Jan. 6 Committee, Where the Crawdads Sing, The Peloponnesian War

This summer of 2022 is really zipping along! Not to mention, she got a package delivered from USPS, and she very excitedly ripped it open (not her usual behavior) and found: a) it was the wrong item, and b) it was really addressed to her next-door neighbor. So she’ll have to get out of pajamas at some point today, and walk it over. BUMMER.

She finished reading Where the Crawdads Sing. She tore through it in four days, and read the closing pages while watching the Jan. 6 Committee Hearings. The novel would make a fine movie (which she’ll probably end up watching, just to see how it differs from the book), in fact the movie might possibly make more sense than the book, especially that ending! Don’t leave us all hanging, Dear Author. How did Marsh Girl engineer the whole thing? Down to the last minute and all? Even to the disguises?

She has so many books on her To-Read list, but after reading Where the Crawdads Sing, she seems to have selected History of the Peloponnesian War, by Thucydides, which was written thousands of years ago, but which begins with the author saying something to the effect of: We all thought this would be a great war, but it wasn’t, it was just an ordinary war, and it lasted 27 years. And the people who started off as allies ended up as antagonists. It was led on one side by Athens, which started compelling its “confederate states” to contribute to the war effort by providing money rather than ships, and continued to require this payment “even though Athens had years before ceased waging war with Persia.” In short, an alliance which had been formed to fight against Persia became instead the birth of the Athenian Empire. All the more remarkable was that this was effected while Athens remained “fully democratic.”

It finally ended this way (not a spoiler because, it’s history): “After the loss of her whole navy in the late summer of 405, in the spring of 404 an Athens stripped of her empire and starved into submission surrendered . . . “

As for the author, Thucydides, all we know about him is what he said about himself, which, according to the Introduction (by T. E. Wick, of the University of Wisconsin), “is very little.” He lived through the full twenty-seven years of the war, but his History only reaches Year 21 — “it breaks off abruptly, in the middle of a paragrapgh, in the middle of a sentence.”

Wow! Self loves history. Which is why she’s been glued to these January 6 Committee Hearings, which in her humble opinion should be nominated for an Emmy award, they are so riveting. Not only that, but the varying rhetorical styles of Chairman Bennie Thompson, Vice-Chair Liz Cheney, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, Rep. Stephanie Murphy, Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Rep. Jamie Raskin are really something! Rep. Thompson is sonorous and grave, Rep. Cheney is blunt and no-holds-barred, Rep. Adam Kinzinger is witty and ironic, Rep. Stephanie Murphy is patriotic and poignant, Rep. Zoe Lofgren is down-to-earth, and Rep. Jamie Raskin is eloquent to the nth! Any of them could run rings around that master of dumb-yet-emotional speech, 45.

So much riveting drama and etc., all in the height of summer. Summer 2022 is definitely one for the history books.

Stay tuned.