WALK AROUND THE BLOCK - More on Gorbachev

 Just came home from an easy walk around the block. That's because I ate a delicious breakfast - two eggs from free range hens - mushrooms I had soaked in water to get the dirt out of them - and cheese made from contented cows - a consortium - up in Vermont, where I once attended Goddard College.

Goddard has gone through many changes and had once lost their license.

My dear friend WENDY GOLDEN DAVIDSON, attended Goddard, though she died as many folks do - she was afeared of going to the doctor.

Is it a death wish?

I also totally wet my hair when I walked swiftly around the block to keep me cool.

Said hello to Bob Sanders, who I mistakenly called Bill, who has already passed.

And KALIE, the barking dog across the street, has something wrong with her.

Very sad.

Watched as the yellow schoolbus pulled up and took the kids to the primary grades. 

Gotta run. My MEMORY TEACHER, KAT, has arrived.

Bye for now. 

...

This is a preview of my latest article for The Atlantic. For full access to both my newsletter and theatlantic.com, subscribe now.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, has died. Many testimonials will focus on his humanity and his vision. But these qualities are not what made him great. Gorbachev attained greatness by failing.

This sounds odd in the West because Westerners have always loved Gorbachev more than his own people ever did, and the tendency outside Russia is to ascribe to him great achievements that were not his own. The night he died, for example, I watched a CNN reporter discuss how Gorbachev helped bring down the Berlin Wall. This is simply not true: Gorbachev made the decision not to deploy Soviet troops to prevent Germans from tearing the Wall apart, which is a very different thing.

As you listen to the tributes, remember always that Gorbachev was trying to rescue, rather than destroy, the U.S.S.R. and Soviet Communism. We should all be thankful that he did not succeed in his mission. He was too decent for a job that required a fundamental lack of decency. In the end, he showed the courage and humanity not to use force to try to turn back the clock—a lesson lost on his latest successor, Vladimir Putin.

The story of Gorbachev’s career is not a neat and unbroken narrative of reform. It is a very Soviet story of intrigue and gamesmanship, with a very Soviet ending of both disaster and dashed hopes.

,,,,

Terribly hot n humid as I walked around block.

Guess who I met?

Scott!

Plus a guy with a Caddy in his driveway. Told him I'm gonna go home and work on my memoirs. 

This is true.

But first I must decompress.

Cold water to head.