If we take the last year–from last July to the end of June this year, say, as in a fiscal year–I’d have to acknowledge that the ledger is lavishly splashed with red. The blood-red of injury, of loss, and the blood, sweat and tears of emergency.
“How do I love thee? [This past year] Let me count the ways.”
On 8 July, 2016, nearly a third of the house we had leased burned down because the landlord, Eric Quek, hired someone incompetent to burn his uprooted trees . Our son Alex literally lost everything, escaping with his life only because, inexplicably, he had come into the main house in his quest for a lime popsicle. Ten days later both the water and electrical mains were severed by someone Quek had hired to rip his now cleared land. The Chief took herself off to the coast, and I had to find a house in about two days. I did so, with some help, but felt compelled to guard Quek’s property until such time as it was responsible to stand down. This meant something like five sweltering nights from the equivalent of the seventeenth century. In December my in-laws sued the Chief and I again for the fourth time in three years. On New Year’s Eve Alex’ dog, Roo, was mercilessly run down and killed. Then, in January, Alex grew terribly ill, and we didn’t realize it was fatally so until March 12. Those were two months I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Liberally season this Grand Guignol with the dissolution of our daughter’s marriage and her own and the Kid’s worrying health issues and–Hey, Presto!–you have the recipe for a banner year.
They say God doesn’t give anything you can’t handle. He must think very highly of us.
Even so, my advice would be not to stand very close to me during an electrical storm.
Still, there was always something serendipitous to alleviate the stress–such as Julia’s helping us find the house we’re currently in.
A friend of mine is fond of saying that everything is relative.
Albert Einstein, the Father of Relativity, famously achieved many of his breakthroughs by using thought experiments.
Let’s try one of our own.
And we may find, when we’re done, that we may indeed have to try one of our own–citizens, that is. Specifically, the Orange Horror.
Let’s say you occupy the Oval Office. You’re under exactly the same scrutiny the current occupant is beset by. So are all your consiglieri. The same potential charges apply, and your agenda has been paralyzed by media frenzy and some fancy footwork on your own part–so much so that all you can claim as an accomplishment is the confirmation of one stolen Supreme Court nominee.
In the process you’ve made a laughingstock of yourself and a mockery of your office.
You need to clear your name not least as a pathway to freeing your hand, but also because you suspect orange might not be the most becoming color for you.
What do you do?
Fire the Director of the FBI? Not if you’re innocent. If you’re innocent you want it made known, and pronto. If you’re innocent, you afford the FBI the greatest possible latitude in quickly clearing your name.
If you’re innocent, “fake news” might be inimical to your exoneration.
You might even volunteer to testify under oath or, failing that, leap to take a polygraph. If, that is, you’re innocent.
But what of your advisors? What if one or more of them is not innocent?
What would you do?
Probably behave as the president has thus far done.
We’ll see about his own innocence. Time will tell.
Do I even need mention the Orange Horror was “elected” during this same banner year?
At least things can only improve.