Today it was home time. Gary worked on our bathroom door which had been a bit damaged when one of the guys repairing our refrigerator backed into it to get a better push. Oops. The door opened into the bathroom and Gary had to take off the door frame, pull the door out and replace the frame. If only it were that easy and, in RV’s nothing is easy. Seems that the frame was not quite cut right so that the corners met exactly so, as part of the process, Gary made them meet exactly.
Me, I just worked on our travel plans for our trip up the Eastern coast of America to match our rip up the Western coast last year. I do believe that this will be more elaborate and expensive than last year’s journey. But then I’ve always heard that RV’ing through the east is trickier and spendier than the west.
I just finished a biography of George Washington and was amazed at the similarities between the attacks he endured and the attacks Presidents today endure. Since we’re 200 years removed from his Presidency, to us he’s the ‘Father of the Country’. To many people of his time he was just a numbskull who couldn’t get anything right. Exempt from attacks at the start of his presidency, Washington was viciously attacked in the press by his second term. His opponents accused him of everything from being an inept general to wanting to establish a monarchy. He was called a traitor, a monarchist, a hypocrite, a liar and other terms along the same vein. In most cases he ignored these comment but at one point, he said that not a single day had gone by that he hadn't regretted staying on as President.
Some Congressional techniques are not so different from today’s either. ‘After Washington won the battle over the Jay Treaty the House Republicans launched a prolonged campaign to starve the treaty by refusing to appropriate money for it.’ And haven't we heard of this recently?
Washington certainly saw the irony between fighting for freedom and owning slaves, which he did. He saw how immoral slavery was and how inefficient slavery as a system was but, as a Southerner, bought and sold slaves freely, and, when one escaped, he worked hard to get the slave back. He hated to split up families and often had more slaves that his plantation could afford. Being such a hard worker himself, he could never understand why his slaves didn’t work as hard as he did. Duh. Two of the favorite slaves of both Martha and George escaped to freedom and, even though Washington used all the governmental resources to get them back, he failed. One, Hercules, seems to have disappeared while Ona Judge, Martha’s personal servant, escaped to Portsmouth, NH which was a free state.
His will stipulated that his slaves be freed - but only after Martha died so that she could benefit from their use on the farm while she was still living. OMG, Martha thought (well, maybe she didn’t actually use that phrase but it is certainly what she thought), what if they kill me to move their date of freedom up sooner? So, terribly unnerved, she decided to free those slaves ahead of schedule, only a year after her husband died.
Really interesting book and it really clarifies what a marvelous first President Washington was and how he set the tone and established precendents for all other Presidents to follow. And, then he retired, something that kings never did and that set America on its course.
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