Calling Card 
Bush biographer Bill Minutaglio takes to Newsweek’s never too rich and too thin pages to update us on the former president’s goings on, and he appears to have a rather open schedule. “Bush has always been friendly,” Minutaglio comments, and the Ex is going out of his way to show it.
The local college kid who sold many Bush neighbors “Welcome Home George & Laura” signs found himself besieged by Bush phone calls, and a 14 year-old commanded 90 minutes of Bush’s time for a frank exchange of ideas.
Things are more mixed further from Preston Hollow. Bush got a big welcome when he first returned to Midland as ex-president. Even a Bush minion was amazed:
“They turned out 30,000 people here,” says his longtime Texas accountant, Bob McCleskey. “And that’s without giving out food and beer.“
But an effort by a hometown state legislator to congratulate Bush on his torture achievements was stopped by
heroic state representative Lon Burman.
Gas Goes South 
Not content with sparking America’s new tea-bagging sensation, CNBC Loser Laureate Rick Santelli takes his angry prophecy to Texas next week, speaking at the George H. W. Bush Library’s storied “Economic Leadership Forum.”
The Bush Library has apparently recovered from Chuck Norris’s stirring “McLane Leadership in Business Award” visit.
A Stretch 
The Houston Press’s Richard Connelly directs our gaze to the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, where the Living Legend ex-president prepares to honor one of our nation’s heroes.
Bush is to present the super-swanky “McLane Leadership in Business Award” to the ever rugged Chuck Norris.
Just what contributions Mr. Norris made to commerce is unclear in the press release, but he has recently floated his possible candidacy for “President of Texas.”
And who needs an excuse to slap up an Invasion USA poster, with the chopper-menaced* Capitol Dome! 
*Not seen in actual film!
Laying It On With A Trowel 
Our glorious tradition of Presidential Libraries was of course launched by Franklin Roosevelt, who famously parked the first one in his yard, and had himself buried there to complete the pharaoh-fication.
The special localness of these little bits o’ greatness scattered over the landscape are celebrated by America’s leading purveyor of thoughtful presidential historian mush, David McCullough:
” it is valuable for anyone trying to understand the life of a particular president should come to the place that produced that human being, where his memory is part of the story of that place.“
Stirring words, except Reagan’s location is an accident of real estate after Stanford, where he had no ties, turned him down. Nixon crawled back to Yorba Linda after numerous rejections elsewhere, and Bush Sr is in College Station for ideological congruity, not any local ties.
The great tradition is coming to its logical end at the FDR Library, where the seventy-five year old structure’s roof leaks, the wiring is shot, and damp threatens the Roosevelt papers. A $17 million fix is requested.
Just why this collection of randomly sited mini-archives must be maintained and expanded into perpetuity even as they are pilfered from within is unclear.
Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot…
