the ever normal readery stockpiling on my tables. A friend worked with their papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and I recall my little sister playing Abigail Adams in an elementary school play. Fateful. Or not. But some quotes I gleaned while watching are in my mind; now they can be in yours.

‘I must study politics and war, so that my sons will have the liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons must study navigation, commerce, and agriculture, so that their children will have the right to study painting, poetry, and music.’

‘A scholar is always made alone, and sober. Studies can be pursued to good purpose only by yourself.’

‘But now I find if I look at even the smallest thing, my imagination begins to roam the Milky Way. Rejoice evermore. Rejoice evermore. Rejoice evermore.’

Hardly snippets from the correspondence between Adams and Jefferson in their waning years..

‘I am, sir, your afflicted friend’
John Adams

‘..the same trials have taught me that for ills so immeasurable, time and silence are the only medicines.’
Thomas Jefferson

Vive la revolution..