Tomorrow my daughter and I are heading for Southwest Missouri, where, I can assure you, I'll keep both my arms to my sides and never go for my waistband, which could give the appearance of an attempted felony and thus instigate a rain of highway patrol bullets. I shall advise my daughter--a most ferocious-looking 15-year-old in deceptively feminine garb--to do the same.
I'll return Sunday. In the interim, I'll post as national events dictate. I don't expect an eventful Thanksgiving break--therefore you can expect radio silence here--but circumstances have a way of intruding, and I can't seem to keep my mouth shut. Writing is a severe addiction, and I've always found that holidays from it are pure torture. With exceptionally little variation, I rise daily at 6 a.m. and sit down to read the online papers about 6:05; by 6:15 my opinionated and mildly caffeinated blood is stirring, and by 6:30 I'm ready to pop off about something--or other.
The effort required to not pop off about everything under the sun is enormous, however (usually) I find restraint in the knowledge that no one is likely to give a damn about my uninformed opinions on modern art or European fashion or Tex-Mex cooking. So I restrict myself mostly to what I've studied for some years: politics and all things political, which, in my informed opinion, are remarkably expansive enough. There's no greater sport than politics, and for sure there's no other sport that carries such weighty, real-life consequences.
What horrifies me most in this age, and particularly in this country, is that we're losing our interest in that supreme practice of republicanism, loosely defined as a dedication to public affairs. I care less that my fellow man or woman may be an upper-case R or a lower-case d than I care that they're simply engaged, for the greater the pluralistic battle the better. The founders knew that, and they counted on mass dedication to see us through. I'll give thanks if we can soon remind ourselves of that obligation.
Oh dear, I'm sermonizing. I best stop. See you Sunday, or something like that.
***
Arrived safely, except for my swerving the car in laughter at Rush Limbaugh's discovery that the Pilgrims were ... religious! They weren't thanking the Indians; no, they were thanking God. That's what the first Thanksgiving was all about. This seems to have come as news to Rush.
Evidently he didn't know that the earliest New Englanders attributed everything to God--good crops, bad crops, good weather, bad weather, births, slaughters, whatever--hence all thanks, whenever something turned out in less than disaster, traveled upward.
But of course Rush's fundamental point was racist--that Native Americans didn't really count. For three hours this morning there was that, plus lots of nonsensical prattle about Obama as "head of the black, urban wing of the Democrat Party." Three hours of racism.