The wind sounds different when there are no leaves on the trees.

Yesterday was one of those days that had me thinking about warmth and sunshine and calmness. My thoughts drifted to the changing seasons and how moving from the comfortable early- and mid-Fall—as abnormal as it might have been—to temps that have fallen off a table as winter approaches is mostly undesirable.

I sat in the house yesterday and swore at the wind. I found myself muttering obscenities under my breath, because it was relentless, finding its way into the house through the basement windows and every tiny crack and imperfection in the siding and insulation. I hate wind. It has a grating, deterrent effect on me. There’s a significant difference between a gentle breeze out of the southwest and a gale force howl out of the northwest, the latter being what’s on our plate from now until sometime in May.

I was grateful each time I’d hear the click of the thermostat, which meant the oil burner was kicking in and it would be getting warm for a few minutes. But on a windy day like yesterday, it didn’t take long for the chilliness to seep in.

Wow. I’m a real ray of sunshine sometimes.

I’m not a world traveler, but I’ve had the opportunity to visit Israel and the north of England, along with various spots in the U.S and Canada.

I’d have to say that the Israel trip stands out, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity which unfolded in the Spring of 2013. It wasn’t a commercial tour, but more of a private one with a Roman Catholic priest, the brother of a brother-in-law, who knew the country well and was able to take me and seven other… pilgrims, I guess, to places that weren’t on any other itinerary. We visited most of the usual spots, except for Bethlehem (too unstable at the time), and a few out-of-the-way and obscure places. We stayed in hostels all over the country, from Mitzpe Ramon to Acco to Tel Hai, and several others along the way.

There were reminders of the tension and fragile peace at every turn, beginning with harrowing stories from our shuttle driver as we traveled from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The current hostilities in the north have affected places we visited, like Kiryat Shmona. We strayed quite close to the Lebanese and Syrian borders when we got lost one day. We followed behind a UN jeep as we headed to the remnants of an Israeli underground bunker and abandoned tank and still dangerous minefields from a 1973 skirmish near the Syrian border. We ate lunch in a Druze village in the Golan Heights.

We lingered at the beginnings of the Jordan River in Caesarea Philippi, caught glimpses of Mt. Hermon, floated in the Dead Sea, saw the famous cave where some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, visited En Gedi, walked the Via Dolorosa and the ramparts of the Old City of Jerusalem, and prayed at the Wailing Wall. We were part of the crowd at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. We became familiar with most of the gates into and out of the Old City.

One of our favorite places to eat was a restaurant in the Muslim Quarter, and we often gathered in a coffee shop in the Christian Quarter. I bought several small paintings and prints from an artist with a shop on Cardo Street, and a piece of pottery in the Armenian Quarter.

We walked through an outside market in Jerusalem, outside the walls, and visited Yad Vashem. We saw David Ben Gurion’s modest retirement villa in Sde Boker, in the Negev Desert, walked the ruins of Beersheba, sat at the edge of Maktesh Ramon and drank in that fantastical view. We walked the Snake Path to the top of Masada, swam in the Sea of Galilee and worshiped on its northwestern shore at Tabgha, walked the summits of Mounts Arbel and Tabor, visited Cana and Nazareth and Tiberias and the Temple Mount. We walked through the Garden of Gethsemane and stood on the Mount of Olives looking back over the Kidron Valley toward the Temple Mount and Mt. Zion and the modern city rising beyond.

There are many more details. It was my trip of a lifetime, most likely.

Let’s just cut to the chase and declare the next Trump administration to be one long reality TV show.

It’s looking like all we’re gonna get is four years of drama and retribution, a tit-for-tat game of vengeance and payback. Little governance, few policy considerations other than “How can we make life miserable for Democrats and the general populace?”

Is anyone else’s spidey sense tingling? It should be!

What 75 million Americans voted for is a four-year revenge tour. Your pocketbook, your concern about inflation, your feelings that the economy “just isn’t working for you”? Trump and the rest really don’t give a shit about any of that. They’re incapable of addressing your concerns.

And besides—based on numbers from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, is the economy really that bad for you? Or were you just buying the line and regurgitating what you were hearing from Fox News and all the talking heads during the campaign?

Trump is contemplating a replacement of Hegseth with DeSantis, which is like replacing an incompetent middle schooler with a slightly less incompetent middle schooler and professional curmudgeon.

Nobody’s making this stuff up. Trump seems intent on nominating the worst possible people for important positions in what’s going to pass for an administration, but this is who he has to work with. And this is probably his intent, anyway.

It’s difficult to think of this in any way other than despicable, and that we’re on hand to witness the makings of another four-year disaster. Even, and especially if JD Vance ends up taking over.

Loyalty, patience (in some things), persistence (in other things), attention to detail, and lawn care.

Family ties can be strong. Joe Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter is evidence of this.

He’s taking a hit politically, in part because he went back on his earlier word. But I think I understand the motivation. Partisan politics and the specter of Vengeful Trump were looming large, and Joe was being proactive, heading off the real possibility that his son might have been in for a rough road once Trump is in office.

You know—because Job 1A for Trump is exacting revenge on all the people who he thinks have done him wrong over the years (yup… instead of working on constructive legislation and acting like a grown up).

Biden’s “legacy” will be tarnished somehow. But does anyone really think he cares about that? We spend way too much time thinking about our legacy, anyway. We tend to take our insecurities and neediness to the grave.

Ambition. I’ve never really had any. I’m rudderless. I’ve always figured that if the world is just full of people all trying to “get theirs”, well, no thank you. I don’t want to be part of that rat race.

It’d be one thing if this led to some sort of altruistic outlook, but that’s not the case at all. I’ve just been wandering my entire life. Introspective, selfish, hesitant or unable to fully commit to anything, or engage the world, really.

When it comes to vocation or finding meaningful work that interests and satisfies me and maybe makes my little corner of the world a better place, I have always been lost at sea, floating aimlessly.

Those twenty-six years in the ministry? Wandering. A facade. Playing a role, getting paid for doing something my heart was hardly ever in, for preaching and teaching something that may or may not even be real. I was taking their money.

It feels kind of late in the game to be mulling over big changes. Sometimes it feels like a personality transplant is in order, which is unlikely to happen at this juncture.

I know we can derive our protein from plants and fish and such. And large scale cattle production is a proven environmental hazard. But…

I tire quickly of contrived grievance and outsized passion, i.e. certain animal rights folks who need to tone things down a bit. Species who can’t speak for themselves may need advocates, but let’s get serious.

The beef, pork, and poultry lobbies will argue that they’re just responding to demand for their products, perhaps as an attempt to redirect the blame and the conversation. But they’re not wrong, as far as the demand piece goes.

I guess what I’m getting at is that, personally speaking, I might be willing to evolve in my understanding of protein consumption if someone can present an argument that reconciles the myriad small-scale meat processors– i.e. hunters– who are basically engaged in the same endeavor of killing for food (ok… and sport) but don’t carry all the extra baggage of methane production and possibly inhumane living conditions and treatment.

Humans are at the top of the food chain. Maybe there is no other argument that needs to be made, except for a focus on the stewardship of resources. Meat has been a means of survival and part of our diet for a long time, albeit not as long as foraging for twigs and berries. Still, I see no reason for looking askance at someone simply because they enjoy a nice medium porterhouse.

What would become of the huge numbers of cattle and hogs and turkeys and chickens if they weren’t slaughtered? They’d still need to be fed and housed. Do they then become someone’s pets?

And what of local deer populations, or the numbers of other wild animals who aren’t on an endangered species list? It seems hunting seasons make sense for at least two reasons: population control and food on families’ tables.

Going meatless is a tough sell.

Depends on the season, though one of them is a standard across the board. I have to have comfortable footwear, to keep the plantar fasciitis at bay.

Right now, as winter approaches, the second item would have to be something that keeps my bony frame warm, for hanging out in a house we keep at 68 degrees no matter how cold it gets outside– which means it can get a bit chilly around the edges inside. This is usually a sherpa lined hoodie of some sort, from now until sometime in April, or at least a base layer over which I add other items.

Functional, hardly ever fashionable.

Seventy-five million people can’t be wrong? We’ll see. We’re gonna get the chance to test that theory.

The people who voted for Trump must see what he’s trying to do. His answer for taking away some of the pain at the pump or the checkout line? Tariffs. Brilliant!

He’s setting the tone for hard feelings and a digging in of heels, rather than laying any groundwork for give and take and a willingness to negotiate. He’s got an image to uphold, after all. He’s not a compromiser. He simply prefers smoke and mirrors, the image of Disrupter. So he leaves the heavy lifting to the likes of Kevin Roberts and the Heritage Foundation.

Who is anyone kidding? Trump loves America only when it’s working for him. He’s not there to do the peoples’ work. He’s in place to carry out someone else’s agenda. He’s there for the selfish satisfaction of prevailing, and avoiding jail time.

He’s clueless, and I can’t picture him having the energy to handle the demands of the job. He’s gonna have a mess on his hands, nominating the pre-approved C-List celebrities and allies and incompetents who will be thrust into roles and responsibilities they’re totally unqualified to assume. The new press secretary will have her hands full defending this insanity day after day. We’ll see how many of those he goes through this time around.

Chaos is the goal. There will be no streamlining, no efficiency, little competence, no responsiveness to the myriad needs that are, quite obviously, beside the point. This is what the MAGA millions voted for, whether they realize it or not. Seventeeth-century Christians, amateurs, and entitled brats controlling the levers of power.

And there is no mandate. How could there be a mandate when half the country refuses to embrace this act?