I''m ... sorry. I shouldn't be obsessing about this, but I *can't* just go on to anything else.

I'm stuck between thinking "Hey, I've always wanted to live in a third world country" and "Hey, it's only seven years until the aliens take over, no need to make long-term plans anyway."

I have become a makinglight junkie and.

I'm halfway between being sorry that my sister is home from ND and her escape across the border to Canada is going to be harder, and really, really glad that she's *here*, where I can sit in her room, reassured by listening to her make vids to send to Our Boys In Iraq, while I quietly panic.

And I *know*, I *know* that there are people living in this country who aren't freaked out and angry, who haven't lost the last of their faith in our system of government, who think everything is being handled to the best of the administration's ability... and that is what has made me lose the last of my faith. Because - almost regardless of which viewpoint is closest to objectively correct - the fact that two such wildly differing versions of reality are *there* - are held by large numbers of otherwise rational, intelligent people - means that we aren't a nation any more, and I don't know how it can be fixed.

(I *can't* be all compassionate and nonpartisanly-trying-my-best to help about the death and destruction right now, I'm sorry. I don't know anyone personally who's evacuated (even internet-personally) and the grief is just too broad. And because from what I'm hearing it *is* like Somalia-- there's plenty of supplies and manpower, but the people in power aren't *letting it get through to the people who need it*.)

(p.s. the last few articles I've read on Somalia made the case that most of Somalia is actually doing reasonably well, more peaceful and prosperous than it ever was when it had an actual central government, thank you.)

I'm going to go make some hot cocoa and curl up in my nest with my old copy of Raven Dance, and do what I can locally to alleviate human misery, the ways I've been giving since I was a kid, the way local people in the devastated areas are doing their best.

One of my old Sunday School teachers has two sons in the Maryland National Guard; one of them is in Iraq, and the other is heading to Louisiana (sometime *next week*.) My sister and I looked at each other across the coffee hour table and said, "Well, at least the Maryland Air National Guard will still be around, since they won't have any aircraft." (Actually, those C-130's are currently being used to ferry our National Guard troops in the relief effort. I wonder if Bush is still going to approve the recommendation to take them away?)

I don't want to be this cynical /: There's a reason I rarely talk about current events; it requires following the news, which requires being constantly depressed. I haven't been even able to continue my project of listening to old This American Life episodes because they've been getting so darn depressing. (and those are just the obviously non-partisan ones I've hit on lately.)

Anyway, after church we went to a game with the congregation, all sixteen who showed up, and sat through fifteen *riveting* innings of AA baseball. (The Baysox lost, 1-4). It's good to know that the ending of the National Anthem, sung loud and throbbing to a crowd, can still give me shivers. It's also good to remember that when it's sung, it always ends on a *question*, a question whose answer should never be taken for granted. (Also, I think I want to get a large American flag to put with my end-of-the-world supplies in my closet. In a real doomsday scenario, having it might help more than anything I can think of other than water purification tablets. Of which I actually have some now, but they date back to Dad's hiking days in the '70s, so I'm not using them unless the only other alternative is much worse.)