It is snowing outside. It is the first snow of the season significantly coating everything, and the snowplows are out. Snow covered asphalt reacquaints us with the laws of physics. With a warming climate, winter snow, as it happens, comes later, and less of it. I can remember the blinding snowstorms of many years past which made driving foolhardy in a concrete sense.  You couldn’t tell what object might be concealed just beyond the headlight beams reflected back at you by the driving snow. With good fortune what was in front of you was another vehicle moving at similar speed, and if fortune was busy elsewhere, perhaps a stalled semi truck. “And so it goes…” Vonnegut would write.

Life is just like that. We are distracted by our constructed worlds, by the amenities of ‘civilization’, especially by the bright shiny amusement on offer for us. Just offstage, behind the curtain though Nature is always present with hard constraints, and the in-between of chance, of life and death. Distraction ought never to be discounted though. To be reminded of my mortality can be exhausting.

This from the New York Times on the firestorm that rings Los Angeles:

• A new fire started in the West Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. Over a just a few hours last night, it exploded to cover 1,000 acres.

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I watched a segment of the State funeral for President Jimmy Carter, our 39th President at the Washington National Cathedral. Usually when a person is referred to as “a good man” the term is a euphemism, a vacuous throw-away comment. As witnessed by the many eulogies offered to those present in at the Cathedral, the arc of Carter’s life demonstrated what it means to actually be “a good man.” Already he is sorely missed. American society proceeds ahead, making a future, with a fading memory of this good human being.

Of the many high notes of the farewell ritual for President Carter was the rendition of Amazing Grace performed by Phyllis Adams. I have heard, and I have sung Amazing Grace countless times. Music is fundamentally a matter of emotion, of heart and Adams’ performance approached perfection. To enjoy an audition of the performance CLICK HERE.

On a concluding note President-elect Trump was seated with former presidents at the event. The camera often captured him, seated impassively, his expression seeming as if frozen by a fixed scowl. Yes, this darkness waits in the wings. We’ve see this before, and unfortunately were unable to take the measure of this man. To the many forms of evil, and of dissolution, resolute resistance is the response that any good person must take. Jimmy Carter would have agreed.