Most anyone who follows this blog is surely following me on facebook or twitter, right? And doesn’t that mean this media form known as personal blogging is surely as deprecated as HTML 4.0? And I’m not going to get started on the state of indie political blogging these days (another time, perhaps in person over wine, but let’s just say that way too many bloggers seem to think it’s great to turn over THEIR space and name to being unpaid dupes for political candidates and/or parties).

Well, whatever.

The urge strikes to put out a little update on things, so here’s a quick rundown of 2012 stuff we’ve been doing:

• Still getting in lots of people time. Home-ownership and the patio from which this blog post is being composed tonight have made me much more social (not media, but the real thing). It doesn’t hurt that we’re blessed with some great neighbors who have become good friends. There is now a tiki torch in our driveway to signify when we’re carrying on and neighbors should come join us on the patio. This is fun, I think. Your mileage may vary.
• Additional home/patio enhancements…. We put XBMC on an old laptop, only to figure out the poor machine really couldn’t carry the load. So we upgraded to this little guy, and added some speakers on the patio. It’s not my friend John’s badass system, but it serves our more modest needs (movie/music server) quite well. Being able to control the sounds on the patio with my rooted Atrix (running CyanogenMod) is sweet.
• Mr. Tom Hanna moving to town, and even staying with us for a little while, has also been a most welcome development. As one gets older, the value of old friends becomes greater. Even if I don’t always stay in touch like I should.
• We’ve flown around 37,000 miles so far this year, fairly cheaply. Some have been mileage runs. Trips to Madrid and Brussels were fun trips also flown for mileage. Facebook/twitter/flickr followers have seen a bit about these trips (which probably would have gotten posts here once upon a time). Mileage trips to Alaska and Manchester on tap for later in the year. A Delta trip to Montana looms. A biz class reward trip to Guess Where is on tap. And I need to book us another 2000 miles or so on United/Star for gold purposes…. Fun stuff! Even though the customer service experience gets worse all the time, I never tire of the air travel experience (especially airports — love them).
• Less biking and hiking than I’d like so far this year. Boo. But Alaska and Montana should help with the hiking, perhaps. And so too should…
• Dropping around 20 pounds from a recent (unfortunate) high about a year ago. What can I say, the diet slipped a bit in the year after my mom’s passing, and I know better (I can’t handle bad carbs and starches — it’s sure, fast weight gain). Back now on a pretty strict ketogenic diet, and recommending that folks read this guy and this guy. They are pretty sharp. Thank goodness wine (preferably French, or old world at least) is carb friendly, although I need to limit it to weekends for weight purposes.
• And now that I’m back down to my fighting weight (and still losing), it’s time to start thinking about… getting back to lightweight backpacking. I miss hammock weekends in the Ouachitas. Both the physical challenge and the beauty/solitude of the place. Maybe a trip this fall, definitely activity next spring.
• Slippage on blogHOUSTON. We’ve done the thing a long time now, and I’m thinking a little break is in order for a software update, a mental refresh, etc. Then we’ll get back after it. With the right energy. Maybe some new contributors (anybody interested? Party/Candidate-bloggers need not apply. Resistance may be futile, but hey).
• My first passover Seder! And no, not the Hittner political event (I won’t ever see an invite to something like that! LOL), but a genuine thing put on by lovely people. Really cool.

That’s the quick rundown of 2012, so far. Orthodox Easter is this weekend, and we’re hosting (after the smashing success that was Xmas). Weather should allow for plenty of patio/outdoor time, and a mix of white and red wine to go with the traditional Greek Easter foods and family. The wine should help both go down a little better!

The Float Trip is not far off, either. If you’re reading this and haven’t committed to joining our annual gathering of friends and family, well, it might just be time to give that some thought, hmm?

Since this is a not-quite-yet-abandoned personal blog that’s sometimes also about politics, that requires some sort of personal statement, right?

Damned if I know what that is, except blogging has kind of jumped the shark, hasn’t it?

I had thought the blogging impulse would come back this year, but instead … it was a lot more interesting spending time with actual people (social instead of media?). Grilling (with neighbors and friends). Wine (with neighbors and friends). Travel (50,000 paid miles, another 12k of reward travel, and aiming for roughly the same in 2012). Face-to-face interaction of all sorts. And my nose in the Kindle more (but in the woods much less, which is not so good). And yeah, a bit of social media (okay, probably too much time on twitter) and some home improvement. There’s your 2011. With plenty of (parentheticals)! Woo! (By the way, Parentheticals wouldn’t be a bad blog/tumblr name, wonder if it’s taken?)

Here’s wishing a Happy and Fulfilling 2012 to the folks who may still be following the little blog. I won’t promise there will be lots of blog posts in 2012, but maybe we’ll have the chance to grab a beer or sip some wine or share a campfire or… well, you get the idea. Hope to see ya around!

View 2011-11-24 14:43 in a larger map

Observations:

1) The ride UP to Skyline Drive is a good way to burn off Thanksgiving carbs.

2) Gravity is your friend if you’re *ahem* overweight and riding downhill.

3) Uphill, not so much.

Okay, back to Thanksgiving football.

Please come check out Texas Iconoclast.

Evan does a nice job describing our thinking here, and the About page has a bit more.

Basically, we’re offering a daily roundup of essential reading on Texas Politics, from a center-right perspective, with a little commentary thrown in for good measure. We’re still feeling our way through the group production a bit, but eventually I think we’ll get a pretty nice discussion going. Be an early adopter and come chime in!

Square Foot Garden, 2011 edition

I’m giving the Square Foot Garden another try this year, after so-so results last year.

For 2011, I’m doing a few things differently.

First, I’ve doubled the depth of the box. Even though the Square Foot Garden guru says you can get by with a depth of only six inches (and I built my original box with 2X6 lumber), I don’t think that depth was enough for the harsh Houston heat, so I doubled the depth for this year, and repainted in a nice semi-gloss brown (the stain didn’t look so great by the end of last year).

Second, I’m only planting tomatoes (in the photo) and green beans this time around. Last year, I experimented with tomatoes, green beans, onions, peppers, lettuce, and herbs. The tomatoes were so-so (I think they needed more depth), the green beans were so-so (didn’t plant enough, but the plants I had did well), the lettuce was meh (took up lots of space, didn’t produce much, quality didn’t beat what I could grab at Central Market anytime), the onions and peppers sucked, and the herbs did fine but the soil was WAY too friendly for them and didn’t stress them enough for the best pungency (they are going all-container this year, and are on display in the photo).

For the tomato varieties, I’m going with Celebrity (3), Big Boy (2), and Bush Goliath (1). All are supposed to be well-suited for Houston, with the Bush Goliath being more of a container garden hybrid. We’ll see how each variety does.

For the green beans, I’ll go with Contender again. My dad has raised them for years, they produce a great bean, and they seem to grow fine in Houston. I’ll plant half the remaining squares with them tomorrow, and then plant the other half in a few weeks, to stagger the yields a bit (hopefully!).

No one was injured after a car crashed into a Regions Bank on Saturday.

A woman about 3 p.m. was parking a Pontiac Vibe in front of the bank, 6408 Interstate 45 in La Marque, when she accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brakes, Sgt. Reggie Rodriguez, of the La Marque Police Department, said.

[snip]

Saturday was not the first time a car has driven into the bank.

Last year, a vehicle crashed through the front of the building in a similar accident, Phillips said.

Be careful with those pedals, people.

And NEVER concede you screwed up. Cry “sudden acceleration!” and express shock that the car suddenly behaved as if possessed. If you have a Toyota, even better!

Edmund Morris was hired to be Reagan’s semi-official biographer on the strength of his Teddy Roosevelt biography, which truly is a great book. But there is one vital fact that noone realized at the time, and which still seems to elude critics and commentators; the book ends before it gets to the presidential years. We all just assumed: major political figure as topic + great book = ability (and or desire) to write a great political biography. But there is really no evidence that Morris understands, nor is curious about, the actual mechanics of politics and the impact of political ideas. In retrospect, it should have been seen as troubling that he was willing to set aside the Roosevelt story just as he got to what most biographers would consider the crux of the tale.

So we have here a terrific author, but foreign born and apparently uninterested in politics, trying to take on a man who transformed the political world. In order to begin to understand what had happened, Morris would have had to immerse himself, not just in personal interviews and old yearbooks and the like, but in research on the Cold War on American anti-Communism on the growth of the New Deal and the Great Society on Goldwater and Bill Buckley and so on. [Instead], he figured out a way to get around the heavy lifting. All the dodges and devices that he trots out are simply there to disguise the fact that he didn’t feel like learning what he needed to in order to produce a genuine political biography. Instead, he gives us a book that is almost entirely personal.

A great deal of scholarship in recent years has filled in many of the gaps left by Morris’s inadequate try at political biography, some of it by liberal revisionists who have grudgingly abandoned the longtime meme that Reagan was merely a substance-free actor filling a role (simply an untenable proposition these days, given the public availability of Reagan’s copious letters and diaries) but try to position Reagan as either a champion of some of their pet causes (really!) or something of a failure at remaking the liberal order (to borrow from another formulation).

Enter Steven F. Hayward, whose two tomes on Ronald Reagan taken together represent the best political biography of the great conservative leader.

When I learned that Hayward, spurred by Morris’s decision not even really to attempt a political biography of Reagan, would take on the HUGE project for himself, I was elated. Hayward is well-trained in American political thought, is a conservative intellectual who was never captured by the academy (perhaps that almost goes without saying of most conservative intellectuals), and is a fine writer whose work can be appreciated by both scholars and a general audience. If anyone could do the project justice, it would be Hayward.

Finally released in 2001, the first volume, The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964-1980, was a page turner for me, for the reasons elaborated previously (Hayward’s writing and insight never disappoint) but also because this was a hefty, intellectual, conservative interpretation of Ronald Reagan’s early political life at a time when assessments were still dominated by sometimes venomous and frequently lightweight accounts from liberal partisans and media (to the extent there’s a distinction). In many ways, Hayward’s first volume set the tone for so much of the conservative interpretation of Reagan that was to emerge in subsequent years (and also set the bar high for liberal revisionists to come — such as Sean Wilentz, whose 2008 appropriation of Hayward’s book title speaks loudly — as it became increasingly clear that the nasty liberal interpretation of the lucky substance-free actor filling a role had been demolished by… reality!).

It also left many of us wanting for more. Namely, the second volume. For quite a long time.

Hayward’s second volume, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989, was finally released in August 2009 in hardcover form. Even though it had been on my must-read list for 8 years, I only finally got around to finishing the thing on my Kindle yesterday — ironically, one day after Reagan would have turned one hundred.

I’m happy to report that the wait was worth it — and the second volume is somewhat stronger than the first, precisely because of the wait: With the release of so much primary Reagan material since 2001 (especially in the form of letters and diaries), Hayward’s second tome is able to delve much deeper into the mind of Reagan — although, as Hayward demonstrates in many spots, so much of the private Reagan confirms our understanding of the public, political Reagan (some of it deepens and clarifies our understanding, of course). What is now definitively proven is that the old, substance-free interpretations of Reagan are untenable. He wasn’t just an actor who was the figurehead for American conservative political ascendance — he led and informed the movement, eventually at the highest level.

To return briefly to our contrast between Hayward’s political biography and Morris’s much less informative personal biography, I’d like to close with an excerpt from the second volume to frame its purpose in Hayward’s words:

I BEGAN THIS two-volume project more than ten years ago in the belief that Edmund Morris’s then-forthcoming official biography would be too narrow in scope, and more broadly that Reagan would fare poorly at the hands of what John Patrick Diggins calls the “media-academic complex.” The full catalogue of dismissive judgments of Reagan during his political career could fill a large encyclopedia. Michael Kinsley, an astute observer of politics, is typical of established liberal opinion with this judgment of Reagan from 1986: “It seemed to us, the carping critics, that this man was not terribly bright, not terribly thoughtful or well informed, not terribly honest, and in most other ways not up to the most important job in the world.” Or this, from the Nation: “Those without a sense of irony about American politics may find it hard to believe that a man of such limited vision, mediocre intellect, and narrow comprehension can cut a figure of world-historical importance.”

Although Reagan left office in 1989 with his popularity with the American people intact, it was the near-universal opinion of the commentariat that the eventual verdict of history on his governance would be negative, perhaps harshly so. Calvin Coolidge left office with high popularity too but, after two generations of rough handling by academic historians, became a president of low regard. Reagan was surely going to be “Coolidgized.” An American Heritage magazine survey of journalists and historians taken around the time Reagan left office ranked him as the second most overrated president, behind, surprisingly, John F. Kennedy.

[snip]

What follows is an integrated, analytical narrative, covering the whole of the Reagan presidency. Even at this length, I have had to be selective and often too concise, leaving out not only valuable detail but also entire episodes. (The long agony of the savings and loan disaster is omitted, for example, in part because it was a diffuse and bipartisan fiasco.) Above all, this is intended to be a study in statesmanship—reflecting in narrative form on some permanent questions that we are still working out in our current political scene. Although I have—and have always had—strong pro-Reagan sympathies, this narrative does not shrink from noting his weaknesses or from strongly criticizing his mistakes and errors, both large and small. Unlike the criticisms of media know-it-alls or ideological opponents, however, the criticisms here are intended to illuminate the deeper, permanent problems of politics and policy. The first volume of The Age of Reagan attempted to explain the deeper sources of the inevitability of Reagan’s election in 1980. The present chronicle of the ups and downs of his presidency attempts to explain Reagan’s durability and his legacy for politics today.

A word about the pace of the book: it is slightly lopsided. The early chapters linger in great detail on the first year of the Reagan presidency, which was its most important year not only because it was the most eventful but also because it laid down the baseline for more than two decades of subsequent political argument between left and right. That year was a genuine turning point, and as such, it deserves treatment in depth. It is also necessary to tell this part of the Reagan story in its fullness, as it is a case study in the difficulty of plotting a genuine change in the course of the nation’s affairs.

Those with an interest in American politics and history — and certainly conservatives — should treat themselves to these two volumes. They are worthy investments.

Two people were injured after a driver crashed into a Rosenberg-area wings restaurant on Wednesday afternoon.

Police say a 22-year-old driver was backing out of the parking lot of a Wing Stop when she accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brake. The car lunged forward, crashing through the glass and injuring two women.

The bolded part of the excerpt is the cause of most “sudden acceleration” incidents (except, of course, for those involving spouses of ethically-challenged Village Voice journos *wink*).

• Spokane to Seattle; The Long Way (Stephan Segraves, BadIce.com)
• As the air miles add up, so do the benefits (Eric Anderson, Albany Times-Union)
• Flying in extreme comfort (Sarah Staples, The Globe and Mail)

New United/Continental livery, courtesy UnitedContinentalHoldings.com

Callie and I returned a little earlier from a same-day trip from Houston to Seattle (or, IAH-SEA, to use the airport codes) that kicks off this year’s efforts to requalify as gold elites on Continental/Star Alliance. We traveled on a fare that cost roughly 4 cents per EQM (elite qualifying miles), which many folks on Flyertalk would characterize as a weak mileage run at best. But, for us, the fact we could do a one-day weekend turn on Continental meant no lost vacation time, no accommodation cost, and a shot at complimentary upgrades to first class (the upgrade didn’t come through on the outbound, but we did sit in the front cabin on the return).

We have a number of these guys booked early this year, so we’ll get a nice jump-start on gold elite status this year (as opposed to flying a cheap US Airways same-day turn in mid-December LAST year to finally reach the mark*). Air travel this year will pretty much displace other hobbies on the priority list (although some camping and hiking and gardening will find their way into the mix, along with grilling and food and wine and reading and blogging of course).

So why DO all of this?

1) Travel is enjoyable and relaxing

For me, it’s enjoyable and relaxing (yes, relaxing, as my friend Stephan described it in the first associated post linked above). Flying is a neat little escape (from the normal mundane things that will always try to intrude on free time: house projects, maintenance projects, all the stuff that will eat up every minute of the day and more). Sometimes, a cheap fare is a chance to see a new place (the ULTIMATE reason to travel). Sometimes, a cheap fare is a means to an end (like today — more on that below). It’s always a chance to engage in some pleasure reading (Kindle is the BEST invention for travelers EVER!), or catch a movie (except on US Air domestic, bleh!), or catch a nap (guilty pleasure), or even get some work done (yeah, I finished some work from the week on the coach segment of today’s itinerary). In other words — leisure time! Americans sometimes underestimate its value.

2) If you’re gonna be flying, there are advantages to loyalty

If one does find this sort of thing enjoyable, for whatever reason, then there are some steps one can take to maximize the enjoyment. Because honestly, flying around in a cramped coach seat on US Airways (or the Southwest Cattle Call) with no entertainment system is not as enjoyable as scoring an upgrade and making that same trip in a comfy leather seat with complementary food/drinks and a nice entertainment system in the front cabin of the plane. That’s where elite status comes in — the airlines’ way of rewarding their most frequent fliers with perks like preferred seating, early boarding, free checked baggage, and complimentary space-available upgrades to first class. As discussed in the second linked article above, focusing one’s flying on a single airline/alliance can secure those elite perks with as few as 25,000 butt-in-seat miles flown in the calendar year (known as EQMs, for Elite Qualifying Miles, in Continental’s program). The perks increase at various levels (typically gold at 50,000 miles, and some higher tier often at 75,000 or even 100,000). Friends like Stephan who work to hit that highest tier really travel in style — and usually on extremely cheap fares.

3) The payoff: Luxury reward travel is sweet — and a great ROI

So all this cheap flying is fun AND can be made even more enjoyable if one is strategic. But there’s an even bigger potential payoff: International travel in premium cabins using one’s redeemable frequent flier miles (different from EQMs). A typical roundtrip to Europe in a business class (or even better, first class) cabin can easily cost well over $10,000. With a little bit of work, though, that same trip can “cost” as few as 105,000 (business) or 135,000 (true international first) miles. For a gold elite, the mileage total for biz is roughly a year’s worth of flying on cheap fares. Potentially turning $2000 worth of flying (or significantly less, if one is good at the game) into a $10,000-$20,000 luxury flight overseas is not so insane in my view (for folks who occasionally question the sanity of frequent fliers) — and that’s not even accounting for the multitude of ways that redeemable miles can be earned without flying (affinity credit cards, banking, shopping, etc). In fact, that’s a MUCH better ROI than most folks have seen in the stock market in quite a while!

Until recently, I had only ever used miles either to purchase exorbitantly priced domestic tickets (technically not the “best” use of miles, but there is no good reason to pay >$500 for a <500 mile flight to Tulsa!) and to upgrade to BusinessFirst on international flights. But frequent-flier friends have convinced me that (3) really is the way to go — and all those stockpiled redeemable miles ought to be put to use at least once a year. So this year’s trip to Greece will be in business on a reward that “cost” 105,000 miles per passenger — a GREAT value given the rough price of the fare ($15,000 per passenger as priced out roughly on ITA’s search engine). As the trip approaches, I’ll also be watching one segment (DEN-FRA) for true international first availability to open. THAT is a whole other level of luxury I understand (see the third linked article above), and I wouldn’t mind trying it once.

So that’s the not-so-quick version of “why do this.” And in all honesty, there’s no mental illness involved!

Well, okay, maybe just a tiny bit — there is the constant obsession with finding cheap fares and lucrative routings.

* A fair part of last year’s travel and even a few reward tix when fares were exorbitant involved trips to Tulsa, which unfortunately I’m not making as frequently this year. But we have been happy to talk my dad into flying down to see us more often!

It’s a great read, although perhaps a bit jarring to the sensibilities of some, since the too-common response to most problems (social and political) over the last decade, maybe two, has been “government must DO something.”

The student of Lutz/Jaffa in me wants to quibble with Krauthammer slightly, however, on this point:

What originalism is to jurisprudence, constitutionalism is to governance: a call for restraint rooted in constitutional text. Constitutionalism as a political philosophy represents a reformed, self-regulating conservatism that bases its call for minimalist government – for reining in the willfulness of presidents and legislatures – in the words and meaning of the Constitution.

I would suggest that a constitutionalism anchored in the de facto preamble* to the Constitution (and to the Articles before that) — the Declaration of Independence* — is a potentially richer American political philosophy.

But, even starting the conversation is a nice step.

* See generally: Donald S. Lutz, Origins of American Constitutionalism and A Preface to American Political Theory, and Harry Jaffa, Original Intent and the Framers of the Constitution.