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help?

Why Are There No Editors Nowadays?

I have to thank looper ... well, Lucia -- I keep refering to people in my head by their email addresses except for superthongboi -- for recomending the book The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker. I have enjoyed it -- but when I hit an offending passage I just dropped it and wandered off. Then the next day I'd forgotten -- AAwk! and saw it again, but persevered. The passage, on page 99, goes, "I stood in the pose of George Washington crossing the Potomac." I presume he means he stood in the pose of Geo. Washington in that famous but much criticised painting of Washington crossing the DELAWARE RIVER on Christmas Day, 1776, in order to perpetrate a sneak attack in New Jersey. You'd be hard-pressed to get to New Jersey by crossing the Potomac River. Washington lived on the Potomac, and in the story, threw a coin across the Rappahannock, and probably did cross those rivers. However, no one stands up in a boat with his foot raised on the -- gunwale? seat? something else? (I've seen it, but I forget) -- thing like that, except in paintings. I went to school in (among other places) Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, and also lived in Delaware, the First State. I think this Baker dude is an American from New York, the Empire State -- one of the original states -- and with no excuse to get it wrong. George Washington's family was from County Durham, nearby where my mum was from, and she looked like him (I always meanly pointed out to her chagrin). At least to me they looked similar. And he had a pack of hounds because he was an avid foxhunter. I always liked the fact that he was a surveyor. I think leading a sneak attack on a religious day, especially when you and your enemy have the same religion, is pretty skanky however.