Surprise

Yesterday morning at about 7 30 am I was rolling down a small  hillock when I saw a brown thingy on the road sitting over a black dealibob. As I got closer what I took to be a cat with its victim became a hawk with a crow grasped in its talons. The hawk rose and flew side by side with the bike for a few feet before dropping the crow and crossing over to perch in a tree. It was an unexpected, or surprising, moment of beauty.

Later that same day I was sitting outside drinking a beer when I looked up to the north and found that I was right on the edge of a thunderstorm. I could hear the thunder and see the lightening but the rain was just over to the other side of the railway tracks. It was an unexpected, or surprising, moment of if not beauty then sublimity.

Early today I read an article in The New Yorker about how liberal millionaires and billionaires aren't giving Obama money because some find super pacs anti democratic, which is true but rather like unilateral disarmament, others, however, pine for the days when Bill Clinton would invite them to private dinners at which, seated in descending order of the size of their contributions, the Clinton would elicit their views on matters of substance and, get this, take notes. Finding this out was an unexpected, or surprising, moment of realizing just how venal Clinton was and just how delusional the riches of these United States are.

Obama, it seems, prefers to get his policy advice from people who know what they are talking about instead of a bunch of riches whose sole virtue is an ability to game a corrupt system. As a result, the article suggests, their feelings are all atwitter and they withhold their ill-gotten gains until such time as Obama, or whomever, decides to grant them once again their unearned ascendency in the halls of power.

What a bunch of assholes.