I know. I know I haven't published anything in close to 10 days (10!) but I've been writing--oh, I've been writing! In my mind, more than anything, actually, because I can't sit at the keys. Something about this weather lately has been kicking me back and forth from the bed to the bathroom to the den, right past the keys, and straight underneath warm blankets that smell of Tiger Balm, Ben Gay and Green Tea, much like I do, I'm afraid.
I have been reading Tolkien again, and like a chameleon, I take on the voice of the author in my thoughts and my writing. Terrible thing, really. Talking in half sentences like this. Dangling participles over capricious phrases, writing like this can be a chore.
Why am I reading Tolkien? Well, I made the kids a promise. Sarah (12) and Bubba (9) are approaching the age where their peers are asking them "You haven't seen The Lord of the Rings?" Like they're asking them if they still suck their thumbs. So, I turned to them one evening and told them, "If you can read through the books, you're ready to watch the movies." Ha! I thought, This will be fun. Bubba will bog down in the Council of Elrond. Everyone does. He'll get discouraged and pick it up again when he's ready.
He's on page 210 of the Two Towers, far outpacing his sister! Aigh!
As a result, we just watched the first hour of the Special, Extended, Super-Colossal, And-You-Thought-The-Books-Were-Long Edition DVD of the Fellowship of the Ring. They are eating it up! And this even after I showed them the long segments on Tolkien and how they adapted the book to the movie, which are really helpful for people who read the books. It seems they're the ones that get steamed about Tom Bombadil only showing up on milk cartons--"Have you seen me?"--on Hobbit first-breakfast tables.
Anyway, I've been writing. I have an open letter to my son that I plan to put up soon, if I can get around to editing it. It's all about relationships, but I won't tip my hand too much. I also have something about skiing, but I don't want to drag anyone through that's not willing, so I'll give fair warning in the title. Nothing like getting snow in you keyboard from an errant skier.
So I'll close with a quick observation in a field I am mostly inexperienced at analyzing, politics. Never has our fair Republic been in greater danger of falling to the wolves. The center of political power in America, Congress has already purchased--ipso facto--the banks of our nation with their bailout. They are now calling their erstwhile managers to account for the money. Does anyone else think this a little... well, what's the word... incredible? Here we have an entity so incapable of fiscal responsibility, it took them years to discover that the House checking accounts were a little overdrawn. There's only one thing worse than Congress ousting the Golden Circle of Bank Presidents and their cadre, and that is Congress letting them stay in power. So where's the danger? If things get worse under a liberal President and a liberal Congress, the state of our societal morals tells me that we will have a French Revolution, not an American one, looking us straight in the eyes.
Small-time Observation: The thing about history is that you have so many years to think about other people's mistakes and the thing about the present is that you have so little time to fix your own.
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