Leaving without a jet plane

The air is crack-frozen, but dryish. People forced to work outside have red noses and fissures in the tiny tissues of their hands. It's a pop-slap in the face of people who warmed themselves in an Indian Summer sun five days ago. Upstate South Carolina's climate is fickle.

Not much happens this time of year. Blossoms don't pop. Grass doesn't green. People don't smile much. It's a dead time that helps remind us why we love the living world. Without the dead time, we start to take rabbit-time and lawn-mowing-time for granted. However, nobody really realizes that right now. They mumble-grumble through the day, The Malcontents of Post-Holiday Doldrums.

However, it is this time of year that the spokey-cogs of America's democratic landscape begin again to turn. State legislatures reconvene for another year of high-dollar bartering and palm-greasing. Newly elected leaders raise their hands in an oath everyone says but few really plan to follow.

I will be in the middle of that machine for the next few days. If this site and the recently mediocre writing within seem a little quiet in the next few days, that's why.

Until circumstance or necessity brings me back home, be good to the people around you.