Saturday commute clviii: Path of the orange jumpsuit

 All of Washington's agog
 with reports that Mr Man-
 afort has flipt, in that
 parlance of turn-about's
 fair play. Determined to
 eat a peach, a love song
 singer for the headlines
 we're all in. Had anyone
 thought to skip the hunt?

Edgar Dégas
Studio Interior
  with the Steeplechase
ca 1881
Israel Museum

Inside the phrases ii

So many times we hear a pending

testing can't come soon enough,

that even though we may enjoy a

placid life or cast of mind, an

approaching storm has the power

to make one feel almost ardent,

anxious now to grapple with it.

Origins of Wednesday lxxix: Caught loitering

Everyone knows somebody who likes

being where he is. Such people do

present what many regard as unwar-

ranted demands on the safety nets,

so lavishly deployed by our sever-

al layers of government to rescue

the incorrigible. Like their defi-

ance of inclement weather or hos-

tile fault lines, however, their

recalcitrance toward official ad-

vice structures a game of risk we

take no trouble to ignore. Unsafe

affections test no nerve of their

own, only ours. They are our part.

A storm is just a storm

One never discounts, in these days

of spluttering American governance,

the prospect of a scriptural under-

standing of our climate's positive

rebellion, along classic Mason-Dix-

on lines. Florence will be a storm

to quell the nay-sayers, decreed a

long time ago by an incendiary veg-

etable, known only to the Saved in

our midst. The nay-sayers, denying

climate-change denial, may be par-

doned for being bored, by a sermon

denouncing the warnings of science 

for precipitating fake weather, at

the very revelation of the shrub's

infallible witness to God's wrath.

But if bored, the nay-sayers simp-

ly underscore the treason of their

sanity. Meanwhile, we have a storm.