The other day, I  found a use for the London Review of Books.

We like to keep the LRB in the plastic sleeve until it’s time to recycle it.

“Please get that out of here,” my husband says every time it arrives.

“There must be something in it,” I said.

Oddly, there was nothing that interested us.

According to VIDA, the LRB is London’s most sexist intellectual bimonthly review. And, indeed, much as I want to believe I am a chrone beyond gender, I can only find it in my heart to read one really famous sexist London publication a year. (We prefer the  TLS, which does a stupendous job covering classics and literature in translation.)  Last year in the LRB, I plowed through a few of Jenny Diski’s spiteful essays on Doris Lessing and an unbelievably sexist article on Hillary Clinton.  As you  see, I favor articles by or about women.  Essentially, the only regular woman writer in the LRB is Diski.

Tired of cold boots, I finally had an LRB brainstorm.  I brought the boots in from the mud room and plopped them on top of the LRB to dry.

Yup, our year’s free subscription was not for nothing.

THE CAUCUSES.  We’re gearing up for the Democratic Caucuses here. It’s the Olympics of the hinterlands, only it’s political!  And there’s nothing else to do here in the winter.

Only thirteen states have caucuses: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, North Dakota, Wyoming and Iowa. The rest of the states  have primaries.  I favor the secret ballot, but live in a caucus state.  We’re raising hands in school gyms here.

The caucuses are a lot of work.  Are you sociable?  You’ll love it.   You mill and throng with fellow Democrats (or Republicans, if that’s your preference) at a designated location in your precinct on a winter’s night, usually a school auditorium or church.  You chat and drink a glass of cider (we Democrats are hip and that’s what we serve),  and then you stand up for your candidate, and there is a count of heads or hands.

I went to the caucus in 2004,  and we spent a lot of time persuading one of our fellow Howard Dean supporters not to go over to the “dark side,” i.e., John Edwards.   “If you go, Dean’s out of the running,” we pointed out.  And so she stayed, though she wanted to hang with her friends, and Dean, by one vote, came in third.  That was John Kerry’s year, though all the magazines said the polls favored Dean.

Hillary is said to be a sure bet this year. Do the polls know?  My mother loved Hillary and hoped to see her elected president. Hilary is a hard worker, if a bit uncomfortable at times, and I have always liked her.   I think she should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work as Secretary of State.  (Obama won it in 2009, essentially just for being elected.)

Actually, I don’t want to go to the caucus.

If I go, I am not sure whether to vote for Hillary or Bernie. They have the same stances on most issues, but he is slightly to the left.  And I love that “socialist” and “social democrat” thing he has going.  (Read the blog at The New York Review of Books for information on his views.)

I’m a Socialist in theory, though I never vote socialist.   In reality, I’m  a liberal Democrat. I vote Democrat, because you throw away your vote in a presidential election if you go third-party.

I am astonished by Bernie’s popularity here.  There are throngs of Bernie signs in our neighborhood.  I have seen a couple of Hillary signs and a couple of  Trump signs, but nothing for other candidates.  This is, however, a liberal precinct.

I would like to see a woman elected president.  Feminism is very important to me.   Am I beyond gender, or am I not?

I am torn. I like both candidates.  (I am sure O’Malley is going nowhere here.)  If it were a primary, I would vote, but the caucus is a lot of work.

Whether I go to the caucus or not, I will vote for the Democratic candidate in the election in November.