Saturday, June 25

           Authors Burstein and Isenberg, in Madison and Jefferson, described landowner and farmer Jefferson’s attention to the rhythms of nature (even while in Washington as president) by charting changes in weather, when vegetables were picked and sent to market as follows:

“He luxuriated in this kind of thinking and planning, as though keeping tabs on the predicable and unpredictable would lead to a more appreciable control over the course of life.”

            The authors described Madison’s personality as “less of an essentialist, with a less deterministic way of mulling over human foibles,” than his friend Jefferson.

            I think we all try various methods to control events and individuals.  

I like journaling as a way to record events and somehow make sense of them, maybe with the subconscious hope of then controlling them or at least my own behaviors, if not the behavior of others.