Happy New Year to All!

We just got home this afternoon after spending some time with Holly's family in the Bay Area and in Mexico.

A couple days ago, Jed and Holly and I met in Oakland at the house of my mother's cousin AS and his wife CS.

AS and CS are terrific people who we re-connected with after Peter was killed. Long story short, AS just gave a box of Marcy's photos and papers to Jed and me (Marcy, for those who don't know, was our mother, who died in 1980).

The box was a treasure trove, and included lots of pictures from Marcy's life that I had never before seen. I learned some interesting new facts about my family--like Marcy's dad, Jack, who died before I was born, was a WW II paratrooper and was born in Russia.

Also in the box was a picture from the early 70's of a woman who was very, very close friends with Peter and Marcy...who Peter later married in the late 1980's. This woman had a significant role in the events that led to Peter's murder (of course, no legal culpability...but rather, her actions were effectively a proximate cause of Nancy's actions). So it was a bit chilling to see this woman's picture from happier times.

But all that is a long story for a different day. Perhaps I will tell you over a beer sometime.

Separately, today in the mail, we received a US flag from the young marine, BB, who Holly and I are friends with and I have mentioned on this thread a few times before. BB served in Iraq and is home safely and out of the Marines. BB had flown the flag over his base in Iraq and brought it home for us. I deeply appreciate the gesture and shall never forget it.

Interestingly, BB has a web page-blog in which he lists your humble blogger's page among his links. Other links include Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity...(queue the music..."Which one of these links is not like the others"?)

While I disagree with with some of BB's viewpoints expressed on his blog, I have a profound respect for his multi-layered right to his opinions--first as a US citizen with first amendment rights, but also as a US Marine, he *earned* the right in a way that very few of us ever do.

Notwithstanding all that, Ann Coulter does not add to the debate. I respect and often agree with a fair amount of what is written by thoughtful/philosophical conservative writers like George Will, Peggy Noonan, Holman Jenkins, and Daniel Henniger. But you can have a reasonable disagreement with any of the four above-mentioned folks and they will not start immediately screaming that you are a traitor, like Ann Coulter might. I exaggerate only slightly.

Of course, I am glad for the first amendment and so I suppose we must accept the shrill voices like Ann Coulter's as part of of our national discourse. But our country does not need polarizing right- or left- wing firebrands trying to lead the debate at this time. We need calm, rational leadership from the center if we are to have hope of unifying our deeply divided country and moving forward. This, and a billion dollars to spend on a campaign is why Mike Bloomberg maybe, just maybe, has a shot at being elected president this year.