seventeen things i learnt from nixons memoirs

1) kissenger and sammy davis jr met and talked.
2) jackie's handwriting has a careless, handsome, fuckable joie d' vie (he reporoduced a note of hers)
3) the notes to his daugthers are filled with cliches, and dont seem v, personal
4) he spent time with norman vincen peale
5) he was a snaky, lying bastard
6) apparently he thot that blacks were like isrealites--and was "poltically unbeholden" to both of them (538)
7) "for those willing to work hard, california seemed to be a land of almost unlimited oppurtunity' (5)
8) he and his brothers were named after the early kings of england
9) "my mother was always concerned and active in community affairs, but her most striking aulity was a deep sense of privacy" (9)
10) we never had a meal without saying grace, but except for special occasions when each of us boys would be called on to recire a verse from the bible, these prayers were always silent. She even took literally the injunction from ST Matthew that praying should be done behind closed doors and went into a closet to say her prayers before going to bed at night" (ibid)
11) i grew up in a religous enviroment that was at once unusuall strict and unusally tolerent. My Mother and her family belonged to a branch of the Friends church that had ministers, choirs andcirtually all teh symbols of other protestent denomations. The difference were water baptistsm and communion, and hte heavy qauker influence on silent prayer. My father had convereted to Qaukeris, from his own rather robust methodism at the time of his marriage and he had a typical entuhism of a convert for his new religion. Our family went to church four times on a Sunday--Sunday school, the regular morning service, Christian Endevour in the late afternoon, and another service in the evening. ... (not including a service on wedneday)(16)
12) often we drove to Los Angeles to hear Aimee Semple McPherson, at the Angelus Temple and Bob Shuler, her great competitor, at the Trinity Method church (ibid)
13) When I was Vice President, President Eisenhower urgerd me to refer to God from time to time in my speeches, but I did not feel comfortable doing so. (17)
14) Despite my qauker background and belief, inever considered getting a (draft deferment). When I heard that young lawyers recruited as officers for the Navy, I talked to Pat about it, and applied for a commision.
15) Although nothing was ever said, I knew that ny nother and grandmother were deeply troubled by my decsison. In World War One my Uncle OScar, had gone to france, with the American Friends Service Committee and worked with the red cross as an orderly...I am sure that this was the lind of service tey had hoped I would choose. It as a difficult descion for me to make, but I felt that I culd not sit back while my country was being attacked. The problem with Quaker pacifism , it semmed to me, was that it could only work if one were fighting a civilsed, compassionate enemy. In the face of hiler and Tojo, pacisfism haf not only failed to stop violence--it actually played into the hands of a barbarous foe and weakened home-front morale. (33)
16) he spends about the same time talking about his poker then he does about his break with the SOF
17) nothing after that--though we have 1000s pages to go.