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"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people ... the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty ...Enlighten the people generally, & tyranny & oppressions of body & mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day."

Thomas Jefferson, who would turn 268 years old today if he wasn't so seriously dead. I doubt that he knows or cares off in the Blue Beyond or if his soul is animating another vessel – brown-skinned, I'd be willing to bet, if there is anything to the notion of karmic lessons – these days, that his birthday is shared by the outlaw Butch Cassidy, a.k.a. Robt. Leroy Parker. How I loved writing and illustrating a book about our 3rd President....It's my brother's birthday, too, my lost, derelict, frightening & upsetting, tragic brother. May the Gracious Spirit keep him safe and far away from me.

L.O.C. – 210 Years & Counting

"The more Adams thought about the future of his country, the more convinced he became that it rested on education." David McCullough

So, 'twas on this day 210 years ago that the 2nd President signed off on a law that'd let the legislators order $5,000's worth of books from London. Thus, the U.S. Government acquired its first library: 740 books and three maps. (Do check out www.loc.gov for this and voluminous lists, piles, and stacks of other information - you won't be sorry!) Thank you, John Adams, who once wrote that liberty could not "be preserved without a general knowledge among the people." Thank you, brilliant, book-loving John Adams, who advised his son, JQA, to keep a poet in his pocket so he'd "never be alone."

Of course, that first "Library of Congress" was caught up in the flames when British troops torched the Capitol in the summer of 1814. www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefflib.html And of course, ex-President Thos. Jefferson offered to sell his personal collection of 6,487 volumes (!) in order that the nation might replace and recommence its library - and as a delightful bonus, the Bookaholic of Monticello could go buy more books. Yup. Understand that addiction. Still, must the tubby New Englander always languish in the shadow of the Virginian(s)?

The Felicitous Circle

March 4, 1801.

The 3rd chief executive is inaugurated: a noble indication that the wheels in the new republic are turning. The new guy, Thos. Jefferson, helped to bring about this revolutionary self-governing machine as did his political enemy/former friend John Adams, i.e. the old guy making his way home to Massachusetts. In his inaugural address, the new President wrote these words: "A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities."

I sat down to write this post, intending to note that today is Tom Jefferson's 267th birthday. If I hadn't done so, I'd never have come across this loveliest turn of phrase, 'the circle of our felicities.' I'll be thinking of these words all day. I hope so, anyway.