In Which The Author Is Re-Introduced To The News

A pleasant morning greeted me as I stretched awake in our bedroom at the Wentworth Mansion, the very room Reese Witherspoon had once stayed in, and decided today was the day to finally get downstairs in time for breakfast.

Breakfast here is held at Circa 1886, the mansion's carriage house and restaurant. Egg souffle, spicy sausage, buttery grits and a subtle black current tea -- all was excellent and attentively served -- but the real take-away for me was being reintroduced to news after nearly a week away from it.

I read the NY Times over breakfast and saw that the world was progressing quite well (or quite horribly), utterly unaffected by the dearth of commentary from me here at C-SM. I read about:

• The Blackwater investigation and the difficulty imposing law on those who work for Blackwater. I'm not particularly worried because all change in our world comes after train wrecks and Blackwater has suffered its. Things will change; it will get dealt with.
  
  
• The House Foreign Relations Committee vote on Armenian genocide. One of the more interesting foreign policy waltzes, this one comes up every few years and causes Armenians to wail and Turks to threaten. Whatever; it doesn't change history.
  
  
• Nobel laureates convene on global warming and Algore's name is bandied about as a Peace Prize winner. The article gave the scientific bona fides of only one of the laureates (he studied the ozone hole); no surprise there. Apparently none won for economics, because the economic insanity of trying to "solve" global warming was not addressed. And what does global warming have to do with peace? Utterly ludicrous.
  
  
• Pakistan bombed the daylights out of Islamofascist strongholds in Waziristan. I was glad to read this, especially since the bombing pushed the scumbags to the mountains, toward Afghanistan. Ever heard of attacking the front and the rear, and squeezing rounds into the middle?
  
  
• And Syria is attempting to say "What Israeli raid?" by touring journalists around a bunch of ag fields and an ag lab. "See, fertilizers, not nukes." If you believe that, I have a bridge in Damascus I'd like to sell you.
  

None of these pieces made me want to race to my keyboard and blog ... but after a leisurely second cup of tea, here I am, pecking away, unloading thoughts that otherwise might clutter my mind later today as we walk around Charleston.

It's been nice being away from blogging, but I know myself and how I slip back into comfort zones, so when the vacation is over, any news like those little blurbs above will likely spawn a post. And the world will go on, my post meaningless in the scheme of things, but cathartic for me and possibly positive for you.

But enough. Time to revel in some beautiful architecture. I'll leave you with this, from yesterday's tour of the Magnolia Plantation: