So it’s official: John Kerry has picked John Edwards as his running mate. I’m not as heartened by this as either the Kerry supporters or the Bush supporters are for that matter. Kerry became his party’s candidate because Democratic primary voters calculated he was the most electable candidate—not because of any great affection for the man, his character, or the policies that he supports. And now John Kerry has apparently calculated that John Edwards is the candidate that brings the most needed oomph to his candidacy.

Can you calculate your way to the Presidency? Bill Clinton would suggest that you can. He certainly didn’t have much in the way of credentials when he ran in 1992. But he did have charm. John Kerry doesn’t even have that. I guess I’m naive.

Why can’t the Democratic Party vote its heart? Or is the heart of the Democratic Party the search for power for its own sake? I hope not.

Well, this promises to be simultaneously the most boring and the most bitter campaign of my memory.

Yesterday I engaged in my first experiment in cooking ribs on my smoker and I can pronounce the experiment a success. I started with some baby back ribs and smoked them for five hours on my smoker using some hickory chips. At the end of four hours I sauced the ribs and let them smoke for another hour.

The ribs were excellent—tender and tasty. We ate the ribs with homemade coleslaw and oven-fried sweet potato chips accompanied by Sam Adams Boston Ale. My wife suggested that we should be smoking ribs once a week if not more frequently. I demurred on the grounds that an all-rib diet would probably not be healthful. However, I do look forward to my next experiment in perhaps two weeks. I plan on smoking them for an additional hour and saucing at hour four and hour five. We’ll see what happens.

I can see how this can become an obsession.

I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself about now. Rev. Donald Sensing, blogger extraordinaire and an ordained Methodist minister, mentioned my post, Anthems, in his Fourth of July Sermon.

It’s always been my dream to be mentioned in a sermon. Who’d’ve thought it would be favorably?

There’s been quite a bit written in the blogosphere about civility lately. For example, see here, here, and here. Before the July Fourth weekend got away I thought it might be nice to reflect on what what might have been some of the Father of Our Country’s thoughts on the subject.

These rules for civility were found in George Washington’s childhood copybook. For an interesting discussion of their origin see here. Hat tip to my sister (via my Mom) for Washington’s rules of civility.
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Here are a selection of pictures of our local Fourth of July Parade.

The house is decorated for the Fourth. It’s overcast and we’ve got a bit of a wind.

People decorate cars, bikes, and even golf carts.

In Sauganash a Fourth of July Parade is not just a spectator sport—it’s participatory and there are considerably more people in the parade than there are watching the parade.

Sauganash School, our local elementary school, had a contingent.

There are always one or two local pols in the Sauganash Fourth of July Parade. This is Marge Laurino, our Alderman. Sorry, it’s not the greatest picture. I was doing a bit of dog wrangling.

And the Sauganash Fourth of July Parade is over for 2004. We’ll be back next year. Maybe we’ll have the dogs pull a cart if it’s cool enough.

for duct tape: attaching red, white, and blue bunting to your windowsills.

Sometime around 8:00pm every night I take Qila (our alpha and only male) and Jenny (our alpha female) for a walk. We typically walk between one and two miles on our evening walk. It’s always a nice, reflective, relaxing time that gives me an opportunity to compose myself and prepare for bed. Not to mention emptying the dogs’ bowels and bladders so they’ll let me get a full night’s sleep.
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Before Canada Day slips away it seems like a good time to tell my favorite Canada story. Some time ago I read a story written by a Canadian journalist (I don’t remember the name) in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The journalist wrote: “We could have had the best of everything. We could have had English traditions, French cuisine, and American technology. We ended up with American traditions, English cuisine, and French technology.”

There’s an old joke about an elderly diplomat who, upon hearing of the death of another diplomat, his opponent in many a negotiation, says “I wonder what he meant by that?”

Did anyone notice that in the swearing-in ceremony of the new Iraqi government the flags behind them were the old Iraqi flag? Not only were they the old flag but they were the flag with Saddam’s handwriting on it. Perhaps these were the flags that were available or perhaps they were implicitly rejecting the new flag created for them by the IGC and the CPA.

But I do wonder what they meant by that.