Donald Ferguson: Calvin
“
Silent Cal” Coolidge was also from rural New England. A
newspaper reporter was going to the White House for a state dinner.
She bet her editor that she could get Silent Cal to say more than
three words to her at dinner. At dinner, she charmingly told the
situation to Silent Cal. His response. “You lose.” My
hero.
I remember a meeting in Austin, TX a few years back in which
there were perhaps 80 or so people in a long and narrow room.
Don positioned his chair sideways on the narrow edge nearest the
door. At one point, he had something to add. As he
began to speak, he was quickly interrupted with a request:
“Could you speak up?”. Don paused for a
second. His then responded with a “no”, whereupon he
proceeded from the point where he had left off.
The “less code” and “simpler” memes
are advancing from below. And from above. From
the inside. As well as from the outside.
P.S.
Anybody have any good recommendations for removing Tabasco
stains? ;-)
Vinegar plus dishwashing liquid? Or maybe that’s for red wine. I do know a cool recipe for a drink involving tabasco, although I guess that won’t be much consolation to you.
In other news, your RSS 0.91 feed is borked. Your description is wrapped in some kind of unescape function.
Silent Don Speaks: &unescape(Donald Ferguson: Calvin “ Silent Cal” Coolidge was also from rural New England. A newspaper reporter was going to the White House for a state dinner. She bet her editor that she could get Silent Cal to say...
I agree that the woman said “My friend bet me I couldn’t get you to say more than two words”.
I’ve always heard that Coolidge’s response was “Did she?”
In “America: The Book: A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction” (by the Daily Show people) the joke changes his response to “Fuck you”. Everyone needs to download the audiobook and set it to repeat.