I'm glad Jimmy Carter got the peace prize. I couldn't accept his comment that "life is unfair", but since he left office he has looked better and better. Not just because he has worked for good causes, but because the presidents since have been worse. And I guess I am more willing to compromise than I was then, more willing to see what I can do to push what is towards small changes rather than to stand on principle and fight only for what is right.

My sudents all wrote that the leaders of the women's rights movement after the Civil War should have compromised, not been so radical. I disagreed there, both for the practical reason that only a woman with radical ideas would have been willing to take a leadership position in such a movement at the time and also because it seemed so important to lay out the principles, not just to make small changes.