Scenes from childhood

Natalie has become a Beatles fanatic. All she will listen to is the Beatles. All she wants to do is listen to the Beatles and rewatch "Help" and "Hard Day's Night," unless she's IMing with her friends, while listening to the Beatles, or changing the desktop on Mary's laptop to different rapidly changing sequences of pictures she's taken of our kittens, Rascal and Leon. They are cute, it must be owned.

Graham, meanwhile, has me reading from book 1 of the American Heritage Book of the Presidents and Famous Americans, which I had when I was a kid. Published 1967. Now, you think, the sixties, should be somewhat PC, right. Well, check this out: "Washington headed for home, on a trek through the frozen wilderness that can only be called heroic. The horse, hampered by deep snow, were unable to proceed, and Washington and his guide, Christopher Gist, had to continue on foot, through Indian-infested forests... Near Muthering Town, close to the Forks of the Ohio, an Indian, perhaps a French hireling, fired point-blank at Washington at fifteen paces but missed." Quite aside from the infestation of forests by Indian hirelings, it's pretty striking how our first president is endowed with near magical, epic powers.

At least Graham is not fooled. He comes home from school telling Mary of how the "mighty Indian warriors didn't need guns, they walked like animals through the forest and killed the British with their arrows."