Momentary cool

The view from inside one of the clumps of elephant ears at the summer house caught my attention the other day: cool shade on a very hot day.

I keep going back to the image when I feed the need to decompress, thinking about the Republicans' stunning choice for veep and the astonishing treatment of the press outside the convention hall.

The GOP was, of course, the talk of our weekend, and most of us were, of equal course, planning to vote for Obama -- poultry is not a reliable constituency for Col. Sanders. And there was bafflement at the selection of a small-town mayor turned small-state governor as the person to step in if . . . .

Let's just quote The Politico, which looked up the Social Security data: "According to these statistics, there is a roughly 1 in 3 chance that a 72-year-old man will not reach the age of 80, which is how old McCain would be at the end of a second presidential term. And that doesn't factor in individual medical history, such as McCain's battles with potentially lethal skin cancer....

". . . For a man who has lived 72 years and 67 days (McCain's age on Election Day this year), there is between a 14.2 and 15.1 percent chance of dying before Inauguration Day 2013."

And some who have a problem with that are facing -- shall we say "challenges" in getting the message across. Did you know that credentialed journalists have been arrested on felony counts in St. Paul? Did you know private homes were raided? No? Well, those nasty mainstream media have obviously been busy defending their own hides, so click here or here to find out.

At least when it happened to me, 40 years ago last week, when I faced machine guns before getting pepper-sprayed and clubbed at Chicago's convention, "the whole world was watching." I'm in a cooler place now, but getting hotter by the minute.