“I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country.” Sarah Palin

So far she hasn’t ruled out a 2012 bid. My suggestion might to be return to Alaska, try running for office again and be with her family. Perhaps she should also take some course work in political science and do some reading.

She says: “I think that it would be absurd to not consider what it is that I can potentially do to help our country.” And then tells us: “Now, of course, my focus has been enlarged. So, I sure as heck better be more astute on these current events, national issues than I was two years ago.”

Ms. Palin asserted that President Obama would lose if the election were today. That may be easy to say, but I think it’s more complex than that.

I also read that a recent state Supreme Court decision frees up corporations to spend money to influence elections, a decision that invalidates several Minnesota laws regulating money in politics.

And I’m still trying to understand what it meant when Pawlenty unalloted what remained of the campaign finance system in 2009 at the end of last year’s session. That action gets argued both ways.

I miss Gene McCarthy. The other night I was reading one of his books with his short life stories along with his poetry. One of his best poems, not in this book, is about My Lai, some of you remember that from Viet Nam.

It sounds like Palin is hoping that we go to war against Iran. I have to think there are other ways to resolve differences, and I think our administration will move in that direction.

From reading The Captive Mind and taking notes it reads: “In the intellectuals who lived through the atrocities of war in Eastern Europe there took place what one might call the elimination of emotional luxuries. Psychoanalytic novels incite them to laughter. They consider the literature of erotic complications, still popular in the West, as trash. Imitation abstract painting bores them. They are hungry—but they want bread, not hors d’oeuvres.”

I wonder what Milosz would say today. Would he still question the ways of America where he finally chose to reside?

This will be my first whole week attempting to manage Mellow, our dog, who at times is confined to her kennel. One of Mellow’s cushions she received as a new pup is deflated and we’re still collecting the little cotton balls out of it instead of getting rid of it. Mellow and I have made more trips outside, short trips this past week. For the moment, she is sitting next to me without biting, instead wondering about the noise of the neighbor’s snow blower.

She also had her first experience fetching a ball the other day. And she has taken to harassing the cats, particularly Ptolme, who is usually hiding under a dresser and occasionally awarding her with a right cross. Echo, the female, almost outweighs Mellow, and she too takes a swat at her if Mellow gets too frisky.

The outside trips vary in length.

They tend to begin with her relieving herself once, twice or three times, and then I shovel snow with my boot to cover them up. She increases her backyard study sometimes even getting out to the driveway south of the house. She is willing to walk on the driveway as long as everything is quiet. She still isn’t comfortable with walks around the block, so I put her in the house on the snowy Monday and walked around the block myself. One forgets how beautiful winter can be. Along the way, I stopped to watch a couple of small squirrels climbing a neighbor’s oak tree.

I didn’t know if they were hiking or just enjoying the beauty of the day. They both ducked behind the other side of the tree like they unusually do when I spot one. But if I stand there long enough, they poke their heads out perhaps wondering why that old guy is still standing there.

I see the local underpass renovation was ‘Project of the Year.’ The work was done to renovate the Oakland Avenue underpass in the downtown area. A few of us felt otherwise. I see that semis can now occupy Oakland Avenue straight through.