Cloud cover

Maggie says:
It's been a quiet stretch for me on m-pyre... sorry about that. Post-election, I immersed myself in the bubble of it'll-be-okay-ness, and the cloud cover has been pretty thick. There has been some not-okayness, of course - some of those Cabinet picks, a dismaying center course strategy, Middle East destruction, and far too many friends and family seeing the worst of this economic disaster. And I know - hiding in the bubble is a lazy form of citizenship. Emotionally exhausted from the election, seeking a break from the stress of contemplating the horrors our government perpetrates, I needed so much to take a couple of months and think only what could be, even though that meant forcing my brain not to get too invested when the Agriculture pick is another Corn King and the uniform critique of our trade deals is hushed away now that it might mean something. There is the hope and promise of politics, and then there is the application of politics, and those are not the same two animals. Those of us who are applicators (read: wonks) at heart have been carried over into the Promiseland the last year. Now that we've all arrived, here together - blind believers and hopeful yet tentative wonks - how will those seeds of hope be planted? How will they be nourished or fertilized or tended to?

Getting past the season of the Lame Duck means for me, getting back to the business of nurturing both the seeds of hope and the mechanics of fertilization, keeping an eye on the sky while knowing where to look underneath the soil. When the great horror ends - we're on the 24-hour-countdown now, folks - it is truly a new day. How new a day is up to all of us. The cloud cover will lift, and the fear will end, and then our wonky hopeful hearts can start digging into the ground again.

Forecast, January 20, 2009: The sun will shine again.