The Partly Cloudy Patriot

I am just back from one of those perfect vacations in which you spend all day doing outdoorsy, Maine kind of things, and the rest of the time on the couch or the playground with a book (or three). I read two books I really enjoyed and one I didn't really like (but I'll be nice) so it'll take me awhile to get caught up here.

I started the week with Sarah Vowell whom I love (see February), though this is an older book (2002) and not quite as good as Assassination Vacation. In one of the essays in The Partly Cloudy Patriot, she provides the best--or at least most succint--definition of a nerd that I've come across. She writes, Being a nerd, which is to say going too far and caring too much about a subject, is the best way to make friends that I know. That has a certain appeal to it, doesn't it? It's not all about Star Trek ears and D&D is it, now? Could be books or lace tating or, in Sarah Vowell's case, visiting famous sites of assassinations or other vaguely creepy historical things. As she writes about herself when she goes on a pilgrimmage to Gettysburg, You don't cross state lines to attend the 137th anniversary of anything unless something's missing in your life.

But, see, just by writing that, and showing her obssessive nerdy side, Vowell inspired me to learn more about the Gettysburg address. She got me feeling all nerdy and interested in something I've never even thought about (aside from the first 6 words in Lincoln's very short speech). Fortunately, I ran across a kid's book of the event in a museum we were visiting over vacation. See, I didn't have time to delve whole hog into Lincoln's words. I just needed the junior version, with a bit more detail than Vowell gives. The speech is, indeed, only 10 sentences long. Look it up.

But Vowell doesn't write just about her obsession with Lincoln (See Assassination Vacation for that). These essays range from her disappointment with the 2000 election, to what it means to be a patriot, to family Thanksgivings, to--my favorite essay--the difference between American cowboy mythology and Canadian Mounted police practicality.

Sarah Vowell professes to a bit of an obsession with our neighbors to the north. Being a history enthusiast, she's charmed by their practical, low-key approach to all things politic (she's ignoring the 1970s and their Quebec independence 'troubles', but never mind). She writes, Achieving independence from Britain gradually and cordially, through polite meetings taking place in nice rooms, Canada took a path to sovereignity that is perhaps one of the most hilariously boring stories in the world (though not really, when Vowell takes it on). She quotes someone else as to the difference between the settling of the hotheaded American West with all of its gunfights and frontier law, and the necessity of taking off several layers of mittens in order to duel in Moose Jaw in the early days. She tries to goad a Mountie into admitting how "not cool" they are (according to Americans) and when the Mountie accidently lets on that maybe Mounties are just that much better than American police, he "feels so bad about this little put-down that he repents, back-tracking about how 'there's good and bad in everyone'...and that 'Canadians are no better than anyone else.' "
This is what I love about Sarah Vowell: Not only she gets people to talk to her about sort of weird stuff, but she listens enough to their answers that she can present it with humor while imparting her geek---um, I mean nerd---knowledge to us, her readers.

Read The Partly Cloudy Patriot for Sarah Vowell's inimitable and fascinating voice that captures the weirdness of current events and life in general, but stay for her father's mesmerizing snake hunting story. Ah, snakes, movies with subtitles, Gore v. Bush, Tom Cruise, and nerds. A little something for everyone.