If the media were covering the Exodus today, this is what we might expect to see:
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By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
An angel helps a compassionate but despairingly frustrated businessman by showing what life would have been like if he never existed.
While I was deep into the A Memory of Light (Wheel of Time), the final volume of Robert Jordan, now Brandon Sanderson‘s epic story of good versus evil, Garry was watching the Inauguration. I had forgotten today was Inauguration day but he had not. My bad.
When you aren’t working or going to school, it’s easy to not know what day of the week it is, much else is being celebrated. I often don’t know what day of the week it is, though because I blog and pay bills, I’m pretty aware of the day of month it is.
Inauguration
As much as Garry dislikes political mud-slinging, he loves the ceremonies that mark America‘s traditions. For him, an inauguration is not the inauguration of a Democrat or a Republican … it’s the inauguration of an American President and he enjoys it, even if it isn’t a candidate for whom he voted. It’s American, not political.
He wrote something about it on Facebook and at least one person went into a political tirade about how he voted for Obama but wished he’d had another choice. Garry pointed out this wasn’t political. It was a celebration, the peaceful affirmation of our power that is far more American than apple pie.
Granted that other countries now have peaceful transfers of power, but only the U.S. from its birth made this a symbol of what we are as a nation … that no matter how hard-fought the campaign, when the votes are counted, the winner takes his place in the White House without violence or bloodshed. The ballot box is where we settle our differences, not the streets and not with weapons.
My take on this is simple: there are far too many people who have forgotten how to be Americans. They are so wedded to party politics, to a set of “positions,” that they are incapable, even for a single day, of just being Americans.
It seems that these folks are constantly gloating (“my guy is IN and your guy is OUT nyah nyah nyah!”) or whining (“We wuz cheated!”). Whether you fall on the side of the gloaters or whiners, if you want to make any claim to being an American or any kind of patriot, you need to be an American first and foremost, with your political affiliation secondary.
If you cannot do that, you really have no idea what this country is about.
It’s getting toward the end of January and our Christmas tree is glowing brightly in the dining room. There are people who are a bit slow to take down the tree, but I believe that we are by far, the absolutely slowest.
No one ever wants to take the tree down. It’s not a real tree, so there’s no time limit. It’s not going to dry out nor is it going to drop millions of pine needles in the house. I guess that takes the edge off it, but to be fair, we’ve always had a problem with our tree. I think we should just throw something over it and leave it up until next year. Nonetheless, sometime around Easter, someone will point out, usually a guest, that we still have the tree up.
We pleasantly agree that yes, indeed, the tree is still standing. Yup, absolutely, no doubt about it, the tree is right there in the dining room where it was during Christmas, New Year‘s, Martin Luther King Day and Valentine’s Day. We just rename it in honor of whatever holiday is currently in progress.
We used to be embarrassed but after all these years of not taking down the tree until the flowers are blooming in the garden, we’ve become fairly thick-skinned about the whole thing.
I can’t take it down myself, nor is this Garry’s bailiwick. When I was younger, I did all that stuff but I’m not so young now. My back is not accommodating about bending, twisting. It’s barely willing to coöperate and let me do things like sleep through the night (defined as more than 5 hours), walk around without yelping with pain every time I move or even sit on the sofa. It is, in fact, pretty bad and while sometimes it seems to be getting better, the moment I try to do anything more than nothing, it lets me know about it on no uncertain terms. So, if it’s up to me, that tree is a permanent part of our decor.
Right now, it’s the Winter Tree. Next month, when I am sure it will still be standing there, I will call it our Valentine Tree and if it’s still hanging around in April, it will be the Passover and Easter tree. In between it will be my birthday tree, then Garry’s birthday tree.
By May it becomes a bit embarrassing and my son will probably take the tree down. If not, we’ll just call it his birthday tree and by Autumn, we might as well just leave it up because the holidays will be coming around again.
No one can say we don’t get enough use out of our tree. We have gotten our money’s worth. That tree doesn’t owe us a thing.
2013 is finally here and I, for one, bid a less than fond farewell to 2012!
Here are the First Night fireworks from Boston to bring in the 2013 with a bang!!
May your year be peaceful, healthy, happy, and uneventful!
It started snowing yesterday afternoon. I first knew because the dogs came in covered with snow. It had looked like snow would be coming … white snow sky … but it seemed too warm for it to really stick. But, as snow so often does here in the valley, it just kept coming and as evening approached, the temperature dropped.
The snow continued after dark and when I got up this morning, there was quite a bit on the ground, perhaps 6 or 7 inches. Real snow, the kind that hangs around until it melts or is dug away.
My back is still treacherously bad, but I had to at least take a few pictures. It wasn’t so deep that I couldn’t get out onto the back deck, so I provided a round of biscuits to my frantic pups, then grabbed the camera and my new wide-angle lens and took pictures. This is the first real snow of this winter, though it is likely last snow of 2012.
Last year, the snowless year, was a glitch in the weather. I hoped we might get another snowless year, but obviously that isn’t happening. Welcome to my world in winter. Fresh snow, so white, so pretty, so … cold.
Ebooks and writings of Kenton Lewis
Marilyn Armstrong -- Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth
"Never does Nature say one thing, and wisdom another"
Ward Bond, Wardell Edwin Bond, and Western Films, Actors and Scetches
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