Himmler, Barney, Goebbels & Andy

"...I could hear her in the drawing room, comparing the attorney general to a pair of Nazis. She was particularly dramatic on the issue of privacy, becoming visibly exercised regarding her confidence that right now someone was preparing to peek in her bedroom and plotting to pull her library card. "Terrifying!' she kept saying. 'Terrifying to have these people in power!' Fair enough, and pass the brie. But my interest was piqued when five minutes later she declared she didn't understand why -- if people had to own guns -- why they would be loathe to submit that information in written form and accept some 'reasonable government oversight.'

Suddenly Himmler and Goebbels are Andy and Barney..."

Michael Perry
Truck: A Love Story (2006)

Rhetorical Soaring

“In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of order, has never been so promising as an independent expression as it is today.”

Lincoln Kirstein

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.”

William Butler Yeats

Let It Flow

"...You learn not to pretty these things up. You learn to take them as they are. I go to (he culvert every so often and just sit quietly. I’m not looking for angels in the tag alders. I just watch the creek flow out the galvanized tube. Around the bend. When I was a kid I yearned to follow that water — on a raft, in a canoe, maybe just barefoot with a stick, Now I just sit there with my feet dangling, and I throw pebbles while the cold spring air makes my nose run, and I watch Beaver Creek slide smooth and quiet until it reoccurs to me that the world is constantly trying to bring everything level..."

Michael Perry
Coop: A year of poultry, pigs and parenting (2009)