All across the country, parents are reluctantly cutting the umbilical cord and launching their youngin’s into the cold, cruel world.

Of kindergarten and college, that is. I’ve seen the evidence on Facebook: “Oh, ever since (insert beloved child’s name here) was born, I’ve been dreading the day we would send him/her off to kindergarten/college. I can’t believe how time flies!”

The New York Times has weighed in as well, documenting the rise of “parting ceremonies” on college campuses designed to give parents the not-so-subtle hint that it’s time to “hit the road” rather than hang around for a week at a local hotel and show up on campus each morning to escort Little Junior to class to check out the suitability of his professors, not to mention the laundry room to make sure he knows how to insert his “Action Card” into the slot and separate whites from darks.

And if you don’t believe me, listen to this Tweet from a college professor friend of mine at my own alma mater (Hail!): “HU freshmen parents: I know it’s great to be at Harding but please go home. We’ve got it from here.”

For the record, Eyegal and I are not known for being “helicopter parents.” Number One Son has nominated us for the “The Least Involved Parents in the World” award which I’m guessing he meant as a compliment although it looks a little funny at first glance. That translates roughly to “Find your own way, boys, but whatever you do, don’t wake us up at 2:00AM to bail you out of jail.”

So far, we’ve only had one relatively mild violation of that rule.

Two of ours are out of the house and off to college and only boomerang back occasionally to pet the dog and ask for money. Number Three Son is starting to pick up on the hint–probably best conveyed by his parents’ passionate embraces in the kitchen while he begs for dinner–that “ya know we love ya to pieces and all, but this whole ‘empty nest’ thing is sounding better and better so could you step it up please, because your mother and I got plans.” Completely on his own, he decided to enroll in a program that will enable him to take classes at a local community college while finishing up his senior year of high school. If all goes well, he’ll have around 20 hours of credit and a diploma come next May.

Seriously, though, sometimes our kids do need a little help navigating The Road of Life and Eyegal and I are glad to help out and play the parental GPS–from a distance, by cell, text or Skype, and before 10:00PM.

But every now and then, you gotta go all Special Forces and break bad on some heads. [...]

Huntsville police and SWAT teams are currently at the scene of a hostage situation in the Medical District.

An optometrist (OD) employed at an ObamaCare-affiliated medical clinic (the one with the new Death Panel drive-thru window) is apparently fed-up to his eyeballs with all the incessant yik-yak from his patients, the constant sniping and backstabbing from co-workers and the drowning deluge of mind-numbing emails, bureaucratic buzzwords and meaningless acronyms (MNEMBBMA) raining down from his overlords on Mt. Olympus.

The OD–OMe! OMy!–has apparently quit his job and gone optical.

Police will identify him only as “Mike the Eyeguy.” According to a department spokesperson, Dr. Eyeguy has apparently been showing several signs of cracking recently. Area opticians have told police that over the past few weeks he has been transposing “minus” signs for “plus” signs, and vice versa, resulting in blurry eyeglasses and a spike in Huntsville metro area traffic accidents. In addition, other local eye doctors and health department officials have noted a recent epidemic of permanently-crossed “googly eyes” resulting from Coke-bottle lenses allegedly prescribed by Dr. Eyeguy.

One patient even said that when he complained about the blinding brightness of the light on the examining scope, the rogue OD, who was frothing at the mouth and quietly humming nursery rhymes to himself, turned the illumination dial all the way up to “11″ and suddenly erupted into peals of “BWAHAHAHA” evil scientist laughter.

Early reports indicate that when this morning’s first patient, who already had crystal clear, better-than-perfect 20/10 X-ray vision in both eyes to begin with, complained to the OD in a small, grating voice which sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard that his vision “still just wasn’t quiiite good enough” and commanded him to fix it “NOW!”, something snapped.  The OD has now taken several hostages and is reportedly threatening to use industrial-strength dilating drops and send them out into the bright sunlight without those little cheap, flimsy paper sunglasses.

In a rambling manifesto posted on Youtube, “Mike the Eyeguy” aired his grievances. The following is a portion of the transcript from that broadcast: [...]

“We were watching the soccer match,” Eyegal explained to the desk clerk at the historic Park View Guest House in the Garden District of New Orleans last Friday morning.

The US v. Slovenia match had ended just a few minutes before the 11:00 AM checkout time, but we had planned ahead and had our bags packed and ready to go. The “good” US National Team had taken the pitch in the 2nd half after the “bad” one, the U-10 squad that had showed up by mistake, had gone down 0-2 in the first.

Yet the 2-2 draw to stay alive in Group C play had left both of us a bit frustrated. Center Referee Koman Coulibaly, a native of Mali, had called back Maurice Edu’s apparent go-ahead goal on a “mystery call”, and the moaning and wailing that emanated from Room D on the first floor rivaled that of the spirits and specters who endlessly roam the grounds of Lafayette Cemetary No. 1 a few blocks away on St. Charles Avenue.

“That’s what the noise was,” Eyegal added helpfully.

“Yes, we were down 0-2 and came back and tied it and then hit the go-ahead goal but it was called back. Terrible call. Terrible, terrible call,” I blurted out.

The clerk turned his head to the right, gazing out on the hazy, green expanse of Audubon Park, already a sauna in the rising heat and humidity.  “So that’s what that noise was,” he said, smiling wryly. “I thought it was coming from out there.”

I’m not sure he believed our explanation. I think he thought we were…“you know.” But really, who could possibly think about “you know” at a time like that, you know? Right Capello? [...]

In the most stunning political turn since Fort Sumter, University of Alabama football fans have ringed the State Capital Building in Montgomery with a barricade of RVs and double-wide mobile homes in an attempt to seize control of the state government.

They are demanding that Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim James cease and desist from his campaign and that Governor Bob Riley establish a new executive office, Beloved Athletic Ruler (B’AR), which would be co-equal with Governor and occupied by Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban.  Riley, an Alabama alumnus, is reported to be seriously considering the ultimatum.

The movement began suddenly this past week after James, an Auburn grad, allegedly made intemperate and ill-advised remarks regarding Saban in which he questioned the coach’s maternal bloodline and threatened to reduce his salary or even outright “fahr his a**!” if he was elected governor in the fall.

These alleged remarks were brought to light on a radio talk show hosted by Paul Finebaum, a humble and low-key man who has never been known to repeat a half-baked rumor just to provoke a reaction among his rabid listeners or boost his ratings. The resultant apoplectic meltdown and firestorm spread quickly throughout the Yellowhammer State, producing a mixture of bile and BS so profoundly dense that BP scientists are said to be considering using it for “top kill” to plug the Deepwater Horizon oil leak.

Predictably, James immediately blamed opponent Bradley Byrne and used his official Twitter account to issue a denial, thereby lending credence to the rumor in the first place and spreading it even further.

He is reportedly hold up in the clock tower of Samford Hall on the Auburn University campus where he vows to continue his campaign and lead a secessionist movement which will include most, but not all, of Lee County and a small band of Auburn-trained engineers who comprise what is left of the Huntsville Chapter of the War Eagle Club that meets for wings and beer once a month at the Chili’s on University Avenue and reminisces about “the good ol’ days.”

In response to reports of rednecks raisin’ a ruckus and burnin’ stuff near a government building, former-Alaska Governor and now TV host Sarah Palin, who had been scheduled to appear at a fundraiser at Faulkner University anyway, decided to come on down ahead of schedule in a show of support.

And as if all that wasn’t odd enough, now several thousand Hispanic immigrants, both legal and otherwise, have joined Alabama fans at the barricades. When asked how such strange bedfellows were possible, one movement leader, who wished to be identified only as “Mike the Redneck,” explained:  “Lookit, tweren’t that hard. All we had to do wuz tell ‘em that we wuz out to save ‘Alabama futbol’ and they came a’runnin’ from evra’ which way. Maybe it’s the kommon man in me, but sometimes it jist makes sense to speak a little Spanish–duz it to you, Tim?”

When reached for comment, Saban denied that he had been contacted about the “B’AR” position, said that he had no interest in the “B’AR” position, and repeated over and over that he would be the Head Coach at Alabama for a long, long time, a’ight?

A’iiiiight.

In a related story, Republican candidate for State Treasurer Young Boozer promised that if elected that he would immediately commandeer the Alabama State Alcoholic Beverage Control Board and once again legalize the previously “Banned in Alabama” wine label, Cycles Gladiator.

Finally, some real progress.

Dear AZ,

Nice try, but no cigarro.

We know you’re a little sore because “L” comes before “R” in the alphabet. And you probably felt a little trampled upon when we drove an armada of Crimson, elephant-festooned RVs with horns that blare “Yea, Alabama,” not once, but twice, through your state in early January on our way to the Rose Bowl and back (Roll Tide!).

But did you really think you could captivate the attention of the entire country with your so-called “controversial” new immigration law? You call that “controversial?” You call yourself “conservative?” Do the names “George Wallace” and “Bull Connor” ring a bell with you people? Please, in Alabama we put the CON in “controversial” and “conservative.”

Listen up Arizona, this is Alabama–we speak Redneck. If you want to hang with the Good Ol’ Boys, you better step up your game in a hurry. You could start by brushing up on your history and start watching more Jeff Foxworthy DVDs and Dukes of Hazzard reruns now. Because as long as all the politico-wannabes in the Yellowhammer State keep rolling out their campaign TV ads, by the time November rolls around, the only thing people are going to remember about you is that big sink hole that you guys keep calling a “natural wonder.”

Believe me, Tim James’ “This is Alabama, We Speak English, Dadgummit!” spot was just the opening shot. In fact, poor ol’ Tim is looking like a libruhl, soccer-loving, pinko Commie today compared to Dale “True Grit” Peterson, the guy whose “goin’ afta’” the “Ag Commish” office.

His TV add went viral in recent days–you may have seen it even way out there. Heck, we didn’t even know we had an “Ag Commish” until that ad hit. Folks around here got so worked up at the sight of his Winchester and cowboy hat that now they’re talking about him and Sarah Palin saddlin’ up together to take back The White House in 2012. A ticket like that might set the English language back a few centuries. I can see their first presser now–Sarah up there behind the podium, winkin’ and flashin’ that “You Betcha” grin of hers, and Dale right there beside her ridin’ shotgun, just darin’ some cocky, snot-nosed libruhl to ask her a real question.

Yeah, yeah, I know we have Bradley Byrne and Young Boozer who want to represent the New South and show that Alabama can be progressive. They’re actin’ all uppity and tryin’ to show off their phancy learnin’ and what not, but don’t pay them no mind.

Tim James and the True Republican PAC (which really isn’t) dug up some good dirt on Byrne who’s a Duke grad and is running for governor. Turns out all that phancy learnin’ led him to make a few sympathetic comments toward evolution “evilution” and biblical higher criticism a few years back, and Tim and his new best buds at AEA pounced on that like a cat on a June Bug. That slick maneuver forced Byrne into damage control mode to repair his fundamentalist Christian cred among the hoi polloi.

Well played, Mr. James, well played.

As for Young Boozer, the “serious leader” with the “funny name”, he’s a Stanford grad who’s apparently playing up his connection with Bear Bryant (God rest his soul).

Stanford, Bear Bryant–it don’t take a rocket scientist (and Lord knows, they’re a dime a dozen here in Huntsville) to know that dawg don’t hunt. All the Old Boozers down in Montgomery ain’t gonna take too kindly to that brand of monkeyshine.

Give it up Arizona, you don’t stand a chance. We’re going to see y’all’s silly little immigration law and raise you one Dale Peterson and two Tim Jameses. That’s right, ol’ Tim is about to go “nucular,” and Ocular Fusion has the scoop on his next campaign ad. Read ‘em and weep, AZ; it’s only primary season, and we’re just gettin’ started.

Reddest regards,

AL

I don’t always speak Spanish, but when I do, I prefer having Jose Rafael Rodriguez (aka, my translator “Danny”) somewhere in the immediate vicinity. I am neither the most interesting man in the world, nor the most bilingual.

I tried to memorize enough Spanish eye care phrases to get by on my recent trip to Guatemala, but despite my best efforts and intentions, I found myself leaning hard on Danny. I would usually start out the day doing a passable job-abre sus ojos (“open your eyes”), mira arriba (“look up”) –but as things got hot and busier and I became increasingly fatigued, I started to mangle my rote phrases more and more. I would then simply shrug and look at Danny and motion toward the patient with my head, body language for “Yeah, yeah, I know, go ahead.”

He knew I couldn’t get along without him and he relished it and wouldn’t let me forget. One of my favorite things to ask the patient at the end of the consult was Tiene preguntas? (Do you have any questions?). I pride myself on being the kind of doctor who doesn’t rush from the room to put out another fire until the patient has had their say. I would say the phrase perfectly (Prrrray-GOON-toos!) and wait for the patient to reply.

Nueve times out of diez, this came in the form of a quizzical stare and a cocked head. I would shrug and look at Danny and he would repeat the phrase word for word to the patients–the same way I had–and suddenly the proverbial light bulb would appear in one of those little fluffy, cumulus thought clouds above their heads. While the patients would launch into a litany of preguntas, more than I could count, really, Danny would simply look at me and grin. [...]

In a rather anticlimactic move, the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee announced this morning (off the record, of course) that the officiating crew for tonight’s title game between the fascist (or communist if you prefer) Duke Blue Devils and the clean-cut, All-American kids from Hickory High Butler University will consist of former Duke greats Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley and Grant Hill.

“Might as well go ahead and say it out loud,” an unnamed NCAA source wearing a Duke coaches polo said. “Everybody knows we stack the deck for the Devils, anyway, although we kinda dropped the ball on that from 2001 until now.”

In what we surely come to be known as “Exhibit A” and proof positive of the so-called “Krzyzewski Effect,” Laettner, Hurley and Hill, who have been training as Jedi warrior monks under the tutelage of George Clooney on the top-secret set of The Men Who Stare At Goats, will have the ability to not only ignore egregious fouls on the part of the Blue Devils, but will also stun Butler players (who will be wearing retro uniforms consisting of tight tank tops, satin short-shorts and canvas, high top Chuck Taylor Converse All Stars) and paralyze them by shooting laser beams from their eyes.

Using similar psychic Jedi superpowers, the trio will also guide the ball into the basket anytime Duke players Kile Singler, Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith (interestingly known as “The Firm”–hmmm, remember that movie?) shoot from beyond the arc.

“Look,” the unnamed anonymous source admitted, “how else can you expect an ‘alarmingly unathletic’ team whose best players are a pasty, white tree-hugger, a skinny Jew from Chicago and an undersized black dude to come out on top?”

Reaction among Duke haters has been swift. Homer Stokes III, grandson of REE-form Party founder Homer Stokes, said, “Did you see the way those Devils shared the ball in that thar semifinal? That thar ‘Firm’ had 23, 21 and 19 points a piece. That’s SOCIALISM I tell ya! It ain’t no coincidence that that thar Muslim president of ours, B. HUSSEIN Obama, beat Clark Kellogg in a game of POTUS on the same day.”

“How is David supposed to slay Goliath if all the refs are Philistines? It’s just further proof that The Little Man is getting screwed with the business end of a broom handle, I tell ya!”

In a completely unrelated story (or so they want you to think), Alabama Head Football Coach Nick Saban and Coach K have apparently purchased a time-share together in Juarez, Mexico (h/t JRB).

Go Duke.

The road to Montellano, Guatemala started in a small, dingy gray room on the 11th floor of Roanoke Memorial Hospital on April 2nd, 2009. It was there around 5:00 AM that I held my mother’s head in my hands and shouted words of love and farewell over her as she drew her last breath in this life.

You don’t travel into the Valley of the Shadow with someone and then back out again without being changed forever. The Reaper’s sickle passes so close to your own skin that you feel its wind. It cuts, and if you’re standing near enough, you bleed.

But after the worst of grief passes (and this can take months), your senses are sharpened, your vision more acute. Gradually, you start to see things differently, even some things that you’ve never seen before.

I had never felt “The Call” to be a missionary. I had always supported such work in one form or another, even sending members of my family on trips while I minded the fort at home. I strongly believed that my “mission” here in Huntsville–being the best husband, father, doctor, professor and writer that I can be–was as important as any, and I still do.

But during the months following my mother’s death, as I tended to the difficult drudgery of caring for and resolving her estate, as I watched the house I grew up in auctioned off on a overcast, muggy morning last August, an idea began to take shape, its outline slowly becoming more distinct through the misty veil of tears that clung to me like summer sweat.

My mother had been one of a kind, and my father a gentle soul who had left his mark on me despite his death in 1980 at the young age of 47.  By September, I knew that I wanted to take a portion of the proceeds from the estate and do something special, “out of the box” as I wrote in my last post, to honor my father and mother.

You won’t see the phrase on the Health Talents International (HTI) website or in any of their literature, but the Harold and Christine Brown Memorial Eye Care Mission was born. [...]

I had a very smart man, a rocket scientist in fact (we have a few in Huntsville), tell me recently that America was going to hell in a hand basket. He didn’t say it quite that way because a respectable Christian, Southern gentleman would never drop the “H” bomb in front of the ladies unless he was reading it out of the Bible. But that was the basic gist of it.

He said a lot of things, that we had strayed from the intent of the Founding Fathers to establish a “Christian Nation,” that widespread belief in evolution was the root of much of society’s evil and ills, including increasing teenage suicide rates, and that really things had grown much worse since prayer was banned in public schools.

He kept repeating how we as a citizenry have elected fools and put them in charge. He didn’t name names, but it was pretty clear whom he considered The Biggest Fool of All. He said we all really needed to “take back our country for God” before it was too late. It sounded a little like he was a recruiter for an army of some sort; the only thing missing was sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves.

Obviously, there was a lot of information and nuance that fell through the cracks. The spaces between the lines of his 32-pt Arial font were big enough to drive a Mack truck through, and I would have been happy to per her in overdrive and gone pedal-to-the-metal had he granted an opportunity for a little Q & A, but he didn’t.

In the end, there was a mixture of applause, some merely polite, some enthusiastic. I suspect most there generally agreed with the majority of his points, while a smaller number recognized his slick presentation for what it was: fear-mongering demagoguery.

But because it was fear-mongering demagoguery for a Good Cause (in the name of Jesus,) he received a free pass. And then the audience rose, shedding his ominous PowerPoints like water from a duck’s back, and grappled with the more pressing Question of the Hour: Chili’s or Logan’s Roadhouse for lunch?

Had I been able to ask questions, I might have mentioned all the biology professors at various Christian colleges and universities, including my own alma mater (Hail to thee!), who somehow manage to hold on to both faith and science and quietly encourage their students to do the same and have for decades (you have to do it quietly lest some large donor fret too much and withdraw his money in a huff).

I might have asked that if evolution, and not love of money, really is the root of all evil, then why don’t we get busy and use whatever means necessary to flush out some of those troublesome, suicide-assisting biology professors from our schools and fire them? Seems to me that if you’re going to take back America for God, a good place to start would be by cleaning your own house.

I think that I might have also pointed out that I’m too busy to join God’s merry little band of stormtroopers. Most days it’s all I can do to get up, go to work, provide decent eye care to my patients while affirming their humanity and honoring the Imago Dei in their wrinkled, grizzled faces, exercise, do right by my family (and even then, the people I love most get shortchanged), pay my bills on time, and try to generally be a decent human being.

That effort alone exhausts me. Usually by the end of the day I barely have energy left to operate a remote control, and even if I try to do the right thing and read instead, my lids grow heavy after 5 minutes, and faster than you can say “Mr. Sandman,” I’m off to La-La Land.

And you want me to spend even more mental, physical and spiritual capital by signing up to fight a Culture War? Isn’t it enough to just try to sew a few seeds of righteousness on the small patch of earth I’m fated to walk across every day? Isn’t loving my neighbor as myself and–egads!–my enemies to boot a tall enough order to keep every fiber of my being occupied?

Hmmm. Let me get back with you on that–right after my evening nap. [...]

I would never tell my good friend Dr. Mark Elrod of Harding University (Hail!) to go to hell. He’s too nice a guy for that, plus he has this “condition”–an enlarged heart. Not the type that would cause you to keel over in the middle of a pick-up basketball game, but the kind that bleeds heavily when people are suffering. It’s a malady we could all use a little more of these days.

As for Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh, those purveyors of post-quake logorrhera, and the political dude from South Carolina who when speaking about people on public assistance used the analogy of denying animals food so they couldn’t “breed” but now “regrets” saying that even though it brought him much attention and fired up his “evangelical” base–I would wish them all straight to hell in a handbasket.

Or maybe a parachute.

Now before someone gets on here, as sometimes happens on this blog, and yells “ALL ABOARD THE TRAIN TO CRAZYTOWN!, allow me to explain. Mark, you see, has already been to hell and back. In fact, he returned from there to Searcy, Arkansas this past Monday, changed for life but still in one piece.  He surprised all of us last week by suddenly announcing that he was going to Haiti (which I think we could all agree is as close to hell on earth as one could possibly get at the moment) as a representative of Harding to scope out possible ways that the University community to assist that tragedy-torn country and her people as quickly as possible.

Philip Holsinger, Harding alum, photojournalist and missionary who has spent considerable time in Haiti prevailed upon Mark to go, and with that “condition” of his, of course Mark said “Send me!” Andrew Baker, head of the Church and Family Institute at Harding, was a key figure in arranging the trip,  and other “higher ups” approved it. Now it’s no secret that a few of those Harding “higher ups” don’t care a great deal for Mark’s personal politics. I know this may come as surprise to those of you who may have been off mining lunar rocks, but that kind of thing happens in many circles these days.

But the powers that be nonetheless figured correctly that Mark was the perfect person to represent the University on the trip. They were willing to put past differences behind them and sign off on this anyway because it was the right thing to do. We need a little more of that kind of “bipartisan” spirit these days.

Kudos, Harding. That’s the kind of pure, unadulterated religion that might shake a little contribution money out of me this year. [...]

Number One Son and I had just been discussing what could possibly be on the palms of Alabama’s new Nike Pro Combat player gloves, and it didn’t take us long to find out.

We knew that the Crimson Tide was among several teams that would be receiving the new gear, which featured a particular avatar representing the “spirit” of each team, but Bama’s was missing from Nike’s preview website.

But when Heisman Trophy-winning tailback Mark Ingram scored his first touchdown in the BCS Title Game against Texas, he flashed the new gloves toward the camera for all the world to see.

Frankly, Scarlett,  they took my breath away.

The background consisted of a subtle, houndstooth-like plaid, symbolic of legendary Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant. But it was the bold, crimson script “A” emblazoned over the houndstooth that stood out the most. It’s the preferred brand symbol of a more progressive, “new Alabama,” a distinct wordmark that increasingly adorns everything from license plates, to lanyards, to university shuttle buses, to the top of the school’s official stationery.

To me, the message was clear: Honor your roots and remember those on whose shoulders you stand. But at the same time, keep your eyes up and looking forward. Don’t become so mired in the past that you can’t move ahead toward bigger and better things. [...]

Shon Smith, preaching minister at the University Church of Christ in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, stood this past Sunday and delivered the goods on how a Christian, especially the white-bread, Southern evangelical Republican-voting version, can pray for President Obama and find common cause with him. In short, it’s a recipe for spitting out those “sour grapes” and just getting on with it.

The 1/25 sermon (h/t to Number One Son for passing it on) was entitled “A New Era” and can be found here. The whole 30+ minute sermon is worth listening to, but the meat (and it is that, not milk) on the why and how of praying for President Obama begins about 6 minutes in.

How refreshing to hear a preacher (with a group of elders presumably supporting him) man up and do the right thing. I lost count of the number of times our President was mentioned–out loud, by name.

You see, that wasn’t so hard, was it?

For those who were fearful that comedians like Jon Stewart would be among the ranks of the unemployed during an Obama administration, know hope.

And have a great weekend, everyone.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

–Stephen King

Stephen King intensely hates them. Chief Justice Roberts carelessly flings them about. President Obama ruefully considers their slippery nature.

Not to needlessly worry. The stray adverb has found its proper home, and President Obama has faithfully and flawlessly executed the oath of office.

Word nerds: lustfully gaze upon the breakdown here.

To all of you who were unnecessarily baptized twice: Let it quietly go.

I was worried yesterday morning that I would be so busy in the clinic that I wouldn’t be able to catch any of the inauguration. As it turned out, many of my patients failed to show (hmmm…perhaps it was too cold, or maybe they had something on TV they wanted to watch?), so I did see a good bit of it, including the swearing-in ceremony, on the television in the break room. And even in those moments when I was tied to my desk, there was good, ol’ reliable NPR.

During one lull in the action, I poured myself yet another cup o’ Joe and sat down to watch as the Presidential motorcade made its way to The Capital Building while a million onlookers, quivering from the cold and bold expectations, formed a happy guantlet whose only weapons were shouts of jubilation flung with reckless abandon.

As I watched, J., a co-worker of some 16 years, walked in. He looked at the TV, and then at me, and scowled.

His first words dripped with venom: “I’m not watching that. I don’t see any reason to celebrate that! [...]