Love

Happy Valentine's Day, Pioneer Valley! I love you.

Love takes courage, especially since it almost always ends badly. I'm not talking about eventual emotional break-ups, common as those painful events are. I'm referring to the true love that really lasts, but is almost certain to end with one of you dying and leaving the other behind. I mean how often do people die simultaneously? I can testify from personal experience that having the person you love most in the world die away from you is life's most devastating experience.

But not necessarily the most tragic. That fate falls to those who no longer have any interest in love and who don't believe in it anymore. Those folks are worse off than the haters, since hate at least is an animating force, and can sometimes be linked to justice. But indifference to love is just a sea of greyness stretching into infinity. So if you think you know somebody you might be able to love, and who might love you, even if that doesn't ring true all the time, then run towards it as fast as you can. Go, go - it will be worth it! Love beats hate or indifference every single time hands down.

Valentine's Day sunrise.


Greetings on the woodland way.


Is this a cosmic statement or just the name of somebody's band? Around here it's hard to know.




NPR offers this description of the first State of the Union Address delivered by George Washington:

The Constitution requires that the president "shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." So Washington — who had only been in office for less than nine months — presented his First Annual Address, a four-page speech of 1,100 words or so. The whole thing could not have taken more than about 10 minutes to deliver, says Stuart Leibiger, a George Washington specialist at La Salle University. "Washington was not much of an orator, and so he literally read the speech."

Which everyone promptly ignored. The State of the Union (SOTU) is still sensibly ignored to this day by everyone except establishment journalists, but if they must give that silly speech every year I wish it was half as clear and concise as this statement by the million vote garnering 2012 Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson's released yesterday in response to President Obama's SOTU address:

"What we didn’t hear tonight was a President telling the truth about the real state of the Union: that we are broke -- and that he and the Congress are succeeding only in digging us deeper into a financial hole that is, in reality, the single greatest threat to the nation’s well-being.

“Rather, we once again heard the tired argument that the challenges we face can somehow best be met by more government that costs more and taxes more. We’ve tried that. In fact, we’ve tried it so hard and so long that we have a debt totaling more than $90,000 for every worker in America.

“And while he spent an hour laying out a mind-boggling list of things the government should do, from ‘investing’ in infrastructure, technology and energy to helping parents pick the best college for their kids, he assured us his plans will not increase the deficit by ‘a single dime’.

“That is absurd on its face, and could only be based on the same arithmetic that has given us a $16 Trillion debt.

“Once again, we witnessed a great political performance wrapped around promises that shouldn’t be made in the first place, and that we certainly cannot afford to keep.”

Amen.

More Azwan in Amherst? Okay.