of our times is here in this thread: the good fractured people who try so hard to communicate, the mindless ones who somehow cannot reach outside themselves, the hurt ones who talk and talk about themselves, and most of all the incredible weirdness time out of joint nature of our political life now(thanks for the Lear, bebop-o: it accurately limned it). And I worry most about my children: my eighteen year old who can vote for the first time this year and doesn't see much hope in voting, my older daughter who doesn't vote because she's sure the last two elections were stolen, my other daughter who walked door to door with me for Kerry last time and cried when he lost and tries to find a reason to continue in her activism; and my youngest daughter who looks with horror at these articles I read by Glen and asks me what we should do, what can we do, Daddy? What if one of the crazies is elected again? What will we do? And I am out on the moor in the storm with Lear and the fool looking for shelter for my children and very sad indeed.

that the real goal of this column was to try to get mentioned in the blog of the Fake Steve Jobs.

I was eating my morning oatmeal when I read your (apt) analogy. That is all I am saying. And that I don't even want to know about the chopstick bras mentioned in the comments. Not. Even. Curious.

Thanks again for what you write, Glen: it helps me think it through.

You remind me today of the exquisite balance of the attempt to live with integrity and hope. For on the one hand, all that matters is to be able to face death without regret, to die with integrity and face what it has meant to be human. Or as Socrates would have put it, to live a life of tending to your soul. And yet part of being the type of person who has that perspective is to do all you can in the current moment on behalf of what is good and right, even when it seems hopeless: because the key point is how you individually live your life, so that all those moments add up to a life worth having lived when you die. So I have to stay informed, and vote, and try to make sense of all this, when I would much rather run and hide form it in mindless entertainment or even in a more elevated sense in what Chogyam Trungpa called spiritual materialism. So the exquisite tension of having to pay attention to all these mundane dirty things while at the same time knowing they are transient; to not give up even though you know you have already lost, because to keep on doing what is right even in the face of failure is what will give you your soul in the moments of death.

And the weather is here is crisp and cool today. There is a cat sitting on my computer box who likes the warmth of it. My morning oatmeal was tasty. Greetings, bebop-o, this eternal morning.

for standing up for what is right. Just: thank you.

out on the moor in the storm with the fool who saw it all coming.