Abundance

Easter. Should be cleaning up, and I will do, but mostly gave myself a peaceful spring day to read Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s book Abundance. (At least part of it. Finish it. There’s a lot to take in there.) (Derek Thompson has long been one of my favorite journalists, but I didn’t know until Abundance that he is a Northwestern alum, as am I, me earlier vintage.)

Best book buy in my memory, except for C. Wright Mills ( The Sociological Imagination), which began all the graduate student research methods classes that I taught. Basically about how our own lives connect within the societies where we dwell, and how to inquire about self and others. And all five volumes of Virginia Woolf’s diaries, which I saved up for, for a few months, bought at the feminist bookstore in west LA when in grad school myself. I’ve still got them, and whatever the day, turn to that page. A fascinating toe touch into a different but influential, era. Writers, artists. I’ve been to Charleston, the country home of Woolf’s sister Vanessa Bell, more than once, just freaking amazing. Every surface painted. Can’t help but wander and soak it up.

How can I leave out The Great Gatsby. So many levels of complexity. No wonder thought the best American novel ever. It feels sad that Fitzgerald died early and did never see his masterwork acknowledged as it is now.

Haruki Murakami, who’s written much. As a once and hope again, avid runner, me (nurse will be starting soon), want to read again Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Zen in a book. Movement good. And he’s a Gatsby guy. Well, there you go.

The authors of Abundance are so observant of our times, and how we got here, historically, the complexity of that path, and of the institutions and society we could create, if we had the will and skill, then leave to our children and grandchildren something better. The book starts with vision and ends with vision. It is possible.

I’m scribbling book notes, which I’ll need to clean up, just fine. I make messy notes but finally get around to fixing them. Just part of the process.

Abundance is that comprehensive. Note taking required. Buy more legal pads.

Both authors identify themselves as libs/progressives, as do I, but it seems to me they’re a little too harsh on this side of the aisle, without which we’d never have experienced much social and economic reform over decades. Sorry, not sorry, if some regulations make us safer. We need watchdogs. I’d rather not see another bridge collapse or flight crashing into the Potomac or kids dying of measles or food poisoning. Don’t like children unable to obtain medical care or flown to a gulag. Don’t like elderly people left without resources and dumped from nursing homes. Don’t like no cancer or Alzheimer research. Really do not like diminished consumer protection (and bows, Elizabeth Warren, heroine, for fighting). Don’t like crazy student loans., just quit the exploitation so young adults can gain expertise and benefit all around them without costing them decades to create value. Worker safety yes. Never again another coal mine death or shirtwaist factory fire.

Oh and ending the Great Depression and winning World War II and then the Great Recession, which, oh yeah, all things libs/progressives fixed. There’re you go.

And the courts. It’s going to be a battle. But even Reagan appointees. Rule of law. Game on.

A bit of a rant, some thinking on a cloudy Saturday morning. It’s still early. Lots of day left. Kitchen work. Floors. Groan.

WordPress work. Groan.

When I need, I read my usual, Marcus Aurelius, Thich Nhat Hanh, Emerson, Whitman, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Open any random page and good seems possible.

MSNBC-ing as I do, Lawrence O’Donnell tilted me with the too-much media “hundred (scum) days” 2025 embarrassment, but launched me on Jonathan Alter’s book The Defining Moment…FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope. In my cart. Can’t wait to read.

When I was about seven years or so, I would ride my bike to the library where there was a shelf of biographies. I still am a lover of biography. But that FDR kid’s biography inspired me and it never left.

FDR was the right man for the right moment. And Eleanor. In my Austin apartment, I hung the International Declaration of Human Rights, which she mostly wrote. Still have it with me.