I've let a week pass without posting, but I've continued to read the news online, to watch our evening news broadcast of choice, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and to enjoy a quiet holiday without travel for the first time in years. Except for a social engagement or two (a house full of teenagers on New Year's Eve, a dinner party before Christmas), we've enjoyed a lot of family time. We've played board games, gone bargain shopping, crocheted and knitted together (our son taught himself to knit and is working on a cap with a skull design; I taught our daughter how to crochet, a craft my grandmother taught me), visited Atlanta's High Museum of Art to view the first emperor of China's terracotta army exhibit, taken walks, read books, prepared tasty dinners, and watched episodes of Babylon 5 (we're in Season 3 now and are uncomfortably aware how the science fiction series reminds us of real-life consequences) and episodes of Jeeves and Wooster for comic relief. We're a family of homebodies, I guess, the home being wherever we happen to be since we have moved so many times. I will return to work when the students return to the campus where I tutor, but until then, I'm enjoying having the time to spend with my kids and to begin new projects. Not a bad beginning to a new year.
One hopeful sign of the new year is the much-needed rain we've received here in the Atlanta-metro area. The drought may not be over, but at least the water levels in Lake Lanier are rising. We've had a series of gray and rainy days over the holidays, but I won't complain. More rain fell last night, and in the late morning, huge ships of dark clouds sped across the sky, powered by a mighty wind. Behind the clouds were clear skies and falling temperatures, but the rain is supposed to return in a couple of days. I removed some dead plants from my flower and herb beds in front of our house, thinking of spring as I turned over the very wet earth to release the roots of last summer's purple and white globe amaranths. The drought isn't over, but at least there's hope that winter and spring rains will help guarantee a fruitful garden.
But here at the beginning of a new year, I am also reminded of what doesn't change:
- The pettiness of people who have enough of the world's goods and power to be generous but who aren't--case in point, the Bush White House's refusing Blair House to the Obamas. Other bloggers have commented on this pettiness here , here, and here. Update: Jonathan Chait at The New Republic suspects not pettiness but bureaucratic bumbling or just misunderstanding.
- The stupidity of rewards (and national attention) going to people who are notorious rather than those with the skills, education, or wisdom to deserve the honors: cases in point, Joe the Plumber and Ann Coulter.
- The bitter and all-too-often disregarded consequences of war: case in point, the civilian deaths in Gaza.
- The consequences of believing in something too good to be true and of putting all one's eggs in one basket: case in point, fund manager Bernard Madoff and the people who trusted him.
- The seduction of a happy ending to a horrific event: case in point, Herman Rosenblat's fake Holocaust memoir.
Oh, yeah, my list could go on and on, but I don't want to depress myself further. As the narrator says during the opening credits of Babylon 5: "The year is 2260: the place, Babylon 5. The Babylon Project was our last best hope for peace. It failed. But in the year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last best hope for victory."
May someone be blogging--or its equivalent--in the year 2260, and recording a more hopeful list than mine.
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