It's November, for sure.

There's a look that November has, a color palette dominated by brown, grey, and taupe, slashed with black accents. The last stubborn leaves cling, brown and crumpled, to the tree branches. Brownish haze of wood smoke mingles with greyish mist under pale grey skies. The grass is still green but turning tan in patches, under fallen leaves of burgundy and brown and faded gold. The bare trees in the woods, their black branches sharply etched in the foreground, fade off into a soft frieze of taupe and grey. The sun is weaker, farther away, so even when it shines it doesn't warm but only wanly illuminates. The wind, authoritative, hurries the dead leaves against fencelines and into corners. The day comes reluctantly; the night comes quickly. The air smells of smoke and rain, mud and wet wood. Time winds down toward the end of another year that now seems old, ancient, moldering away.

Snazzzy In Wonderland

When I was a little girl, the Alice books were among my favorites. I loved the language, and the fanciful situations, and the general thinking outside the box that went on. I loved the dreamlike morphing of things into other things, the wordplay and puns. As I grew older, I began to see that everything I ever need to know, I learned from Lewis Carroll. I find it quite useful to believe six impossible things before breakfast, for example. And this exchange resonates with me in my personal life: "Are we nearly there?" "Nearly there! Why, we passed it ten minutes ago! Faster!"

Lately, however, it seems that we're all living in Alice's looking-glass world. The world of politics, particularly the politics of the current administration, is starting to resemble the Mad Tea Party. I first noticed it during last year's Presidential campaign, when a draft-dodger ran a campaign impugning the patriotism of a decorated veteran -- and the electorate bought it. Huh??? That same draft-dodger loudly proclaims himself a "uniter", while his party's politics of hatred, mudslinging, and class warfare drive deep, festering divisions between Americans who should be on the same side. That administration waves the flag and shakes the "national security" rat on a stick and sends our soldiers into ill-planned battle without proper armor, vehicles, or ammunition -- then accuses anyone who questions that behavior of "undermining the troops". Say what???

The party that paints itself as compassionate, religious, Godly, respectful of life, has declared war on the poor people of this country -- even while their policies drive the middle class into poverty. They borrow from the communist Chinese, mortgage our children's and grandchildren's future, and spend spend spend on their own enrichment and that of their cronies. Social programs get gutted while Paris Hilton gets to keep her tax cut.

President Enron and Vice President Halliburton are destroying the country's economy. President AWOL-from-the-NG and Vice President 5-Deferments are calling decorated combat veterans cowards.

I don't know how they get away with it. I don't know what it will take for the American people to wake up and realize what's being done to us. All I know is that we've got to get out of the looking-glass. If we don't want to find ourselves living in a third-world country, we've got to leave Wonderland behind.