Articleman's Year in Review: Ranking Twelve Noncommesurable Things I Loved About 2008

Periodically, I like to rank stuff that can't really be weighed against other stuff.  My first foray into this area ranked Michael Jordan, the Sun, and a good political book, among other things.  My return to the realm of the noncommensurable counts down twelve great things about my 2008 that really can't be compared.  Which of course, I compare anyway.  Grip it and rip it, y'all, and Happy '09 to you:

12.  Running.  I got my running mojo back in 2008.  Most pleasant.  Hope it sticks through my forties.  It's good for me.

11.  The Yankees Not Making the Playoffs.  I liked this even more.  The Yankees last didn't make the playoffs in 1994, but that's just because there were no playoffs in 1994 -- no one did!  I love how small markets rise in baseball -- this year Tampa -- because it gives hope and joy to kids who care too much about games (a pleasant place to get lost when you're an eight year old), and because it's part of the purity of the game.  Just ask Crash Davis.

10.  Heirloom Tomatoes.  Their taste is so full and rich, eating my first one this year was like discovering that I have been eating false tomatoes my whole life.  These are essentially old-fashioned tomatoes, open-pollinated and grown in small amounts, more expensively, and not in the mass-produced manner in which most store bought tomatoes, even those grown organically, are.  Put a thick slice of heirloom tomato on a sirloin or Kobe hamburger patty for your friends, and you are suddenly a good comfort food chef.

9.  Illinois Basketball Is Bouncing Back.  Most teams I root for I will drift away from in bad years, not because I'm a fair weather fan, but because my time commitments, professionally, as a parent especially, and this year politically, take me away from watching crappy sporting events.  But even in bad years, like the 16-19 2007-08 campaign, I stuck with and watched (to the extent I was able) the University of Illinois basketball team.  I love the coach, I love the program, it's quite simple.  A 90 win White Sox playoff team gets less love from me in a busy year than the Illini did last year.  Happily, the Illini are back, will head into Big Ten play 12-1 with a big 75-59 win over Mizzou, and have frighteningly good recruits in 2009, 2010 (Jereme Richmond, Crandall Head), and 2011 (Tracy Abrams). Better times to come.

8.  Pro Bono Work.  Doing and especially promoting others doing pro bono legal work has been a big part of my 2008.  Some of my most satisfying professional moments came in this area.  In a down economy, there are a lot of opportunities to get good lawyers together with opportunities for public service, both directly for clients and also for the courts.  2008 has been a good year for making lemonade from those lemons.

7.  John Adams, the HBO Miniseries.  The underappreciated Paul Giamatti simply inhabits John Adams, in a spectacular performance replete with the rumpled fussiness, the passion of his speaking and lawyering, the self-righteousness and ego sometimes broken up by the truly self-effacing wit.  Whether this was the John Adams, this is a compelling John Adams you should want to meet.  While the series' length makes its scripting inherently reductive, it features other tremendous performances.  Of particular note are the chameleonlike Tom Wilkinson -- he's a crazy trial lawyer! he's a blue-collar guy turned transsexual! no, wait, he's Benjamin Franklin! -- David Morse's wonderfully understated, taciturn Washington, Sarah Polley as daughter Nabby, and Stephen Dillane with a charming yet dislikeable Jefferson.  Best TV of the year for me, but I don't much like TV.

6.  Alinea.  Had a wonderful meal during the first week of July at Alinea, the molecular gastronomy mecca on the near north side of Chicago.  While the menu has changed, the current one represents well in style what we had.  The wine pairings were fifteen strong.  Nothing like a twenty-five course meal with fifteen wines at the best restaurant in America to make it all work out.

5.  John Quincy Adams, A Public Life, A Private Life, by Paul Nagel.  The book of my year.  I read a bunch of President books -- McCullough's John Adams, Joseph Ellis' His Excellency (Washington), Walter Bornemann's Polk, David Herbert Donald's Lincoln.  I can't say Nagel's book is better than Donald's, but it brings alive John Quincy Adams, who had the most amazing career of any American President.  He begins by traveling in his early teens with dad John, the American envoy to France and the Netherlands.  As a youth, he attends Harvard (where he later teaches) and becomes a lawyer.  At 26, in 1794, President Washington appoints him minister to the Netherlands, and two years later, Portugal.  In 1803, he is elected Senator from Massachusetts.  He later argues a major contract case in the U.S. Supreme Court (Fletcher v. Peck), declines appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court, becomes Monroe's Secretary of State (where he is the principal architect of the Monroe Doctrine), becomes the sixth U.S. President, and then spends seventeen years in the House of Representatives as the most ardent opponent of slavery in Congress (and returns to the Supreme Court to win the freedom of the Amistad slaves!).  I left out the part where he taught himself German and immediately penned one of the best translations from the German of the epic poem Oberon.  What a guy, and the book, which draws heavily upon his colorful diaries, brings the man alive very colorfully and well.

4.  dagblog.  I'd provide the hyperlink, but you're already in dagblog.  Or maybe I should provide the link to increase our traffic, kind of a Moebius link.  I love the writing and conversation with others, I love that I can write about matters beyond politics, including food, hoops, music, the media, anything of currency.  I enjoy working with the people I am working with here.  I have confidence that it will continue to expand and improve, and that our rising traffic numbers (we're in the top 1% or so of blogs, traffic-wise) will continue to rise.  Thank you for stopping by.

3.  The Whole South Carolina Primary Thing.  Had a passionate argument with a very smart and well-connected friend of mine who strongly backed Hillary Clinton on a day in mid-January when she led Obama by 20 points in national polls.  He said I should shift my support to her, essentially because her victory was inevitable, and that she'd come close in SC.  I argued for an hour that Obama still had a chance to pull it out, told him how disaffection with Bill was building, the Kennedy endorsement would help, Obama would win SC by 15.  The remarkable SC Democratic debate made me so uptight I had to leave the room.  I've tried cases that made me less nervous.  Later that week I hosted a SC primary watch party in a bar.  Obama won by 28, and was in the game.  When he spoke on this wall-sized TV screen that night, I teared up.  That whole period felt so special, and it was.

2.  Pedicab Ride in Santa Fe.  My son really didn't want to go to Coyote Cafe, exhausted as he was from an afternoon hike in the Tsankawi unit of the Bandelier National Monument.  He was pooped.  He wanted to ride on a pedicab.  I told him he could on the way back.  Right.  Parents always say things like that.  But on the way back, it was a crisp 55 degrees or so near sunset in the Plaza, the skinny hippie boy with the New Mexico flag on his pedicab was waiting for a fare, and we got under his warm blanket as he pedaled all over and talked about his time in southeast Asia.  I told him to take the longest way back to the hotel.  It was just a couple of minutes, but my son's face was something I'll remember for the rest of my life, he was so happy.  I gave the guy a $20, should have given him a lot more.

1.  The Election of Barack Obama.  The nation needed that badly.  I needed that badly.  I have already written at some length about what his election meant to me personally, so I won't repeat myself.  The campaign was a nearly perfect thing.  A tip of the hat again to everyone who canvassed.  Obama is the President, but this was your year.  Thank you for powering the New Democratic Majority, about which I'll be writing in the coming weeks.