January is the Season

for passages from off this Breathing Earth it seems. Case in point former Governor of New York Mario Cuomo who died yesterday. Cuomo was once one of those Apex Predators in the Democratic Party whose name was constantly bandied about as a potential Presidential Candidate for something akin to three election cycles. It was a tight little fraternity for a while there and included such luminaries as Senator Sam Nunn, Senator Dale Bumpers and Governor Cuomo. None of them ever took the bait, although with his gift for eloquence, tendency to public rumination & proverbial thin skin there was something weirdly "watchable" whenever Cuomo wrestled with the decision to run even if he came up with the same answer time after time. In life Mario Cuomo was a Jeffersonian, in good times he was for "The Man and The Dollar" (to quote Abraham Lincoln) but if those things came into conflict then he was for The Man, First and Foremost. So its a little ironic that a recession wracked discontented New York Electorate finally gave Cuomo the heave-ho in 1994 ending an eloquent, brilliant and somewhat enigmatic career in politics. I actually shook hands with him briefly on West 57th Street in Manhattan some ten years ago, he was game but a little preoccupied looking, ah but that is how it goes with the smart ones they are always thinking Big Thoughts.