Word: greate
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Distrust of government is as old as the Republic. In fact, it's in some ways the basis of the Republic; the framers took great pains to dilute and spread out the powers of the central government. They did not want an overweening concentration of power at the center of our national life. At the same time, they arrived at those checks and balances through a spirit of compromise--something that's notably absent today in Washington. On the final day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin noted that every member should "doubt a little...
...more interested in himself than I am. And yet even I don't care about my genealogy. What my great-great-great-grandfather did isn't any more interesting to me than what your great-great-great-grandfather did, especially since in both cases it was farming...
...Meryl Streep, while NBC's upcoming Who Do You Think You Are?, executive-produced by Friends actress Lisa Kudrow, seeks out the dead relatives of Sarah Jessica Parker and Spike Lee. In an episode of the NBC show, Kudrow goes to Belarus to find the grave of her great-grandmother who was killed in the Holocaust and meets a family member who survived. It's fascinating, but probably only because she's a celebrity. Even ballroom dancing is interesting if there are celebrities involved. (See the top 10 reality TV shows...
...Ancestry.com look up my family history. I found out through the 1930 Census that my father's father's parents paid $45 a month for a one-room New York City apartment for six people and they were the only ones on the block without a radio. My great-grandmother, when asked what country she grew up in, wrote "Poland," crossed it out and then wrote "Austria." These are countries that don't even border each other. I come from stupid people. You know how I know that? Because I had to look up whether those countries border each other...
Carol was very excited that I was interested in our family's history, even if it was just because a former sitcom actress told me to be. And to my shock, she told me a fascinating story. My great-grandfather Reuben and his brother left Russia instead of serving in the army. This, it seems, is where I get my bravery from. But later, when Reuben's dad was looking to get the rest of the family out of Russia, he sent family members to scout out New York, Brazil and Argentina and wound up ditching my great-grandfather...