An editorial writer needs to be well informed. I read several news magazines cover to cover, newspapers on line and watch several different news programs on television. Like comedian, Lewis Black, I get mad and depressed at what  I read and see. The national and local situation is terrible and each day things somehow get even worse.

The other day things seemed even "worser" than usual and watching a program about the plight of children starving in Africa was the straw that fractured my spine and I sank into a deep, deep, dark, funk. After complaining loudly for an hour or two, and to the relief of my poor suffering wife, I finally left and drove my wheelchair outside onto our deck into the dark of night where I believed that in that darkness I would find a kindred brotherhood of funk.

After an hour or so of reviving all of the terrible events I'd seen, heard about, or read, I let my arm flop down over the side of my wheelchair. The quiet of the darkness was then broken by the sound of my dog's claws tapping across the wooden deck. Something warm and wet squirmed into the palm of my hand as if to assure me that everything was all right.

I remembered then, something my great aunt, who was a full-blooded Apache Indian shaman, told me when I was about ten years old:  " Jimmy," she said, "Just remember that regardless of how badly you personally have botched things up or how hopeless world events may seem, tomorrow morning the sun will still come up and the air will be filled with the sound of singing birds and it will be a beautiful day in spite of us. And that's a fact". My dog licked my hand and at once, I knew the old lady had been right. 

An owl hooted in the trees somewhere nearby when I later drifted off to sleep dreaming of a field of Spring lupine and other wildflowers tossing gently with a morning  breeze. Politics, poverty, global warming and everything else now seemed to be more than a few million or more miles away and sleep slowly wrapped me in a warm cocoon. I had come to believe that the world was going to survive after all and even  people and politics couldn't screw it up completely. I'm holding on to that thought for my own peace of mind.