It never rains but it pours. So they say, so I seem to live. And since I am up past my bedtime with far too much work still undone - well, I will blog. Maybe this time I will get the hang of it and I will actually get into the habit. Maybe, but I suspect that's highly unlikely. One can always hope, of course.

They say that the way to your blog noticed is to develop some topic which is important to you, and become the place that people come for news about the topic. That idea would work well for people with one or three good obsessive interests, but for a dabbler like me I doubt it wouild get anywhere. What truly fascinates me? Knowledge, history, politics and community ecology. Of those, only in the latter area can I claim any level of expert knowledge. And sadly, that "expert knowledge" has me convinced that I know basically nothing. Oh well. Obviously, if I have a sense of how little I know I have the beginning of wisdom (with regards to that one area). But the "beginnings" of wisdom are to true wisdom what a single hair is to a wig factory.

So now you must blog. Write about nothing and nothingness, about the experience of attending the Fourth of July fireworks show in Norman. I found myself thinking about battlefields, mortars and shelling. I wondered what it would have been like to sit in your village and watch the front lines light up. I suppose if you were secure in your knowledge that the fighting was not going to come your way you could sit there and enjoy the show. But who is ever really sure enough about where battle will go. I was reminded of last year's footage of the first siege of Falluja, the one that the Americans were forced to lift. Sure, they came back a few months later and levelled the city. That story reminds me of Grozny...