Hope

The DC Circuit Court came down today on the right side, upholding greenhouse gas regulations on all counts.  The country can move forward, progress can be made.  Did my small contribution in preparation for the arguments change history?  No.  Undoubtedly it did not.  But I did contribute to something I believe in and saw history take the right step forward.  The cause of B by A seems, to me, a dream.  But I know intellectually the connection between the laborious research of February and positive progress of Today is genuine.  Hundreds of hours by dozens of minds have led to one tick forward that we all share.

I Pray

I told everyone I had a funeral to attend. I was given condolences and long faces.  Leah suggested a "second funeral" event, and friends deflected the idea. But as I sat in the middle of a magnificent stone church, eyes closed, a tear running down my cheek, and chin tilted slightly upward, open to the choir's mystic energy resounding through the hall, I felt love.  I barely knew him save through the his beautiful daughter, but I felt the laughter, love, joy, and sadness of his life.  Perhaps it is because I am not naturally prone to compassion that I find the ceremony around the most humbling of experiences enlivening.  He brought me to life.  He is not dead.  He did not die.

Paragraph #1

Andy roamed through Boulder this week, fresh off of his launch into high-altitude photography.  Naturally (I guess) I become overwhelmed with thoughts about how green the grass is on just the other side.  I imagine how exceptional a life might be when its based on paychecks for exploration in faraway locales, practicing a creative artistic craft.  But I catch myself rationally, if not emotionally, and remember that every dream job has its nightmares - whether endless travel or monotonous movement or impossibility of balance between family and adventure.  Creativity can be found right here, too - and it needn't be found at a place of employ.  It does demand discipline, though, lest time slip entirely away to worldly pursuits.  And time does slip.  Huge projects I always delay.  My proximal goal is hereby launched: to put a paragraph a day, and no more, upon this page.  We'll see if my discipline can survive a bit longer than that doomed photo experiment.