Schramm and I made a whirwlind visit to DC yesterday to attend the official presentation to the Library of Congress of Why Coolidge Matters: How Civility in Politics Can Bring a Nation Together, a collection of essays about Coolidge's continuing relevance for modern politics.  It's a worthwhile collection, with pieces by Amity Shlaes, Burt Folsom, Alvin Felzenberg, Robert Ferrell, Ward Connerly, John Kerry, and others, including Schramm and me.  It's available on Amazon.  The presentation featured a good talk by James H. Douglas, governor of Vermont--who, I was surprised to learn, is a Republican.

We met some worthy folks, including Coolidge's oldest great-grandson and several individuals from the Calvin Coolidge Memoral Foundation, several of whom, Schramm was delighted to learn, are motorcyle aficionados. 

The book has an endorsement on the back cover from a certain former governor of Massachusetts, leading a friend to quip, "A book about why someone matters, with a recommendation from Michael Dukakis? Anyone else see the irony in this?"