Monday, March 17, 2008

Adrift



"These are the times that try men's souls." Thomas Paine's words from The American Crisis unfortunately seem appropriate now. Our country seems to have lost its' moorings, temporarily, we hope.

I was thinking that Jonathan will be able to tell his children, and anyone who will listen, in the future about moving to Chicago and surviving one of the coldest, snowiest, winters in recorded history. I've told the story about living in California for only one year--sadly, the year of constant daily rain from January to May. I imagine if we'd had the normal California winter weather we might have stuck it out. But then, there's never any point in wondering what might have been is there?

David, similarly, is living through one of the worst financial crises ever. I would not want to be in his shoes these days. He's told me he wishes that his predictions had been wrong, in fact, he'd give anything if he'd been proven a pessimist. The truth is that he's been talking about how bad it's going to get for well over a year. He loves to use baseball metaphors when he's talking finance. He told us around Christmas we were in probably only the second inning.

I hate to be someone who puts their head in the sand, but my goodness, what else can a person do? Listening to the news is like getting hit on the head with a sledgehammer. Bruce has gotten hooked on CNN. He's been following the election like a hawk.

Speaking of the election, when did the word disenfranchised become so popular. It kinda reminds me of the weatherman when we had all those hurricanes three years ago. They kept repeating that we had to "hunker" down which drove me bonkers. It's just one of those words I'd virtually never heard in the past but now I hear it daily. Aside from using it to describe primary mess in Florida and Michigan, I heard it this morning describing the Sunnis in Iraq. Has it always been used so frequently and I never paid attention to it?

Lot's of fussing today, you would think I was cranky wouldn't you?

Not really, but it can be depressing if you think to hard about it all. Best to just go on with one's life, loving your family, doing your work, and being kind to all you meet. People all over need a little cheer in their life, it's up to us to provide it if possible.

Lastly the market wasn't as good to me as last week but I'm not complaining.

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Now playing: The Yards - Forget Your Regrets
via FoxyTunes

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Now playing: The Yards - Crime
via FoxyTunes

3 comments:

sarah said...

i have been thinking about all these things, too! I had been very invested in everything this year, but for the last few weeks I've just been turning the news OFF. I feel like everyone is just showing their worst side.

For what it's worth, I did pull my head out of my hole and read Obama's speech "on race" this morning. I know that he is probably not the candidate you are supporting, but you might find it interesting anyway--it's not very partisan, and I felt it took a really balanced take on things that are often distorted one way or the other. I'd be interested to hear what you think! :)

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/a_more_perfect_union.html

sarah said...

oops, not sure that worked...anyway, you can read the text on

www.realclearpolitics.com


which is a really good news feed, btw. they are pretty right wing, but represent views from many different perspectives.

Gail Peck said...

Thank you Sarah for that great feed--lot's of good stuff.

A Week Ago Tuesday