Chasing Bubbles With A Butterfly Net

For someone like me with a well-developed startle response and a self-imposed posting deadline, the last few days in the news have been exhausting. It's the silly season in America, of course, with just days to go until the mid-term elections and the culmination of all our anxious imaginings, regardless of our political starting points. But it isn't just any election and it isn't just an America in isolation; it's a globe in transition 'midst an era of revving change. Back peddle? Plunge forward? Stand up on the or accelerate--with or without a prayer? Shit or go blind? (Do NOT fuss at me; that's a perfectly good Anglo-Saxon term with a rich, fertile history.)

The week's been either a blogger's dream or her worst nightmare: more material than I could ever want, flitting past me far too fast, and me with only a sieving mind to capture it. I wake up every morning to chase the tantalizing NYTimes headlines, browse among the big, syndicated blogs, and find it impossible to choose a spot on which to land--a hummingbird on a sugar high.

Should I go with the eerie tolling in my brain from Angela Merkel's "Multikulti has utterly failed" statement? No matter how the Germans are spinning that one today, my head still rings. I've finally gotten so old that a first-hand knowledge of history is more than just a Trivial Pursuit advantage. Swell.