Chelsea Clinton’s Coconut

By the Fault has a nice post about Hillary Clinton’s taking part in a MomLogic panel discussion yesterday in, I think, Raleigh. Read it to find out about the title fruit. Link from commenter facta non verba at TalkLeft.

Allan Gurganus is posting dispatches to the NYTimes from North Carolina. Here’s a snippet of the first:

As a lifelong Democrat, I find myself asking: What crossed stars ordained that our party alone should alternate a drought of candidates with this year�s tidal flood of them? I liked Joe Biden. But let us praise sudden excess. There�s something wondrous in life�s going abruptly abundant. Especially after our eight years of sustained near-death experience.

The air has gone out of American buoyancy. Our houses have stopped selling, even to New Jersey retirees. Our economy is dying of its own flagrant usuries. North Carolina�s soldiers return home impaired, suicidal, strangers to their loved ones. One day, Baghdad � next, Wal-Mart. �Military mental health services?� A contradiction in terms.

Our popular village postman joined the Army Reserve. He has been missing in action from our local lives, his route a wake, his charm and knowledge irreplaceable. The difference between knowing one candid soldier in Iraq and none at all? That�s the difference between registering Democratic or Republican.

There is, out here in small-town America, a deep wish to do the right thing. With that comes bitter confusion about which right thing we must cling to next: Our God? Our guns? One another? Since North Carolina has early-voting-centers, most people I know have already cast their ballots. Actual issues are now beside the point; emotions reign. We all feel a sickening urgency to choose one cure.

And here he is from yesterday:

But give her three minutes and Senator Clinton�s bright hard mezzo asserts its raw forward energy. A force, maybe not of Mozartian crystal-springs talent but surely revealing a titanic Beethoven will. Her speech proves as swift as it is friendly. Half-bawdy, she laughs at the unfairness of her needing more time to get camera-ready than do her male competitors.

Unbelievably, Senator Clinton shows no exhaustion. This speech might�ve started her campaign a full 18 months ago. If her factoids more resemble USA Today pie charts than her husband�s baked-goods stories, she hits only salient points. I want her to handle my finances. She reminds me of my tightly buttoned secretly sexy favorite fourth-grade teacher, one whose lessons tasted medicinal going down but have stayed right with me these Ice Ages later.