PAGE SEVENTEEN

"The blessed summer light creates a euphoria
that runs through our veins...."

"Even in a good year, summer speeds past in a three-month flash, from mid-May to mid-August. In contrast to our long winter darkness, the blessed summer light creates a euphoria that runs through our veins. Hour after hour, there is still more time and more daylight to accomplish one more thing. If we told our kids to be home before dark, we wouldn't see them for weeks. The never-ending sun so elongates the days that by September, newcomers to the state (or 'Cheechakos') say they're exhausted enough to hibernate until spring."

I think that these few words can teach us much about the peril and the glory of our mortal frames and our mortal condition...and much about our Sarah! The best way to see this may be to pose a pair of hypothetical questions and conditions.

First, what if summer were never-ending in the Great Land (or anywhere else)? What if, instead of the glow and glory and "euphoria," as she says, of the swift-footed and swift-fated ninety days racing by in their flaming exultation, what if, instead of this, time plodded along in a never-ending, never-changing summer time? Would the days be so precious and, indeed, priceless? Would they have any meaning?

Second, what if this summertide never came at all? What if there was no hope for the coming of the days and times of warmth and light and action? What if we were comdemned to a perpetuity of confinement in the chains and fetters of darkness and of coldness and of frozen, lifeless inactivity?

On the contrary, Alaskans are given and we are given the gift of the golden season of brightness and activity. However, we are solemnly charged to cherish these days, to fill them with vigorous, noble exercises and strivings in our various fields of endeavor and of combat.

Consider the ancient wisdom of Odysseus, hero of Homer's The Odyssey. The goddess Calypso offered him unending life, unending youth, if he would stay with her on her island of Ogygia and forsake Ithaca and his people. The hero chose to return to his wife, Penelope; the hero chose to return home; the hero chose to remain mortal; the hero chose to remain human; the hero chose to remain a man...the hero chose to remain within the embrace of Time on this earth.

Surely it is the very limitations placed upon the hourglass of our minutes, hours, and days that, potentially, clothes all our time in robes of glory--if we use our time well.

We can imbibe this lesson anywhere on the planet, but I believe it has been more sharply and forcefully defined for those privileged souls who inhabit the great forty-ninth State!! Think of the paradox: Never-Ending Days That Will Soon End!!!

The gift of Sarah to this nation is ultimately a mystery that none of us can fully grasp or explain. The Secret is hidden and buried deep in the confluence and congruence of the Will of a Loving God and the free will of a loving servant of His ("a servant's heart"!!). Still, we can discern many factors that influenced her through the course of her life, beginning, of course, with her wonderful mom and dad!

However, the particular and peculiar geographical position of Alaska that engenders so bracing and striking a contrast between the Time of Light and the Time of Darkness is surely one of those powerful influences.

As we watch in awe, in admiration, in amazement while this little lion of a lady races up and down and across this land of ours, fighting, fighting always, fighting for America, we surely see the Alaskana girl who, very early in life, learned to use the Days of Summer, and to use them well!!

Now, indeed, as the Bard (Shakespeare) might say, has the Winter of Our National Discontent given way to the Glorious Summer of Sarah Palin of Alaska.

She will act for us;

She will not rest in her labors for us;

She will seize the golden rod that the turnings and movements of the Lord's celestial timetable have placed into her strong hands, and will wield that rod to crush the evil that threatens to engulf and enslave the land that she loves.

The Summer Days Are Verily Come!!

Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land!!!!



Read It For Yourself:

Other Great Sarah Books:

Palin Essentials:

Credits:

All sidebar photos are from Wikimedia. I have tried to post all royalty-free images or to get permission, but in a few cases I could not locate the original source of a photograph or find a way to ask permission.


Contact info: bbrianus@gmail.com.

Other Great Going Rogue Reviews:

Jedediah Bila:

"Palin’s inviting first-person narration that is sometimes whimsical, often confident, and always patriotic...Going Rogue is truly one of those reads in which you put the book down after your eyes graze the final lines and you somehow feel like the writer is someone you’ve known all your life."
John Ziegler:

"I was simply blown away by Going Rogue on almost every level. For many reasons, this is by far the best book and greatest literary achievement by a political figure in my lifetime..."
Brigadier General Anthony J. Tata:
"Her book washes away all doubts that any reader might have had about her readiness to be president. She comes across as exceptionally bright, dedicated, and passionate about public service. Her moral compass is strong, pointing true North in this case. And she has a wicked sense of humor."
Don Surber:
"Conservatives know why Palin is still standing — and standing taller today than those who tried to bring her down. What does not kill you makes you stronger. Thank you, Tina Fey."

Sarah Palin is Coming to Town

Review by Stanley Fish:

When I walked into the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan last week, I headed straight for the bright young thing who wore an “Ask Me” button, and asked her to point me to the section of the store where I might find Sarah Palin’s memoir, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” She looked at me as if I had requested a copy of “Mein Kampf” signed in blood by the author....


A few days later...I had begun reading Palin’s book, and while I wouldn’t count myself a fan in the sense of being a supporter, I found it compelling and very well done....

First, the art. The book has an architectonic structure that is built around a single moment, the moment when Palin receives a call from John McCain inviting her to be the vice-presidential candidate of the Republican party. When we first hear about the call it is as much a surprise to us as it was (at least as reported) to her, because for six pages she has been recounting a wonderful family outing at the Alaska State Fair. When her phone rings, she hopes it might be a call from her son Track, a soldier soon to deploy to Iraq, but “it was Senator John McCain asking if I wanted to help him change history.”

And that’s the last we hear of it for 200 pages. In between we hear a lot about Wasilla, high school, basketball, college, marriage, children, Down syndrome, Alaska politics, the environment, a daughter’s pregnancy. The re-entry of John McCain into the narrative on page 208 introduces Palin’s account of the presidential campaign and its aftermath, especially her decision to resign the governorship before the end of her term....


Paradoxically, the effect of the neatly spaced references to the call is to de-emphasize it as a dramatic moment. It is presented not as a climax, but as an interruption of matters more central to Palin’s abiding concerns — her family, Alaska’s prosperity, energy policy. (She loves to rehearse the kind of wonkish details we associate with Hillary Clinton, whom she admires.)

Indeed, it is a feature of this narrative that events we might have expected to be foregrounded are elided or passed over. Palin introduced herself to the nation with a powerful, electrifying speech accepting McCain’s invitation to join the ticket. It gets half a sentence (“I gave my speech”)....


The only event that receives an extended discussion is her resignation. It is important to her because as an act it reflects on her integrity, and she has to be sure (as she eventually was) that she was doing it for the right reasons.

Resigning was a moral act for which she was responsible. The vice-presidential candidacy just happened to her; her account of it reads like an extended “what-I-did-on-my summer-and fall-vacation” essay.


For many politicians, family life is sandwiched in between long hours in public service. Palin wants us to know that for her it is the reverse. Political success is an accident that says nothing about you. Success as a wife, mother and citizen says everything...

I find the voice undeniably authentic...It is the voice of small-town America, with its folk wisdom, regional pride, common sense, distrust of rhetoric (itself a rhetorical trope), love of country and instinctive (not doctrinal) piety.

It says, here are some of the great things that have happened to me, but they are not what makes my life great and American. (“An American life is an extraordinary life.”) It says, don’t you agree with me that family, freedom and the beauties of nature are what sustain us?


And it also says, vote for me next time. For it is the voice of a politician, of the little girl who thought she could fly, tried it, scraped her knees, dusted herself off and “kept walking.”

In the end, perseverance, the ability to absorb defeat without falling into defeatism, is the key to Palin’s character. It’s what makes her run in both senses of the word and it is no accident that the physical act of running is throughout the book the metaphor for joy and real life. Her handlers in the McCain campaign wouldn’t let her run (a mistake, I think, even at the level of photo-op), no doubt because they feared another opportunity to go “off script,” to “go rogue.”

But run she does (and falls, but so what?), and when it is all over and she has lost the vice presidency and resigned the governorship, she goes on a long run and rehearses in her mind the eventful year she has chronicled. And as she runs, she achieves equilibrium and hope: “We’ve been through amazing days, and really, there wasn’t one thing to complain about. I feel such freedom, such hope, such thankfulness for our country, a place where nothing is hopeless.”

The message is clear. America can’t be stopped. I can’t be stopped. I’ve stumbled and fallen, but I always get up and run again. Her political opponents, especially those who dismissed Ronald Reagan before he was elected, should take note. Wherever you are, you better watch out. Sarah Palin is coming to town.

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