a busy day in this stupid town. the library's booksale is today, and tomorrow. the library is all of 10 minutes away by foot, so I'm there almost daily. a large conference room held fiction, but I didn't even bother to go there (no offense, Fiction). I found the non-fiction room, which was small, filled with upright shelving and, squeezed tight with people. I spent upwards of 2 minutes in there, realized my butt was not big enough to crowd people effectively, so squirmed my way out. no doubt a goodly number of books there formerly were mine, I gave the library a ton last summer. a lot of older folks bookhunting, or rather, few if any younger ones. outside, Little Leagers gathered at the nearby ballfields. a greater gathering was for the town celebration. 231 years ago there was some sort of Sons of Liberty sort of rambunctiousness in this town. I don't truly know if it was exactly the Sons of Liberty, nor if Johnny Tremain attended, but it was that sort of thing. so the township celebrates subversion each year by reenacting what those whoevers did back them: raise a pole and stick a red wool cap atop. I hung around beforehand watching the gathering of minutemen in colonial garb. it is funny to see men with muskets walking around. I had my camera but things got boring quick enough. I went back home. Beth wanted to see this event. I've lived in this town for years but never saw the polecapping. we collected Erin and hustled over. the parade of minutemen (I don't think there was any of that youth organization stuff in this parade) was just making it to the little park at the confluence of 3 roads near the center of town. festivities began with the local priest invoking God. listen to me now and hear me later. a long list of state and town reps were introduced. I'm sure they're all Democrats, which is to say, they were taking this time away from being underfoot of the big mean Republican Party. one of these dorks, head of the town council I think, was brought in to speak. while the talking went on a few minutemen readyied the pole to be lifted into place. there was an air of anticipation. but instead of the usual few words about liberty, and even acceptably some remarks about our brave men and women in the various undemilitarized zones in our global village, he started in on terrorists. this guy got all his information regarding the Iranian hostage situation from a 1980 issue of Time magazine. our hero Ronnie Reagan. I grew up where the 1st shot of the Revolution was fired (possibly from a tavern window), and have endured my share of liberty-strewn speechifying. but I have to say the plangency today was more than I've met before. and aside from that, this celebration was getting boring. the offensiveness of the speech was the key stink, and we just left. too many words. perhaps in the spirit of this, I had to sign for a letter today from this town regarding Erin's education. they decided they want to be interested in his schooling. well not to the degree of helping with text books or any fuckin shit like that. maybe they could make a special needs student out of him (aren't all studetns special needs students, because each child actually (radically!) is an individual?). how is Erin going to learn about America being a melting pot? how will Erin discover the importance of football players and cheerleaders? in sooth we are not screwing around with Erin. here are a number of real schools that will provide accreditation of homeschool work, and it is not rubber-stamped accreditation. anyway, sometimes it seems like the local is dead.