It is early and it is cold out there already; it’s supposed to get down to near twenty below by tonight.  Snow covers the ground as it has almost continuously since November.  The wind picks up the loose snow that remains unstuck and blows it around, packing it hard into drifts against the house and trees out back.  The schools are closed- again- for the fourth time this season due to cold alone.  I’ll be driving my wife to work this morning. 

I need to get dressed to let the dogs out on this frigid winter morn.  I can hear one of them crying now.  After they go out, they eat.  They know that.  They are creatures rather easily trained and molded in their behaviors by habit.  Not unlike a lot of us I guess.

I ground up some coffee beans a couple days ago and that is what I brewed up this morning and that is what I am drinking just now as I gaze out the window on the cold, hard winterscape of the morning.  What does the rest of my life hold for me?  And how long do I have?  In the case of the latter I would really rather not know and in the case of the former I am eager to know as I plan those efforts, as I drive myself toward things I have never done before and toward the hopefully bright futures for all in my family. 

I think of the family and friends who are no longer in my life.  Some have passed, it is true, but so many more have simply fallen away on the sides of life’s pathways.  Sometimes I manage to reconnect for a touch but usually those times and those folks remain more than an arm’s length away and I really don’t work hard to bring them back into reach.  There is usually a reason or two for things to end.

Every year he tries Dan Marino throws the ball slower and for less distance.  The march of times.

The coffee is warm and I think I got the mix just right today.  It is good.  As I sip it I look out the window and wonder as the sun begins to rise and spread a brightening light across this frozen gloom.  I wonder about the future and what it holds,  for me and my family as I have said but also, and sometimes moreso, for this country and what it will be when my kids are older and I am then too old to do much about it anymore.

If you want a glimpse of what you are becoming then you should start by taking a look at what you do and what you consume.  What do we consume?

Take a listen to the music; take a gander at the tube.  Watch and learn about the video games your kids are playing- now just what is available but what they are wanting to play.  Do you let them?  Observe the general state of the folks on the streets- what they wear, how they act, the simplest manners they may or may not display.  How about you?  Listen to what they are talking about in the coffee shops and at the lunch counters and at the bars.  Check out the local theatre and take stock of what is being shown- this is a reflection of either the Hollywood mindset or the result of what the public is consuming.  What do you go to see, who do you give your money to?  Look at the family unit, how it is constructed and what values it promotes to those within it.  Yours?

The words, the pictures, the music, the people- all glyphs of the times and all trueing reflections of what we are now and are becoming.  Simple question then: are you good with all that?

Dennis Rodman knows.  He knows more than any of us as it turns out.  He is the true ambassador for our qualities and beliefs as a nation.  You and I are merely in the stands and watching the game.  He is the star, he is the hero.

I ramble.  I am tired but the coffee is good and will soon hopefully fill my being.  The sun also rises, higher now as the angles of the morning shadows shift and lose their early morning length.  What does this day hold in store for you, for me, for us? 

I think that I will go back and read some Benjamin Franklin and be amazed yet again at all that wise man knew over two hundred years ago.  How did he know?   Are some truths simply timeless? 

I worry my friends.  I am somber and tired this Monday morning.  So maybe I am just wrong.  I suppose that I am now firmly in the minority on most things.  But before you pass judgment I have a question.  If you’re cool with what is happening now I would ask if you have thought much about where things are going to wind up in the future?  I know that I have.

For now, well, the Superbowl will be played next weekend and that is so important to all of us right?  I hope that Richard Sherman will get the respect that he feels he so deserves on the field because when he talks about it off the field he quickly loses the respect of a lot of people who don’t care much about the respect that he says he does deserve on the field.  At least a lot of people who aren’t hooked into him for something.  When he’s lying there and dying, as one day we all must, he can ponder about which respect was worth more.

I wonder what he will conclude…