On a day in late spring, some years ago, I had just opened the door of a friend's house on my way out to retrieve a package from my husband's truck when I witnessed something that to this very day retains both moments of horrible clarity and blessed moments of forgetfulness, that are now dulled both by trauma and time.  The human brain is an amazing organ, able to process and slow that which we know is taking place in a matter of mere seconds.  How is it that we can have so many complete thoughts all the while, while witnessing something so horrendous?  So mind-bogglingly impossible?  It's not something I would wish on anyone, but today I am going to share.  And then I am going to tell you why...

Dear Markos,

I live in a really, really old house, one that has been in a permanent state of wreck and remodel for at least the past six or seven years.  We have replaced the plumbing, the heat and air and the wiring, and the roofing, all of which don't really do much for the appearance, but are life's little necessities.  Mostly it seems that things keep breaking down anyway, and right now I need a new dishwasher.  Well, damn.  That poor old house didn't even have one when we moved in, and I already need an new one?  What a kick in the butt.

Step on up, step on up!  Confess your guilty pleasure today!  What are you hiding?  Come on.  Tell.  You bad, bad democrat you.  We all knew you were really a closeted repub!

The rules are simple.  Say your sin, say your secret, BUT, here's the best part:  No responsibility is to be taken.....EVER!  No one will be held accountable, no grudges held!  Feel free to point the finger of blame!

Me first... (because it's always all about me)

Or the goose bumps running up and down your arms.  It's that ache in your throat as it tightens and tears are held at bay.  It's the irrepressible urge to stand, to cheer, sometimes in the privacy of your own living room, all alone with no one to witness or wonder what all the clapping and cheering are for, serving only to garner a sleeply and curious sideways look from your canine or feline friend.  It's the grateful recognition of like-feeling, eloquently spoken, expressed from one human to another.

Or...

Dateline:  January 20, 2009

In what has become one of the most event filled days in American history, we bring you the following breaking news...

Only brief seconds after taking the oath of office in what was to have been a solemn swearing-in ceremony at the capitol today, new President Barack Obama was interrupted when Senator and former first lady and presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, accompanied by her by her husband, former President Bill Clinton rushed the capitol steps...

"Shame on you Barack Obama", she was heard to say.  "You should be honored, honored to have me as your Commander In Chief!"

Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines:  for our vines have tender grapes. - Anonymous

Well, there are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it.... Then there are people who stand around and watch them eat it.... Sometimes I think it ain't right to stand and watch them do it." - Addie from The Little Foxes

Character is the product of daily, hourly actions and words and thoughts; daily forgiveness, unselfishness, kindness, sympathies, charities, sacrifices for the good of others, struggles against temptations, submissiveness under trial.  Oh, it is these, like the blending of colors in a picture or the blending of notes of music which constitutes the man. - J. R. Macduff

The year was 1968 and many times, in retrospect, I've often wondered what it must have been like to have been her, standing there, staring down at a sea of little white faces...

You may flame or you may answer.  I suppose that remains to be seen, whether or not this not particularly well written diary gets a response or not.  I am a most average American, uneducated, even as I said in a previous diary but one thing that has always fascinated me is simple human nature.  For instance, who can know what particular toxic sludge drives the engine of someone like Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh?  Some say that they only do it for the money and don't really mean what they say.  Again, I'm no expert, but I have my doubts.  I think they mean it.  But I digress.  Today, I have questions.

They are at worst presumptious or even arrogant of me to ask, but I ask you humbly to take me at my word, that these questions are based solely on what I have observed, via MSM and blogging and the presidential debates, almost all of which I have closely watched.  I have also observed, as many as possible, the televised campaign speeches of our candidates.  Ready?  Flip.

Yesterday, it was made clear once more, the tactic these people will try to  use.  It is tiresome, it is ugly and it is old.  But use it they must, for it is their only weapon, dulled though it is with the blood of thousands, they have kept it ever at the ready, anxious to pull it free from the scabbard and start hacking away again, relentlessly and endlessly.  

                                FEAR!

Senator Obama, America has stilled to listen to your voice.  You have a powerful gift and as you, yourself quote, it is about the "fierce urgency of now". "WE ARE WHO WE'VE BEEN WAITING FOR!"  So respectfully, I ask...

I confess.  I did not go to college.  Neither did my husband, though he certainly should have.  He was a straight A student in all the higher maths in high school, having taken Algebra I & II, Calculas and Trigonomentry.  The fact is, his parents couldn't afford it.  So he went to work.  

Jump...

For whatever reasons, be it the corporate controlled media, or the established and entrenched political machines that have held America in a stranglehold for so long, ignorance, apathy or fear on the part of the American people, is unknown to this diarist.  I suspect it is the sum total of all of these things.  And so today, we in this country lost out.  Again.  John Edwards will go and with him take a great deal of the hope we might have had for an immediate and radical change that this country so badly needs.  Our grasp grows tenuous, fingertips straining to hold onto what was a once great and proud nation.  In our history, we have clawed and struggled, ever forward, against tremendous odds.  In these last seven long and miserable years under the Bush administration we have seen progress come to almost a full STOP.  Indeed, not only has no forward progress been made, we have traveled to places heretofore unthinkable!

America faces the ultimate test now.  Will she pass?

As the song says, (with profuse apologies for for making this stick in your heads for the rest of the day) You Can't Always Get What You Want.

And you know something?  We can't.  Because what we really want is a mixture of what we have and what we have had.  That saying that Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line?  Well, it would seem to be a truism too, although at this time it's as if someone took giant eraser to the line that Republicans toe so well and this diarist is grateful, however temporarily, as we have enough problems of our own.

We want the wisdom and far-sightedness of Al Gore.  We want the hope and uplifting and gifted oratory of Barack Obama.  We need the passion and strength and willingness to fight for the every-man that only John Edwards has shown us.  We want and need greatness.  Now more than ever before, we need and want these things!

This has been an interminable Merry-Go-Round ride!  The operator left the switch on a seven year long bathroom break, some punk stole the brass ring, and we are all dizzy, tired and sick to our stomachs!

Firstly, full disclosure.  I am an Edwards supporter!  It is a simple analogy, but when you are driving and discover that you are going in completely the wrong direction, turn the hell around!  All the way around, full U-Turn!  I've been paying attention for seven plus, long, agonizing years and know what is going on.  The Republicans will never play nice and strength, stamina, resolve and a true desire to do right by We The People is desperately needed and required at this crucial time in our history.  I believe John Edwards is the man we need!  NOW!

But, last night....  Oh, last night.  Can we take just a minute?  Just a minute please to recognize something special?

Is it Free Speech to say that I heard a rumor that Rudy Giuliani once had a traumatic sexual experience with a male ferret?

Is it free speech to alledge that Mitt Romney secretly believes in polygamy and has a harem that nightly bathes his head in Grecian Formula while wife number one looks on and directs said harem to remember "just a little touch of gray on the sides, ladies"?  

Is it free speech to speculate that there is an alien space monkey corpse hidden in area 51 and that somewhere back in time said alien space monkey somehow found its way into the Bush family gene pool?

Last night, a little after Ten o'clock I stepped through a doorway.  It was an invisible doorway and I had no knowledge it was there.  It was quite unexpected on my part and upon passing through, though soundless, the door suddenly slammed shut behind me.  I found myself in a place that I had never expected to be.  It's a place that so very, very many of you here know of.  And now, along with you, I find myself a most reluctant guest.  A new member of a club I never wished to join.

California is burning and how dare anyone bring up the possibility of global warming as a cause!  Yep, that's what the right wingnuts are screaming about the past two days.  That the main stream media actually had the audacity to cite global warming as a cause.  That the main stream media is politicizing a natural disaster.  How dare they?

Now, I'm no scientist to be sure and possibly shouldn't even attempt to comment on a subject in which I'm unable to state facts, figures, data  and all current scientific jargon entailed within on global warming.  But I do have common sense.  And I do know that there has been a consensus among the world scientist that this is indeed happening.  Happening right before our very eyes.  It's getting to be late October here in northeast Texas and the leaves on the trees are still green.  I visited my family in Oklahoma last weekend, northeast Oklahoma.  And you know what?  The leaves on the trees are still green there too.  Yesterday, a customer came into my little bookstore wearing shorts and a t-shirt and sandals.  In late October!

Try as we as may, we can never quite get there.  Try as we may, we can never imagine, never, what it is truly like to be another person.  We can never know what it's like to wake up one morning and feel their feelings, live their lives, experience their experiences past and present.  We can never know their deepest secrets or joys or hurts.  We can never know all these things, not even when that person is a public persona, larger than life.  We can't know what drives them, be it ambition or a deep desire to make a difference in a world that desperately needs changing.  We can't know in spite of having observed that person for years and we can't know even when that person has spent his entire life in service to others.

We can only see what we see and in the case of Al Gore we see someone who has inspired so many of us beyond our wildest dreams.  Of this man, we ask much.  We ask him humbly to take on the biggest burden of all.

Hello all.  I write today to give you hope for the future as we may very well have found the solution to end all our problems.  Yes, indeed.  We had, in our very own household, just last evening, a small flash of brilliance, guaranteed to get the American people up and motivated.  Well, either that, or they will put a gun to their own heads.

Follow me below the fold as we enter the make-believe world of January 2009 where-in Mitt Romney has just taken the oath of office...