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RESPONDING TO AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

I’m reluctant to say much about yesterday’s attempt to kill Donald Trump. There’s too much that I don’t know, especially about the motivations of the shooter.

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RESPONDING TO PROJECT 2025

It’s really encouraging to see the heightened media coverage of Project 2025. Surely (he thinks!) as people learn more about it, fewer and fewer people will elect a candidate for president aligned with those who developed it.

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HOW MANY WORDS DOES IT TAKE?

Lydia Davis:
I read recently that in English, a mere 43 words account for half of all words in common use, and that just nine (and, be, have, it, of, the, to, will, you ) account for a quarter in almost any sample of written English (my source is a very entertaining exploration of the English language, The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way, by Bill Bryson).

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LOOKING FOR NEWS ABOUT TRUMP

I wrote a couple of posts last week about the upcoming election in the United States, focusing mostly on the question whether Biden should release his delegates and withdraw from the race.

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ADVENTURES IN THE USED BOOKSTORE

Virginia Woolf:
Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.

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LIVING IN THE US AND LOOKING FOR HOPE

After writing two rather clumsy and rambling posts about current election turmoil in the United States, I’d like to back away a bit today in hopes of finding some reason for hope.

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