No rest ...

... My daddy worked all night in the Van Lear Coal Mines,
All day long in a field a-hoein' corn, -- Loretta Lynn

Okay, so my miseries don't exactly compare.

But why precisely on the night my Beloved and I determined to go to bed early and catch up on a little sleep, did my dear brother have to call just as we climbed into bed, needing a shoulder to cry on ...

... and why, as soon as I finally hung up, did a pack of idiots have to start hooting and hollering next door, riding their motorcycle around their back yard until I finally stumbled outside and threatened them in the most savage terms I could formulate from the cobwebs in my brain?

Of course, Sweetie is now convinced that they will plot revenge and burn our house down or something.

There is no rest for the weary.

She is amazing

"I don't want to go out for dinner tonight or anything like that," She said to me.

And She explained. She wanted to spend Her Valentine's Day evening with me visiting a lonely, house-bound friend.

So we had a quick dinner from Wendy's in our car along the way and then spent the rest of the time with this friend, who has medical procedures scheduled tomorrow.

When my eyes were opened as a boy to the magic of Womankind, to the sparkle in Her eyes and the sweet music of Her voice, the power and complexity of Her intelligence, and the intoxicating, exhilarating joy of simply being in Her presence, and I realized, firmly and unshakeably, that the highest and most sublime destiny of a man is to find the Woman meant for him and devote his life utterly to Her, in sickness and health, richer or poorer, come what may, from days of youth until death parts us, hopefully but for a moment ...

... yes, when my eyes were opened and I began my quest, I couldn't even begin to imagine that the One who would consent to journey with me through the remainder of my life and beyond, would be even this utterly incredible.

I am humbled. Blessed. So very happy.

Happy Valentine's Day, my Beloved. You inspire me.

Friday

Friday.

Thank heaven.

Who invented work anyway?

I hope he got kicked over a cliff by an irritated mastodon.

Deals with the devil ...

It is so very, very easy to be a critic, as I so often am. It takes little intelligence, very little creativity -- nothing but an inflated sense of self-righteousness, especially when you don't have a horse in the race.

How richly ironic that in the very week that on this blog I have chided my country for making deals with the devil and stood on my soapbox again against the developers of housing projects, I have received an email at my job, from the representatives of a local housing development that last year burned up a beautiful forest in our city, to clear the ground -- choking our air with smoke for days, and whose greed I cursed bitterly and still do, each time I pass the desolation they call development.

Yes, how ironic that they want to talk to me about partnering with our schools, as they are having trouble selling the homes they have built, and they blame it on the perception our schools have in the region.

How ironic, because of course I will meet with them and shove my personal disgust for them deep down into some closet of my soul and pretend like they are Girl Scouts selling my favorite cookies, not rapists of Mother Nature.

I suppose that makes me a laughable, pitiful hypocrite.

Termites chewing, chewing

The news reporter stood at the edge of a subdivision last night and pointed at a forest just beyond.

"Soon," he said, "this wooded area will be cleared for 80 new homes, the first application in this part of the county in over a year ...."

The whole story was presented as a great thing, a sign that the economy is turning around.

I shook my head in sorrow for the box turtles, deer, wild pogonia, oaks, maples, pines, bluets, wild azalea, butterflies, black snakes, birds, tree frogs and countless other wild things that will not be consulted in the developers' plans.

And I wondered again: When every last acre of the United States outside of our national parks has been plundered, raped and paved over, when our insatiable greed has spread a dreary shroud of "development" from sea to oil-slicked sea, when Los Angeles borders Boston, when no more "development" is possible because nothing outside of our national parks is left to destroy, how will we keep our sacred economy afloat?

How much longer until Egypt explodes?

Ever try to hold the lid down on a boiling pot?

I wouldn't recommend it. Eventually it will explode in your face.

Mubarak must go. He will go. If he does not go soon on his own two feet, he will be carried out in a coffin. That is obvious to everyone in the world but him.

What will come after him will probably not be orderly. Democracy, it has famously been said, is messy by nature. It will certainly not be very friendly to the United States. But we made that bed for ourselves propping up a dictator for 30+years, simply because he said the right words to us while standing on the neck of his people; now we must lie in the bed we have made.

There are casualties great and small in this struggle. Obviously, those who have died or been wounded. Those who will die or be wounded in coming days. Another likely casualty: The long struggle of Egypt to have its ancient antiquities returned from the various museum collections of the world. No sane museum curator with a love of the ancient, will take those requests seriously for a long time to come, not after the heartbreak of the shattered wooden artifacts from King Tut's tomb, now smashed by looters.