The one educational item I learned yesterday is that there have been no US Presidents born in the 1930s. Carter and George I were both born in 1924. Clinton and George II were both born in 1946. The speculation as I heard it on NPR is that those born in the 1930s - children of both the depression and World War II - were intensely focused on survival and did not produce the same type of leaders that other decades did.

Far more interesting, from a gossip perspective, is that the new portrait of Bill Clinton that will become a part of the National Portrait Gallery does not display his wedding ring. The fingers of his left hand are curled under and the ring - which the painter, Nelson Shanks, claims was on his hand at all times - cannot be seen. The portrait shows him in a rakish, hand-on-hip pose with an expression that has been characterized as showing a "hint of a scowl", "flat and tired", "relaxed, rougish", and resembling Ted Koppel. Thr first thing I noticed was what looks like a newspaper in his right hand, certainly not something that will be included in the portrait of the current president.