School Begins

Well, school for Sarah, Jeffrey, and their cousins here in Minot starts again at Minot Public Schools tomorrow, but this afternoon from one to three they get to go to their schools' open houses and meet their teachers (and even bring their school supplies and leave them there so they don't fuss with them in the morning). This morning as I was getting ready after Martha left for work -- lately I've been sleeping in late whenever I can, with the paper route at four am and all (but Martha had the route today, and the one complaint -- yes, even we get them -- was that someone found their Monday paper wet; well, it was raining yesterday when I was out and I put the paper in their box, but if you don't clean it out after a rainstorm I'm afraid that is not my fault).

Briton. Jew. Novelist. Jew. Politician. Jew. Prime Minister. Jew. With Adam Kirsch's biography of Benjamin Disraeli (titled by his name, ISBN 9780805242492), I'm not sure where to begin. At first I was reading this and thinking of the nineteenth-century man as the British equivalent of Abraham Lincoln, except where Lincoln is the only President of the United States to hold a patent (a device for lifting boats over river obstacles), Disraeli is the only Prime Minister of the United Kingdom -- it's been the formal name of that country comprising England, Scotland, and Wales since the 1707 Acts of Union, with its name now being the United Kingdom (UK) of Great Britain and Northern Ireland since 1969 -- to also have written novels. Many novels, in fact.

(Yes, Winston Churchill was the major politician/writer of the twentieth century, but his books are histories. I especially recommend his Second World War.) Where was I? Oh yes, although I'd always wanted to know more about the man Disraeli who became a baptized Christian when he was twelve, yet suffered politically under the onus of being born a Jew the rest of his life, I must admit to being a mite underwhelmed by the story of his life as Mr. Kirsch presents it. Disraeli's own view of his Judaism seems so over-the-top in these pre-Zionism days -- there are parts of this book that made me wonder whether I was reading a biography of Theodor Herzl instead! But in his last burst as Prime Minister in the 1870s, you can't help but admire him for the courage of his convictions.

Disraeli's called a conservative, but in Victorian England "conservative" was roughly the equivalent of liberal today, and vice versa. Returning to my world, today's open house at Longfellow Elementary was a great success. Tomorrow for second grade Jeffrey starts out with Mrs. Braasch, Sarah's teacher from last year; for third grade Sarah has Mrs. Tillema (whom their cousin Josceline had last year, if I remember aright), and for fourth grade Josceline has Mrs. Larcombe. It's going to be a great year, I think ... at least I won't have Sarah or Jeffrey bugging me weekday mornings to play the Nook or the iPad or the DS as we will not have time. And after I've brought the kids to school, I am free (say that in Mr. Humphries' camp accent from Are You Being Served?) until I have to go to work myself.

Now to the start of a fantabulous year!

David