I didn't think much of a criticism that Gary Hart made about Obama in a recent podcast interview with Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review.  But it roused me to prepare this consideration of Obama in light of John F. Kennedy's leadership during the Cold War. And  I did agree with most of what Hart had to say in his Times review of Obama's The Audacity of Hope.

I can't say enough good things about the three-part podcast from which I excerpted audio on JFK and the Cold War.  I found it on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's "The Best of Ideas Podcast" hosted by Paul Kennedy.  The web site says the links won't be up permanently, so grab them soon if you're interested.  Here they are:  Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

"Going to the Sun" by Montana musicians Christine Dickinson, Janet Haarvig and Matthew Lyon is from the Glacier Journey CD.  Used by permission.

My uncle Bert Tighe in 1963 began a new water works supply business, Ti-SALES, in Sudbury, Massachusetts.  He and Aunt Edna this morning talked about the single quality which seems to have led to that company's current success: the refusal to quit.  We also heard from Peter, my cousin who worked for the family company for 18 years, and Kevin, who is now president. 

I remember when Uncle Bert's office was in the basement of their house, and we kids had to be quiet around the stairway, because he was working hard down there to get his new venture going.  Now the company employs 29 people and has annual sales of more than $20 million.  It's a great story of the value of persistence and the wisdom of figuring out new ways to do things when the old ways won't work.

Music for this episode is "Until Dusk" from "When You're There" by Frank  LoCrasto, courtesy of the Independent Online Distribution Alliance (IODA) Promonet.

Every time I fly the JetBlue red-eye from Denver to Boston, I hope I will sleep.  This week, I armed myself with a geeky audio eyeshade from Brookstone and a horseshoe pillow made of space-age material, and I interviewed several fellow passengers in Denver, asking for their sleep tips.  The result was maybe an hour of sleep, or was it an hour of simply tossing and turning in a row I had all to myself?  In any event, I'm still looking for ideas on how to sleep on planes.  Feel free to add your own  suggestions!

The photo is from JetBlue's Flickr photos, taken on the company's first flight to Tuscon.  The music is “Seven Days of Falling? by Esbjorn Svensson Trio, courtesy of IODA Promonet.

On a visit to Hartford, I thought I was following in the footsteps of Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), the renowned poet, on the two-mile walk he took each day from work at the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company to his home at 118 Westerly Terrace.  In the way of poetry, things didn't turn out the way I planned, and my walk ended up being as disorienting and oddly satisfying as a difficult Stevens poem.

To listen to Stevens reading "The Idea of Order at Key West," click here, courtesy of the Academy of American Poets.

"In an Instant" from the CD Make or Break by Incognito courtesy of IODA Promonet.

Last night I finished reading The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James (at right in photo, with his brother the novelist, Henry James). 

In this book review, I describe how the book inspired my own variety of religious experience, and I offer some musings about what James's approach implies for the religious landscape in America 100 years after he delivered the 20 lectures on which the book is based.