Foggy morning.
I love this time of day. After a long night of working from my office on broken electronics around the country, I shut down the computers on my desk and click off the light on the bookshelf. Walking down the well lit stairs I stop just outside the door on clear mornings and marvel at the quiet of the city around me. Over a million people in this metropolitan area, over three in the more broadly constituted metropolitan region. And at 0500 it’s just me and the planets and stars on Stinson Boulevard. No cars anywhere in sight. Not even on the nearby freeway.
After a short drive home (during which you could count the cars on two hands) I close in on the final hill to my house. The vantage point allows me to see whispy bits of seemed to be a light ground fog now rolling as a blanket of icy smog coming in from the Mississippi River valley toward my house. I have a half hour at most before it fogs the joint out.
The two oldsters are snoozing by the couch and after I change a load of laundry they’re waiting for me to open the back door and lead them outside. I have to prompt them down the stairs, they don’t feel a pressing need to “go” and do their duty. I sit on the back step and marvel at the roiling mass of almost snow that is coming into the neighborhood. It’s cold on the steps and very quiet in the back yard. Something about the quiet that fog brings is so special. No other blanketing in the world is quite the same.
They finish and plop down in the wet grass. Like all predators they sniff the air and scan the area to get a better idea of what threats and opportunities are out there for them. I’m cold. It’s been a long week and I’m ready to go in and write for a while before hitting the rack.
It takes a while to get them up the stairs and inside. They’re old and their joints don’t work all that well. She needs to be lifted up the stairs and he has but tentative steps when approaching the back steps. But he makes it. Another day, another battle won.
I sliced up a batch of lemons and squeezed a few into my favorite beer stein. I don’t honestly know if I’ve ever had beer in that thing. Lots of lemons and Splenda, that’s for sure. And now I’m about to have a very nice looking macaroon or twelve. And I’m thinking.
I’m thinking harder than I ever have since starting this blog about writing about national politics. And I don’t want to alienate my audience by doing so. But there is a quote from Edmund Burke that keeps coming back to me over the last twelve hours while I pondered this blog post that’s occupied my mind: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Doesn’t ring a bell? Perhaps this paraphrase which is attributed to him will bring it to you: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
The quote is in dispute. My conundrum is not. I am asking for advice from the readers, especially my fellow authors and bloggers as to the advisability of posting a strong opinion on a political subject here. Please leave a comment and I will not publish it, but I will read it.
I purposely buried this at the bottom of an otherwise innocuous post so as to attract the attention of my “regulars.” Thank you for your consideration.
