The year is young, yet already too full of news where people have died from extreme weather and gunfire. Some people can’t wait for the Superbowl, as if this event with its creative TV ads, over the top half-time show and thousands upon thousands of house parties will heal our nation. At least it won’t be January anymore, although it will be Olympics month where the unfortunate focus will be on security at Sochi, not gold medals.
I have this sense that 9/11 didn’t change the world, it simply became a convenient marker for our downhill descent, starting with global warming, terrorism and the explosion of internet intrusions, from hacking to bullying.
Today is a record setting day—48 days without rain in Sacramento. The soot levels throughout California are high—it simply feels dirty here. At the other coast we are facing more freezing temps.
Schools and shopping malls have become target practice areas. I am looking for sanity and those good hearts that make this country strong.
It is time to recite “Invictus,” a poem written by William Ernest Henley in 1875
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
67Steffen.com 
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