The electric rotary cutter may in fact be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Holy shitballs Batman. A twenty minute charge busted down all my cardboard in under ten minutes and then snipped flagstones to size. I may be in love, at least until I get stupid and require stitches. Still beats the wrist and hand pain I would generally be ignoring by now.
Weird side effect of Audible – time log. I didn’t think I spent much time in the lab tonight, but I’m three hours into the book I started this evening. Sanding takes for. ev. er.
You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one’s country, not to its institutions or its office-holders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. To be loyal to rags, to shout for rags, to worship rags, to die for rags—that is a loyalty of unreason, it is pure animal; it belongs to monarchy, was invented by monarchy; let monarchy keep it. I was from Connecticut, whose Constitution declares “that all political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority and instituted for their benefit; and that they have at all times an undeniable and indefeasible right to alter their form of government in such a manner as they may think expedient.”
Under that gospel, the citizen who thinks he sees that the commonwealth’s political clothes are worn out, and yet holds his peace and does not agitate for a new suit, is disloyal; he is a traitor. That he may be the only one who thinks he sees this decay, does not excuse him; it is his duty to agitate anyway, and it is the duty of the others to vote him down if they do not see the matter as he does.
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court