As another put it, "The Child is father of the Man." One of my stars.

No they haven't changed. Vanished for a time, a long time---maybe I thought they were gone. Then one day the impossibly thick bank of black cloud broke up. And there they were in perfect resplendence, still providing a pulse. The same stars, my only guides, win or lose.

My soul is an enchanted boat,

Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float

Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;

And thine doth like an angel sit

Beside a helm conducting it,

Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.

It seems to float ever, for ever,

Upon that many-winding river,

Between mountains, woods, abysses,

A paradise of wildernesses!

Till, like one in slumber bound,

Borne to the ocean, I float down, around,

Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound:

Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinions

In music's most serene dominions;

Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.

And we sail on, away, afar,

Without a course, without a star,

But, by the instinct of sweet music driven;

Till through Elysian garden islets

By thee, most beautiful of pilots,

Where never mortal pinnace glided,

The boat of my desire is guided:

Realms where the air we breathe is love,

Which in the winds and on the waves doth move,

Harmonizing this earth with what we feel above.

We have past Age's icy caves,

And Manhood's dark and tossing waves,

And Youth's smooth ocean, smiling to betray:

Beyond the glassy gulfs we flee

Of shadow-peopled Infancy,

Through Death and Birth, to a diviner day;

A paradise of vaulted bowers,

Lit by downward-gazing flowers,

And watery paths that wind between

Wildernesses calm and green,

Peopled by shapes too bright to see,

And rest, having beheld; somewhat like thee;

Which walk upon the sea, and chant melodiously!

And something else.

I grew up in a red diaper baby sort of environment. My mother says she danced with my baby sister when Reagan was shot; my father was in the SDS in college, and kept a Vietcong flag on the wall in his dorm room.

Naturally, I rebelled.

One thing I noticed is that the MSM gives you the narrative on the Right before you even have the chance to really acquaint yourself with them. It's like a nation-wide tainted jury pool.

Take Sarah Palin for instance. I admit that I know little about her, except that if I want to hang out in an Upper East side apartment with movers and shakers, I need to sneer at the mention of her name, and talk about how she is a corn-pone fascist who will usher in the 4th Reich if her power ever extends past Alaska.

While Reagan does not escape this scorn (the Left still regards him as Hitler), for some reason Lefties always give HW a tepid endorsement (even Jon Stewart admits to voting for him).