Orchid

When I was in grad school, years and years ago, I knew a Chinese woman name Yalan. Her name means “Orchid”, she told me, and didn’t let other people call her by it because they always butchered it. The accent is on the first syllable, and the rest should just sort of roll off the tongue. I asked her to teach me how to say it properly, and she did as well as she could with a kid from Tennessee.

I don’t know that I ever got it right, but she appreciated the effort.

One evening, she asked me to share her dinner. It was a small meal of noodles, vegetables and some chicken wings. Very good, in my estimate.

With dinner I got story. She had a husband and child in China. And the two Mongolian Chinese guys who had no interest in English literature or culture who were also enrolled were most likely there to keep an eye on her. “They will not let my husband or my son leave the country,” she told me. “They are hostages to make sure I come back.”

The last time I saw her was during the uprising in the 80’s. She appeared on a TV program in Waco, TX, and said she was going back to China, almost certainly to be arrested for speaking out on American TV about the lack of freedom her fellow citizens suffered.

I don’t know what ever happened to her. I hope she’s back with her husband and son, and that the two Mongolians have quit following her around.

Yalan. My Orchid. Tonight I pray for you and your family. May God hold you close and protect you, keep you safe and give you the strength and courage to fight another day.

Inconvenient Truth

I ran across a picture that starkly contrasts the aftermath of the Jackson tornado.

This is before:


This is after:


It's hard to get a very good idea of what something should look like from piles of rubble. And even though I lived there for 4 years, until I saw the "before" picture, I couldn't quite get an honest estimate of the extent of damage.

Classes started back today, just 14 days after they were suspended. And they've completed the entire demolition of both housing complexes that were hit the hardest (80% of on-campus housing). And that's after they visited each room or what was left of it multiple to time to retrieve any personal items that might still be intact.

I have some long-standing gripes with the University because of its fostering of religious, political and social insularity. In many ways, that's the exact opposite of what I believe to goals of a liberal arts university should be: to expand and engage the mind to see beyond the narrow, homogenous world that most people grow up with.

Still, I'm nostalgic about my time there. Most of us are about our youth on one level or another. And a little part of my past is gone, at least physically. It's not like I have ever had plans to go back and visit. But now I don't have the opportunity to do so if I changed my mind.

Human's are weird, unpredictable and inexplicable. I am no different, and like most people, most of the time I don't really know why one thing moves me while another does not. All I know is that some things do and some things don't.

This one has, and not just because my niece was affected. It goes much deeper than that. Even though my memories of the place tend to lean to the negative, I have a profound sadness about the whole thing.

It is an inconvenient truth for which I have no explanation. So for now, I'm chalking it up to nostalgia for a time when I was younger, a time when I was just beginning to explore life outside of the narrow walls I had grown up in.

And now that I've explored it more thoroughly than I ever planned, maybe I just want a simpler time. Not that the things were simpler back then, but maybe I was.

Baby of Mine

Shannon is about the sweetest thing around. He doesn’t complain that I still haven’t caught up on the laundry from when I was sick a month ago, and then just tired. That I let the dishes sit in the sink a little too long before I get them in the dishwasher. That I’ve been using days off as a vacation I haven’t had in months instead of doing housework.

Instead, he lets me spend hours reading the news and then pursuing other computer projects. Hours napping. Hours putting off everything else because I just need the time.

And when I finally got around to doing the laundry I’ve been putting off, only a small part of it, he gets up and helps me hang and fold it.

Sort of. There’s a reason I do the laundry and he doesn’t. He means well, and I appreciate the effort. And some things come out OK. Others, I just readjust or re-hang in the closet where he can’t see me.

It reminds me of a very surreal lecture from my sophomore English teacher in high school. She told us that a very good friend of hers has just been diagnosed with cancer. Her friend had always been an immaculate house-keeper and had taught home-ec for decades.

When she couldn’t do as much as she could before, she said that she heard her husband vacuuming and hitting every piece of furniture and woodwork in the house.

At first she was upset. She wanted to get up and show him how to do it right. But then she realized that she really couldn’t. And was amazed that her husband who had never touched a vacuum in his life was vacuuming the floors for her.

Furniture and woodwork get dings and dents. It’s the price of living with them. Clothes will come and go.

What is priceless is the effort of those who love us to make our lives a little easier.

And I’ll re-hang the clothes as long as I need to. I’m a sentimental old fool who has learned that what someone does honestly is much more important than whether the clothes hang straight.

In the words of the semi-immortal Bonnie Raitt: “He’s not much, goodness knows/ From his head down to his toes/. But he’s so special to me./ Sweet as can be./ Baby of mine.”

Shannon’s my baby, and always will be.

Out of Africa

The hottest topic in the parts of Africa that President Bush is visiting isn't his admirable support of HIV/AIDS funding for the region, funding that has changed areas where it is available. It isn't al-Quaida. It isn't even the weather, which has been (no surprise here) stiflingly hot.

The hot topic on the hot streets and lanes and dirt roads of that part of Africa is the Democratic primary here in the U.S. Even reporters are asking President Bush and African dignitaries about the question in press conferences usually reserved for the matters at hand: increasing funding for humanitarian causes on the continent.

A short excerpt from a NY Times piece that ran this morning captures the phenomenom best:

Outside of town, at the Mwenge Village market, Theresa Maridadi, 62, was seated with a newspaper in her lap, debating the Democrats with her son, Lucas Kahtoza, who lit up at the mention of Mr. Obama’s name and put his hand to his chest.

“Remember, Obama is from Africa,” he said. “From my heart, it is good.”His mother cut him off. “Why you want to like Obama because he come from Africa?” she demanded. She is for Mrs. Clinton: “Her husband was the president, she has more exposure. She’s mature, she’s a woman. It’s good for a woman to lead that country.”

This election is turning out to be a bigger deal than even I thought. I knew everybody in the country was talking about it and drawing up battle lines like Lee was shelling D.C. I knew that it's shaping up to be a political battle like none we've seen since the South seceded from the Union.

And mothers and sons are the same everywhere.

I didn't realize that families in Africa were having disagreements over the upcoming U.S. election, just like mothers and sons are disagreeing here. I didn't know they cared.

Me and my mama haven't seen eye to eye on politics since, possibly, before I was born. She supported Kennedy, but I wasn't around yet. Since then, Johnson's handling of Vietnam made her a Nixon Republican, something she's been ever since. And we've been disagreeing ever since I had a political conciousness.

This year, we've agreed to disagree. With all we've been through over the last year, it's something to laugh about more than to get mad about. I doubt that either of us will ever understand the other's politics. But I don't think we'll come to blows over our differences.

Mothers send their sons out into to the world with trepidation, I know. Not just concern about their safety, but also about their larger lives, from education to employment to relationships. And ultimately about their moral character.

And it's a mine field these days even more so than when I left home.

But I haven't done so badly. I have a stable life and am giving her advice about what to do with her money. Not that I have a lot of my own, but I can give her the benefit of my knowlege. I don't have any money to speak of, but I deal with a good bit of it every day at work.

Mothers and sons go on debating politics around the world. Mothers trying to impart their wisdom, and sons taking it where they find it. We say, "Yes, Mother," when what we mean is "I'll think about it, but not too much."

So to Lucas Kahtoza in Africa I say this: mothers are mothers are mothers, no matter what continent they come from. They will always be opinionated and think they're right. Go with your heart, and if your mother loves you, she may roll her eyes at your adult opinions, but will be able to agree to disagree.

And one day she will need you, more than she probably expects.

Bird on a Wire; or Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

Mrs. Clinton is giving speeches about speeches, about how lofty oratory won’t put food on the table, pay the bills or educate kids. Talking about talking. Losing focus on the real agenda.

She’s referring, of course, to her opponent in the Democratic primary, Mr. Obama, who is prone to wax poetic.

He goes on and on about the need to unify the country. About how we have never stopped being a great nation, but have just lost our way for a while. About how our people are our greatest asset.

Most often than not, behind poetry there is vision.

That is not to say that Mrs. Clinton doesn’t have a vision. But if she can’t effectively communicate it, her vision is of little consequence. If she can’t inspire the average Joes and Janes that comprise our nation, then nothing will change.

Change does not happen by mandate from the top down. It happens by consensus, and not the consensus of the House or the Senate. It happens by the consensus of the people.

As in “We the People, in order to form more perfect Union..”

Neither candidate is substantively different from the other. Their goals and dreams are almost identical. As President, either would be almost indistinguishable from the other.

Except when it comes down to words, those long-neglected jewels that we’ve grown so used to being thrown around like so much chaff. After two terms of words meaning anything other than what they mean they don’t mean, an eloquent orator takes us all a little aback.

We’ve all forgotten about the power of the spoken word when properly employed.

After too many years of a President stumbling over what is supposed to be his native language, a candidate that not only understands grammar, but also the nuance of words—the shadows and light that can play across a well-turned phrase, the subtle differences between words that mean the same thing, the elegance of the language—surprises us.

We’ve forgotten the language of hope.

After living with the language of fear, hope is like a foreign tongue. It’s a brave new world that we have to be re-born into, just as surely as an evangelical Christian is re-born into the resurection.

Mrs. Clinton is right that words won’t put money in my pocket. But she leaves off the rest: words that motivate are always better than words that dictate. Any candidate must know that any specific plan they have has little to no chance of making it through Congress and coming out whole and pure. Passing any legislation is a matter of compromise.

It’s a matter of having an ideal and working to get as close to it as you can. It’s a matter of having a big picture that defines your policy much more than having too many specific policy points that won’t fly after the elections are over.

Mrs. Clinton, I think, denigrates Mr. Obama when she says he’s all about words.

Words matter, perhaps more than she realizes.

It is not sound and fury, signifying nothing, as she would seem to suggest.

Words matter.

They are the fundamental connection we have between each other as human beings. And the ability to use them effectively should not be criticized, but rather lauded.

Like a bird on a wire or a cat on a hot tin roof, I have to make a move. One way or the other. The wire’s getting ready to short, and the roof’s just too damned hot. Neither one's a real comfortable place to sit, so I'm getting ready to fly, getting ready to jump or maybe both at the same time.

At this point, I’m leaning towards ideas and ideals over policy talking points.

Words have power, more so than Mrs. Clinton wants to acknowledge. And so does the politics of hope.

It’s a politics that can’t be captured in policy detail or 10 point plans. It requires a broader vision that will then define those policy details and 10 point plans. Not the other way around.

I believe in the politics of hope. The politics of vision. The politics that refuses to let go of idealism. The politics that starts with the premise that we are a great nation that can do anything it sets it mind to and goes on to use that power judiciously. To use that power for the people and not against them.

These days, it takes courage to talk about hope. To articulate a belief that our greatest days are still to come. That we can resume our position as the greatest country in the history of the world. That we can get back to the day-to-day life of being free, living without vanity wars, advancing rather than constraining civil liberties, and getting back to business that has been long neglected for too long.

Those are all tasks that require vision as well as political connections and maneuvering. Unless you can articulate one, you have no way of getting where you want to go. You might know stops along the trip, but if you don't know where you're going, you'll never get there.

And unless something changes, I’ve finally figured out who I’m going to vote for.

Wanna take a guess?

Wind in the Willows

This a picture my niece took with her cell phone of her car after a tornado blew it 150 yards from where she had parked. Whoever ever makes those commercials about what to do and not to do in a tornado should use it as an example of what not to do: stay in a car. Imagine being tossed around in a manner that would create so much damage, all while being assaulted by flying debris. Even strapped in, I'm not sure how anyone could survive.

Not much of a post, I know, but I really have anything to say tonight other than that.

With Imperial Tuition, Do I Get Egg Roll?

The cost of higher education has sky rocketed since I was student all those years ago. What cost me $4,000 a year now costs over $25,000, an increase of over 6 fold. The cost is rising exponentially, not lineally. In fact I can’t think of much else to compare it to.

Well, other than art by highly collectible dead artists that has increased so much in cost.

Gas is roughly 3 times as expensive as it was back then. Food, probably twice as much. Housing costs depend on where you live, and from what I’ve observed, they have increased by 2 to 3 times. And the price of technology has decreased. (Unless you’re shopping for a very large plasma TV, and the price of them is dropping.)

Accounting for inflation, the $4,000 a year it cost to educate me is equal to $7,470.24 as of December 31, 2007. That’s a $17,500 gap between the cost of living and the cost of purchasing.

Multiply that over 4 years, and you’ll most likely get a butt-load of debt with your diploma.

Not the best graduation present in the world.

Universities, both public and private are notoriously secretive and evasive when it comes to determining why the price has increased so steeply. Even state universities are reluctant to justify their increases. And their financial books are supposed to be a matter of public record.

The increase is self-evident, but the justification always seems to be that things cost more than they used to. Granted they do. But not at the same rate as tuition and fees have grown.

And certainly not at the rate of wages used to purchase education have not grown.

Any other industry (and, believe me, education is an industry) would have been investigated by now for price-gouging and possible anti-trust violations. Let any other industry raise prices so sharply and uniformly, and they'd be talking to a Congressional panel about possible abuses and colusion.

Amazing Grace

Grace is a tightrope I think I must walk every day. It means one more day of being alive. And given the mercurial nature of the universe, being alive is not guaranteed.

I think about people who have died and about those who have been spared. There is no pattern that I can see. It seems all too random. It seems that we either live because of grace or die for some arbitrary reason.

It’s a concept I have trouble coming to terms with. In a perfect world, a person’s value to the larger community of man would dictate the disposition of grace. It doesn’t seem to.

It’s not a perfect world, and maybe I don’t understand the true concept of grace.

I have more questions than I have answers.

And maybe that’s a good thing, the way it should be. It keeps me questioning, thinking and trying to make sense of this mess of a world.

Not that I can solve the world’s problems. I’m no where near that ambitious.

I just want to understand my own little corner of it.

And why bad things happen to good people.

If I came up with a real answer to that one, I could sell more books than any jingoistic motivational speaker.

Until I get further, I’ll just keep on wondering why and living on God’s good grace.

Give Me a Break. Please.

They found my niece's car yesterday. 150 yards from where she left it, in a ditch on top of another one with a tree somehow involved. It's either on top of the car or sticking out of it. Mama wasn't real clear. She hasn't seen it, and when the insurance adjustor called, she couldn't tell him exactly where it was. He called Morgan, the called back a few minutes later to say that they'd get someone out today or Monday, but it would most likely be a total loss.

Do you think? Direct hit from an F4 tornado, blown almost a tenth of a mile away, sitting on top of another car in a ditch with a tree involved. Would you drive it even if it got "fixed"?

Morgan's taken the opportunity to get out of town for a few days. She's gone to Illinois with one of her roommates. I think she just needed to get the hell out of Dodge for a few days, get some sleep and think about something else.

I can't blame her.

I want to get the hell out of Dodge for a few days, and I haven't been almost blown into oblivion.

I took a couple days off work to have some off that didn't involve illness or death. I haven't had any for a while. First Shannon in the hospital last October and again in December-January. Christmas and New Years in two different hospitals. Then Pinto died in February. He was our beautiful 18 year-old red tabby, whose ashes sit in an honored place in our bedroom. And then Daddy in July. Two trips to Tennessee later, I came home to a disturbing email: Richard's mother-in-law, Denise's mother, had been killed. Then Glenn's mother died, and John got put back in the hospital again. Then his mother died.

And now this. I guess I should just be happy that no one's dead. And I am. I just wonder when it's all going to quit. When I can get back to my boring life that stays boring for a few days at a time.

Life, as always, is a mess. The laundry keeps piling up and the diswasher needs to be emptied. I'll get to them when I can.

For now, I'm catching up on sleep.

Eany-Meany-Miney-Moe

For the first time in my life at the ripe old age of 42, I’m going to vote in a primary election. Up until now, the nomination has been decided long before the road show came to my town. Nothing to ensure a low voter turn-out than an already done-deal. Done, carved and served up nicely on the Party’s best china.

Not so this time around the block. My opinion actually matters. There will be no likely Democratic front-runner by the time they bring the show to Texas. We have too many delegates at stake for primaries in Louisiana and Nebraska to matter much. This time, Texas is the next California. In fact, we’re the biggest state left.

It’s time to turn the phone off.

We’ve already had enough calls from the Democratic party and the ACLU and the Committee to Elect Bob Dufus that I’ve pretty much stopped answering unless I’m expecting someone to call. God knows what it’ll be after the primaries and caucuses next Tuesday, when the campaigns have time to focus on the March primary states.

And the devil of it is that I still don’t know who I’m going to vote for. For the first time ever, mine could make a difference, but I don’t know who to endorse.

Both candidates have their good and bad sides. Hillary is a policy wonk who knows Washington inside out. Obama is a newcomer to Washington, a relative naïf.

Those are their strengths and weaknesses, in a nutshell.

One is very entrenched, and the other just got started digging one. I’m torn wondering how much difference trenches make. I’ve always been a staunch Clinton supporter, and I’d like to see the legacy live on. But then again, I’m enchanted by the idea of a fresh breeze blowing through the White House. Part of me thinks that it’s time to open all the windows and do a thorough house cleaning.

Maybe in the next month I’ll come to some peace about it all. Right now, I don’t know. I’m at all at sea.

I just keep hoping one of them will do something so stupid that it will make my decision easier. Given their records, I don’t think that will happen.

God is good and cruel at the same time. He gives two good candidates. Democrats around the country are both celebrating and gnashing their teeth.

It’s like “Sophie’s Choice”, only not filmed as well.

The Clear Light of Day

Those used to be buildings in the background. I lived in a couple of them years and years ago. And my niece lived in one until Tuesday night, when everything changed. An F-4 tornado changes a lot.

It's still all over the news, and W. was down to pay his belated condolences. They still haven't found my niece's car, and I have no idea how that's going to mess up insurance claims. If they don't have a car carcass, how long before it's legally dead?

The more I see, the more amazed I am that a densely populated compound could take a direct hit from a major tornado and not have any fatalities. As of this morning, all 51 kids taken to the hospital had been released but 2. Those two were still in critical condition and expected to recover.

I'm saying a special prayer that they do.

More

Blow Hard

My undergraduate alma mater almost got wiped off the map last night. 80% of its dorms were either destroyed or severely damaged. The EF-4 tornado damaged or destroyed every building on campus, to one degree or another. And my niece was in the middle of it all.

My parents took custody of Morgan before she was a year old, so in some ways she’s more like the sister I don’t really know than the niece I don’t really know. We were raised by the same people in the same house. Mama thinks of her and her brother more like kids than grandkids. So did Daddy. They raised them and lived through all the trials that go with parenthood. (A ‘hood I have no intention of visiting.)

She’s ok, though. Just cuts, bruises and scrapes. She rode out the storm in the bathroom of her downstairs neighbors. She said that it got quiet, and then the walls started shaking. Then the roof came off, along with most of the second floor where she lived, and the water came pouring in.

Her car is missing. It got blown to God knows where. It was directly in the path, so it very well may be in the next county. I’m guessing she lost pretty much everything else. Mama drove down this morning to get her and take care of what they can, which isn’t much. They’re letting residents of a few building go in and retrieve what they can, but I she wasn’t in any of those. And I suppose that if she can find her car, she might or might not be able to get things out of it. Depends on the level of damage.

Tomorrow, she’ll get to go in with a police escort to the area where her room used to be. There’s no roof and some walls are missing. And since she was on the second floor, she will probably be able to get so far. The stairs or the landing could be unsafe, as well as the floors. Most likely, she’ll have to just look around in the yard and try to find something she recognizes.

God has a strange sense of humor. He does stuff like this to remind us of how fragile we are, of how tenuous our grasp on life is, of our physical mortality. In doing so, he wreaks havoc on our lives and takes everything we have. And then leaves us grateful to be alive.

Morgan is safe and sound. The future is uncertain, but it’s still there. What happens next week or the one after will work itself out in God’s good time.

For now, we give thanks for not-so-small miracles.

Tide Pool

The pols are slugging it out again tonight, hoping for a definitive outcome on Super Tuesday. I don't think it will happen. I doubt if anyone except John McCain will come away with definitive results.

I don't really understand why they call it "Super". They should call it a blitzkreig. That makes about as much sense. Over-whelming force that leaves people addled. Nothing super about it.

Still, my dream would be for Huckabee to sweep. Once he says "23% sales tax" and someone actually listens, he's dead in the water. He's such a goof-ball that any real campaign he mounted would implode beneath him.

Doesn't matter in the long run, though. I don't see an electable Republican on the scene. Huckabee's a stooge, Romney is too far to the right and McCain is running as Bush-light.

The country, by and large, has already rejected all of the above. And while McCain may get some mileage out of "Bush-light", he's most likely to end up landing on skid row on that platform.

The good news is that Democrats are turning out in numbers that usually dwarf the dark side. More Democrats are turning up for caucuses and primaries than ever before. And if they take the time to vote at this level, they'll most likely vote in the general election.

The tide seems to be turning.

I'll leave you with a short passage from "Julius Caesar":

Our legions are brimful, our cause is ripe;
The enemy increaseth every day;
We, at the height, are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat...

Oh, and one final piece of advice: don't mess with truth, no matter where you find it. Even dead poets have things to contribute that remain relevant.

Night of the Living Brain-Dead

"You work three jobs?. . . Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that"

--George W. Bush, Omaha, NE, 2/4/05, to a single mother of three

Need I say more?

Civics 101

If I have been writing a lot about politics lately, it's because I care deeply about who runs our country. No good citizen can be passive and abrogate their repsonibilty to vote. And no good citizen can cast a vote lightly, without serious consideration of the candidate in question.

Maybe that's just Protestant guilt bleeding over into my politics, but I wish more people had those blood stains to deal with.

Americans only seem to come in two flavors these days: ignorantly passive or highly partisan. And while I may seem to many people a highly partisan person, I'm not. It's just that I don't like much of what the right wing of government proposes.

The best thing GWBush did while he has been in office was to raise the immigration issue. And his plan for allowing illegal immigrants to naturalize makes fundamental sense. Not a hallmark of his administration to date, so finding one bit of common ground reminds me that no party has a death-grip on the truth.

Truth comes where you find it, even if it is out of the mouth of an illiterate and tirelessly-ignorant jackass.

But even he recognizes that asimillation will happen, with or without government sanction. Better to set new rules than trying to enforce ones that obviously don't work.

And, yes, we could beef up border control. Build fences and walls. Try to contain the illegal inflow of folks from south of the border.

But to do so in any significant way would cost billions that we don't have and would have to borrow from the Chinese, and it would likely have little effect on illigal immigration.

People already risk their lives to get here. They sometimes die in the deserts along the border. Or in transportation that lacks any allowance for replacing CO2 with fresh oyxgen.

While some may be more concerned about their house keeper and who's going to mow the yard, I'm more concerned about families being torn apart and people living in an underground sub-culture where they remain isolated and fail to reap all the benefits that come with American citizenship.

They aren't coming here because of our less-than-stellar public assistance programs. They don't want the next in line on the dole. They could probably do about as well and stay at home.

As far as immigration is concerned, most people will think only of Mexico. But we have illegal imagrants from all over the world. Asia and Africa are both supplying a good quantity.

And they all come here for the same reason: the chance to get ahead. To give their children a better life than they had. To work hard and get paid an honest day's wages for it.

Again, I'll say, it's the only thing I have in common with GWB. And I was disappointed to see legislation addressing immigration shot down in both houses of Congress. By both parties.

Too many people seem to be robots these days. They don't think: they just react. Thinking seems to be part of an earlier age. I mourn its demise.

This is all to say that I don't vote on partisan lines. I vote based on philosophical and ethical bases. As a citizen, it is both my obligation and my privilege to do so.

Voting is the only activism I participate in.

6 of 1...

Since John Edwards is out of the way, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are making nice. Each is running for President and Vice President, simultaneously. Since Mr. Ewards is no longer a factor, they don't have to worry about the possibility of him coming in second and not willing to be a VP candidate again.

I hope that Edwards will not just go by the wayside, lay down and die. His message is important, and it should inform debate on the Democratic side. While both viable candidates pay lip-service to his message, I'm not sure either one really gets it.

Of the two left, Obama is probably the most experienced with overcoming the adversity that Edwards campaigned on. Yale may prepare you for some things, but understanding poverty is not one of them. Until you've gone without eating or worn beat-up clothes and shoes simply because you can't afford anything else, you don't know about it.

Still, idealism does not always translate into action. For day to day issues, the President has very little control. At best he or she can propose legislation and veto legislation. That's about it.

To get action, the future president will need strong support in the legislature. Clinton has been around long enough to form those alliances and create a network of legislative supporters.

It's a toss-up. I find myself torn between the idealism of Obama and the practicality of Clinton. Both qualities, in a sincere and informed incarnation, have been missing for the past 7 years.

I'm hoping that one of the two will present themself as both in the coming months.

Regardless, neither has ruled out the possibility of running as a VP. And polls have shown that ticket with either of them as President with the other as VP would be hard to beat.

So they're making nice. They both realize that either one could make history and that the two of them could make history together.

The Republicans are going to continue to be brutal, but I'm expecting a more congenial tone on the Democratic side. Attacks don't work so well in a one-on-one race. And neither wants to throw away the chance to be the first black or woman Vice President.

It's six of one and half a dozen of the other from where I sit.