February 3, 2011

A blizzard followed by sunshine has left me weary but cheerful. The huge piles of shoveled snow will complicate life for weeks. My shoulders will still ache tomorrow from yesterday's clearing of walks and driveway. The packed-down snow remaining in the driveway will ice over at some point in the next week or two; wheels will spin and it will take a couple rounds of reverse and forward to get going. But gosh, the sun has been out ever since the snow stopped. I had a nice lunch and a nice Harp's with my kids, plus Dan, the birthday boy. We've all been through a lot together. How good to celebrate snow day #2 over brats, burgers, beer and french fries.

Yet there are things I wonder about--things I've had time to wonder about in the last two days. Can those demonstrators in Egypt really change their government? So many thousands of people, assembled mostly peaceably, with reasonable expectations--yet will Mubarak's thugs and the ensconced elite prevail? The world watches, but what can the world do?

I'm reading "Year of Meteors," by Douglas R. Egerton. It's about the year leading up to Lincoln's inauguration. Fire-eaters in the South, fearful of the loss of millions of dollars of property in slaves and of their privileged position, pushed the debate to extremes. What was the North to do? There was no longer any way to agree to disagree.

Where would I have been in that debate? (Assuming it mattered at all where a woman stood!) Moderate and fearful? Wild-eyed and radical? One of those two--I don't seem to be wired for a reactionary. And I was more moderate when I was younger than I am now. But then everyone in America seems to be more one way or the other than they were twenty years ago.

Pray for peaceful change in Egypt. But change, nevertheless. Pray for clear eyes and sunshine after storms.