One If By Land, Two If By Sea...

The world is too much with us.

How's that? Two poetry citations before the blogging begins? Wait. I'll come back to them.

I haven't posted for several days.

Why?

Simple.

I have nothing much to say.

How is that possible? So much information. The Brits have let the Lockerbie bomber go. The Taliban have picked new leaders. Dick Cheney says that we're not safe. The Eagles signed Michael Vick. H1N1. K-Fed took the kids to the zoo. There's just so much going on.

And of course, that's the problem. There's SO much stuff going on, so much to know. But how much do we REALLY know? Nothing, really. We are AWARE of so very much, but we haven't digested any of it. We haven't reflected on any of it. The stuff just lies there on the tops of our brains until it's swept away by new stuff. I mean, really. If we had two seconds to think about it, would anyone outside of an Alzheimer's unit spend more than two minutes with Jon and Kate?

My response has not been to cut myself off from the world. Au contraire. I read the Wall Street Journal and cruise Huffington Post daily. I watch cable news and listen to NPR. But I don't feel the need to react immediately. Because that's what I would be doing. Reacting. And when you react, the other guy has set the agenda.

I let things simmer, sink in.

If the world was too much with William Wordsworth in 1802, what would he think about the world today?

And would Longfellow have been inspired to write anything at all if Paul Revere had a Twitter page?