Having been beaten and bloodied after making the apparently outrageous statement that--as an average citizen who was a kid in the 1980s, not as a political scientist or any sort of expert--I admire our 40th President and think of him often in terms of my own political philosophies, and making the further outrageous and flawed assumption that maybe, just maybe, some of y'all might be as interested as I was in reaching across the aisle and actually talking with each other rather than slamming, name-calling, point scoring, ignoring the stated intention of my post, picking bits of it to respond to out of context, and other things I tell my Comp I students not to do, I got to thinking about some of the other famous folks that (gasp) I don't remember, don't know everything about, but admire anyway. With the exception of the first, they were all flawed human beings who caused harm as well as good, and I'm no professional expert about any of them, but they all mean something to me.  I submit that I shouldn't need a defended dissertation on any of them to publicly state that I admire and draw inspiration from them.

Jesus--yup, definitely don't remember Him, and I'm no professional theologian.  And none of His inner circle were women.  But I like Him anyway and trust Him with my soul.

Catherine of Aragon--don't remember her either.  Anyway, if her faith was a mustard seed, then mine is a sub-sub-sub-atomic particle.  And I am stubborn, but I don't hold a candle to her. 

Anne Boleyn (yes, I admire them both)--she was an adulteress and may even have conspired in a few murders.  And of course I have no detailed personal memories of her either (you get the drift).  She was also an independent and outspoken woman, a religious, social, and educational reformer, and the mother of . . .

Queen Elizabeth I of England--also a likely adulteress and possible murderer (apple, tree).  Beyond that, a brilliant politician and beloved leader, a pale-skinned redhead who wore a lot of jewelry (hi!), an unapologetic nerd who translated the Bible back and forth from Greek for fun, a woman in a man's world who never married, succeeded professionally, and did relationships her way or the highway, my hero.

Thomas More (if anyone still respects/tolerates me enough to have read this far, we're almost out of the Renaissance, I promise)--educated his daughters when such wasn't done, and then had enough courage of his convictions to die rather than recant.  

Sir Philip Sidney--the only poet whose verse has ever physically impacted me.

William Shakespeare--shoot, it's possible (though highly improbable) that the man we call Shakespeare didn't exist or do anything we attribute to him.  But his words are on all our lips and his likeness is all over my personal library.

The US Founding Fathers--they were white male Europeans!  Some of them held slaves!  They did/believed a lot of things we find unsavory today!  They also had More-like courage of their convictions, committed high treason on the strength of an idea, and gave us the society we live in today.  I thank them.

LM Montgomery--though she married late in life and had children, she was essentially a spinster schoolteacher, who from her little Canadian island gave the world a freckled, opinionated, bookish redhead (hi!), and through that fictional schoolgirl brought a lot of feminist ideals to countries that wouldn't necessarily have had such without Anne of Green Gables.

Buck O'Neill--I'm here passionately defending myself because people were rude to me on an anonymous blog.  Mr. O'Neill, who I should learn from, was a model of graciousness, always saying that he didn't mind not having played in MLB because he did have his career.  Love.  Which brings us to . . . 

Branch Rickey/Jackie Robinson--can't have one without the other, and yeah it's just a sport, but it did a lot to help integration, which brings us to . . .

Rosa Parks--who not only has the same middle name I do but is an ordinary person who found the courage one day to stop giving into something that was wrong.  That's heroism. 

 Jimmy Carter--I think I've made it pretty clear that I'd disagree with every policy position he ever held, but I've always respected his Habitat for Humanity work, and he won me over when I was watching the Presidents documentary and he said something like, "the happiest moment of my life was when the hostages were returned from Iran, and I didn't care at that point about losing the election."  That was my whole point with the previous post that everyone hated so much.  Americans of different political stripes may disagree wildly, but ultimately, per Top Gun, "we're all on the same team."

Ronald Reagan--I'm not recanting.  

The 2004 Boston Red Sox and 2008 Philadelphia Phillies, with sides of Bill Simmons and Jayson Stark, respectively--laugh if you must.

Based on a remark (which I am taking the wildly optimistic step of believing was meant as advice, rather than more nastiness) in one of the comments on the post in which I was trying to be nice and everyone beat me up, comments are off here because this is my closing argument, so to speak.   Please message me if you want to actually discuss any of this, but if you just want to be nasty some more, take it elsewhere.