November 25, 2007 -- Sunday evening

Reading the largest book I've seen on the BART platform in months--The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788-1800, by Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick.

He loves history books. He has so many (history books + New Yorker magazines dating back to the 20s) stacked up in his garage, there's no room for a car....his wife's car still fits thankfully.

A favorite quote:
"For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two oclock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his
hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is stll time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper, Armstead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable
victory the desperate gamble ..."
- William Faulkner