Thanks

OK, let's see, what am I thankful for?  Not a hard question, really.  I live in a place that is not regularly bombed.  I have a loving wife, healthy kids and grandkids, and pretty much my own health.  I have the president I voted for in office and still fighting.  My financial status is not plush, but it's adequate and pretty stable.  Though I lost my first wife, we spent thirty-two wonderful years together.  Though my sons and grandsons are distant, I see them a couple of times a year.  I have a good deal of my hearing left and have music, as Billy Joel would say, in my hands (and everywhere else).  Though I peer though floaters, I see pretty well and can read (words just fine, notes not so much, but that's another problem). 

Now, who receives the thanks is another question.  After being pretty much a spiritual drifter (or agnostic, whatever) for nearly 40 years, I joined a church several years ago.  But it's the kind of place that lets one believe whatever one wants to believe, which suits me.  I am not keen about religion or the religious (who tend to hurt people who don't agree with them), and, if pushed, will only admit to believing that there is a spark of something (ok, call it the divine) in all of us, in living things. 

A mystic -- Meister Eckhardt, perhaps -- said, "If you are going to pray one prayer, let it be 'Thank you.' " 

So thank you.  Thank you very much.

Think Obama Has Done a Poor Job?

Read this:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/220013

A Thought for Young People

According to a recent piece in the New Yorker, 45 million fewer voters voted for congressional candidates in 2010 than in 2008.  Forty-five MILLION.  According to the same piece, the 2010 electorate was overwhelmingly elderly.  Folks like me.  Well, not like me, I suppose, because I supported Obama in 2008 (and before!) and I support him now.  And I voted a nearly straight Democratic ballot this year (nearly because we have our assholes too).  So what this looks like to me is that the young folks who supported Obama in 2008 just didn't come out.

Well, young folks who didn't come out, I hope you're not thinking about complaining about the job he's doing.  Repeatedly in the campaign and during his presidency, Mr. Obama has said that he can't do it alone, that it's up to us, that we need to help.  Repeatedly.  And forty-five million people decided it was too much trouble to get out and help this time.  If things go badly for the next two years (and they will, they surely will), it won't be Mr. O's fault.  It'll be yours.

Thanks a lot, kids.

Next time get your youthful bottoms off the couch and vote these idiots out!