Gasp! Anti-road press from The Economist?

…[H]ighways began expanding rapidly after President Dwight Eisenhower, 50 years ago this month, signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 which committed the government to invest heavily in a national network of interstates.
…[T]he network that he authorised was often referred to as the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. The generals thought that better roads would make it easier to move military convoys around in case of attack, as well as to evacuate big cities in a hurry. The overpasses were made high enough so that ballistic missiles could be transported beneath them. Though the atom bombs and invaders never came, life in America would never again be the same. continue...

Hawthorne family reburied next to author

AP

By Ken Maguire
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tucson, Arizona Published: 06.27.2006


CONCORD, Mass. — It was a Hawthorne family reunion, for the dead and the living.
About 40 descendants of Nathaniel Hawthorne gathered in Concord on Monday to watch as the remains of his wife and daughter, buried for more than a century in England, were interred in the family plot at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery alongside the author.
"It's greatly significant to see the family reunited," said Alison Hawthorne Deming, 59, of Tucson, Hawthorne's great-great-granddaughter.

"It's also great to get together different parts of the heritage. It's a beautiful celebration for us," said Deming, a professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona. "It's not something we imagined happening. These people have never all been together."

Hawthorne, author of "The Scarlet Letter" and "The House of the Seven Gables," died in New Hampshire in 1864. His wife, Sophia, moved to England with their three children and died there six years later. She and their daughter Una were buried at Kensal Green cemetery in London.
Hawthorne's daughter Rose returned to the United States and started a Catholic order dedicated to caring for cancer patients. The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, based in Hawthorne, N.Y., had paid to maintain the Hawthorne graves in England.

But when cemetery officials told the nuns that the grave site needed costly repairs, the order arranged to have remains reburied in Concord.

On Monday, one modern casket containing the remains of mother and daughter was put on a horse-drawn 1860 wooden hearse and carried through the town center to a church for the memorial service.

The burial, which was private, took place in the section of the cemetery known as Author's Ridge, not far from where writers Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson are buried.

Feingold hedges on Peace...time to look to the antiwar Right again?

antiwar.com 6/26/06

Not even Russ Feingold believes – or says – U.S. troops ought to get out of the region entirely. Speaking on Meet the Press Sunday, an otherwise admirable performance by Sen. Feingold, a putative presidential candidate, was marred when he assured Tim Russert that he had no objection to leaving a substantial force of American soldiers behind in Iraq, and that of course we would have to go back in force at the first sign of real instability.

Peaks Island votes to Secede!

June 13, 2006
PORTLAND, Maine --Residents of Portland's most populous island voted Tuesday to secede from the city and make a go of it on their own.

Final post on ReactionaryRadicals Blog

I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together…by Bill Kauffman

...Our America– the ragged prophet/volunteer fire department/sacrifice bunt America—ain’t dead yet. The late great Edward Abbey used to say “Up with Spring/Down with Empire! Now there’s a war cry you could win elections with.”

Still could, Ed.

Chesterton told us that the patriot never, under any circumstances, boasts of the largeness of his country, but always, and of necessity, boasts of its smallness. Dorothy Day spoke of the Little Way. Or little way. As the anti-American Empire crumbles into unlamented dust, patriots of the little America, on their front porches and in their backyards, will reclaim our country. Read back through this discussion. Our side is fiddles and poetry and baseball and country churches and the local beer. Their side is bombs and tanks and television. How can we lose?

Note from Mr.Kauffman

Dear Mr. Bowen--
Great essay. I'll drink, too, to the Old Republic, and our ancestral memory of it, and its return.
Sounds like you've made a good home in Maine. I like New England very much. Small enough, sometimes defiant still. The Second Vermont guys hit the right notes.
Drink up!
Best,
Bill