Alexander Hamilton

“Oh, I have read his heart in his wicked eyes. The very devil is in them. They are lasciviousness itself.”

-- Abigail Adams

She is referring to Alexander Hamilton, who perhaps gets the dubious credit for introducing the big sex scandal into American politics with Maria Reynolds. The sexual farce got tied into suspcions that Hamilton played foul as Secretary of the Treasury, and in an effort to protect the integrity of his official function, he put out a long pamphlet coming clean with his marital infidelity. His all too fluid pen perhaps hurt him here.

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The Republican press had a field day with the pamphlet and battened off it for years. Henceforth, Hamilton would be viewed as the oversexed treasury secretary. Callender rejoiced at Hamilton’s indiscretion, telling Jefferson, “If you have not seen it, no anticipation can equal the infamy of this piece. It is worth all that fifty of the best pens in America could have said against him.” Drawing on this material, Callender wrote mockingly that the “whole proof in this pamphlet rests upon an illusion. ‘I am a rake and for that reason I cannot be a swindler.’” The Aurora responded similarly when it paraphrased Hamilton as saying, “I have been grossly … charged with … being a speculator, whereas I am only an adulturer. I have not broken the eighth commandment. … It is only the seventh which I have violated.”

-- Ron Chernow, “Alexander Hamilton”

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Riding Roughshod

Do you know what it means to ride roughshod over others? Orwell, in one of his nit-picky language essays, quipped how many people use that expression without knowing what it means. I had to admit that I am not overly familiar with its exact, literal meaning myself. Thank god for the Internet!

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Act without regard for the feelings or interests of others, as in "She just forges on, riding roughshod over her colleagues." This term alludes to the practice of arming horses with horseshoes mounted with projecting nails or points, which both gave them better traction and served as a weapon against fallen enemy soldiers. By 1800 it was being used figuratively for bullying behavior.

-- The Free Dictionary.com

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I really like that. I may have to start using this expression more often.

My Life

I really hate the post-nap shit. I thought I should mention this before it becomes just another part of life's dull routine. This only started up in the last couple of months, and I guess it's not just a temporary thing. It irritates me, because I am often in a hurry to knock out my shower before Pop comes home from his rounds. It is as though my body thinks I am actually waking up from a long night's sleep, even though my nap is still only fifteen, twenty minutes long. I count it as another gift of aging, along with all this wisdom and a fucked up prostate.

Cripples

Lorie was taken to her surgery yesterday. I am not very optimistic that we have seen the end of her stay. Her wheel chair and her walker are still sitting in the living room. Walking by them today, I had the cruelly humorous thought that if Kay comes over, it would make quite an addition to throw in her walker in the lot - such is Pop's love life. Well, it is livelier than my ... life. And I do not really want to mock. The way my right foot is going, it looks like I could become a member of the cripples' club in the not so far future. I say that so lightly, as though walking were a nice luxury that I can easily do without, like bottled water, when I seriously doubt that I could survive the wound.