My apologies for the blog silence, but lately I’ve been doing my best not to think. That’s something I’m truly not good at: not thinking. Sometimes I envy Zen masters’ ability to clear their mind of their own existence, their freedom from the clamor and clang of emotion, the whiplash of conflicting thoughts. Sometimes, more so of late, I think I’d give just about anything for five minutes of that kind of peace.

How can it be only Tuesday? Already, this week has proven that, just when I think I can’t handle one more ounce of stress, I’d better get ready because there’s more about to rain down. But just as thunderstorms aren’t signs from God if you’re smart enough to pay attention to the weather forecast, a deluge of stress during an already stressful time shouldn’t be a surprise, either. As the saying goes: “When it rains, it pours.” It’s pouring on my life right now, and I am soaked. Drenched, even.

The situation with my father-in-law hasn’t changed: he’s holding on, clinging to life, suffering. The knowledge of that weighs down on me. Last night, laying in bed listening to the sound of my own breathing, it struck me that every inhalation of mine is one less that he has. I suppose every inhalation of mine is one less that I have, too.

It’s ironic that the things in life we feel we should let go of are quite often the ones that linger with a tenacity that rends the heart. And sometimes the things we’re not ready to let go of — the things we wanted to savor in our own time — prove to be the most fleeting, the unexpected suddenness of their ending itself a unique pain.

But I don’t want to think about that. In fact, most of the morning I’ve been trying not to think at all. I’m not doing a very good job of it. Some thoughts, I suppose, are like train whistles in the night, or wheels crunching past on the street outside your bedroom: they’re part of the droning background of your life, trivial irritations so long as you continue to ignore them. Give them any import, dwell on them for even the briefest instant, and they’re no longer so easy to ignore — no longer part of the background, they become part of everything else swirling around in your head.

Which is why I’m trying not to think, because my head is now so full of such things that it aches. I ache. I’m tired and I can’t remember the last night I slept soundly. Every little noise wakes me up, and sometimes it’s not even a noise at all: sometimes it’s the overwhelming weight of silent aloneness that wakes me. Last night I woke up repeatedly in anticipation of the phone ringing — why, I’m not sure: there’s not a damn bit of good news that phone’s going to bring.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I had a teleconference this morning with my literary agent in New York. She says a publisher wants to see the first three chapters and an outline of my novel. That is a call I was glad for, although I’ve been down this road before, too. So I’ll go through the motions of sending that out, just as I’ve been going through the motions of a lot of things … for quite some time.

But I’m not going to get my hopes up. I’ll never have a Zen master’s ability to exist without awareness, to clamp down on my thoughts and empty myself of understanding and the desire for it. But I’m “Venomous” Kate for a reason: I do know how to clamp down on hope if that’s what it takes to get through a day, a week, a decade. I just keep forgetting that fact.

UPDATE: In the time that I sat writing this, my father-in-law passed away. I was wrong: it turns out that knowing something is coming doesn’t make it any easier to take, and that even the absence of hope isn’t any less painful.

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Nope. It’s just an observation that I remain an excellent judge of character.

If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you may have caught my announcement Tuesday evening that I was planning a trip to Minnesota to be with my father-in-law, who is dying from esophageal cancer. Last weekend, tired of the vomiting and bleeding he’d been experiencing after meals, he chose to stop eating. His health has been in rapid decline ever since.

My husband has been up north with his family for a little over a week now. That’s a blessing for all of us: not only is VH there with his father, he’s also able to help take care of him and provide emotional support for his mother. I’d thought about going up there, too, so I could be with my father-in-law in his final days.

The Big-Eyed Boy did not handle that announcement well. Not at all, as a matter of fact. Late Tuesday night he woke up after having a nightmare, and we spent most of the night together awake and talking. At only 8 years old, this is all quite overwhelming for him, and despite our best efforts to shield him from some of the stress it’s nevertheless affected him. Yesterday I let my son stay home for a “mental health day” and promised him I wouldn’t go up north because, when it comes down to it, he needs one of his parents home to help him through this.

As it is, I’m not sure taking a trip to Minnesota would really do much for anyone except, perhaps, me. After five days without food, my father-in-law has reached a state where he most likely wouldn’t even know I was there. Even if he did, I’m sure my presence wouldn’t help him feel better: for some reason he’s started to think of his passing as a burden on everyone. Perhaps that’s the way of these things: having cared for our family members throughout our lives, when we come to the end we find it hard to surrender to their caring in return.

So I’m here, and most likely I’ll be blogging… although, in all honesty, right now I’m not feeling terribly motivated to do so. I’m finding it hard to get motivated to do much of anything, really, except to sit quietly and think about the great man whose life is coming to such a swift, painful end. I’ve yet to make my morning phone call to VH to find out how things are going up there. Truth is, I’m a bit afraid to know.

Your prayers are appreciated, as is your understanding if I don’t blog for a bit… or, conversely, if blog about more light-hearted things. We each deal with death in our own way, I suppose. I’m finding that “my way” seems to change with each passing moment.

And now, I have a phone call to make.

UPDATE: I just got off the phone with my father-in-law. He sounds as weak as one would expect, and yet surprisingly cheerful. When I offered to have the Big-Eyed Boy call him after school today he readily agreed. I asked him: “You don’t have a golfing tee time or anything that’ll have you too busy to talk around 3:30, do you?” We both had a good chuckle, and he assured me he’d make room in his social calendar to talk to his grandson.

I love a good story. I particularly love a good story when it’s told by a masterful storyteller, one who knows the precise details to add without robbing me, as a reader, of the chance to bring my own imagination into play. Master storytellers capture all the right nuances: the oddly-timed facial tick, a hard-drinking character’s pause in conversation to take a nip, a liar’s fascination with the patterns of dirt on the toes of his boots. I particularly love an historical novelist who not only tells a story masterfully, but does so while populating his tale with the kinds of characters one ordinarily does not encounter in an historical novel.

For all these reasons and more, I loved David Liss’ latest novel: The Whiskey Rebels. So much so, I might add, that I’ve now read it twice in the short time since it arrived in the mail.

My first go-through was an admittedly hurried one. I was flying down to see my mother in Austin at the time, and due to the stressful nature of my life with two ailing parents these days, my stack of books to review had grown quite large. When that happens, I make it a habit to read first the books I know I’ll have to compel myself to read: the politically-oriented nonfiction and the “memoirs” written by people whose fascination with their own lives I just don’t share. When it’s done well, I savor fiction, and so I’d put Liss’ book off to read on “my time”.

Once seated on the plane, I immediately cracked open Liss’ book. By page two, I was chuckling. By page three, my face had adopted a sardonic smile that stayed in place through a lengthy layover in Memphis and the second leg of my flight from there to Austin. Because, in addition to loving it when an author tells a good tale, I love it when one breathes life into characters who are as fascinating as they are flawed. Having finished his book by the time I finally landed in Austin, I told my brother he simply must read it… then proceeded to keep my copy so I could read it again on the flight home, too. Yeah, it’s that good.

It’s just so rare that I run into one character, much less two that I so wholly enjoy. But that’s precisely how I felt about Ethan Saunders, a former spy for General Washington during the Revolutionary War who undeservedly spent 10 years debasing himself as punishment for a crime he did not commit. In counterpoint, Liss gives us a clever woman who’s not merely an anti-heroine but an anti-historical novel heroine: Joan Maycott, a woman who masterminds her own rise in society despite her own crime.

What’s truly uncanny — and I don’t think even David Liss himself would claim to have foreseen it — is how The Whiskey Rebels is set smack in the middle of a banking crisis very similar to that which we’re reading about in today’s headlines. Through Liss we see Alexander Hamilton struggling to fend off a short run on the newly formed U.S. Bank by unscrupulous and money-hungry traders.

Playing against each other, these Ethan Saunders and Joan Maycott’s are more fascinating than any real life political chess match, though — unbeknown to them — they’re both playing for the same side. But as we all know, the means to an end matter just as much as the end, and Liss delivers a satisfying affirmation of that belief.

Liss’ book will be released September 30. I’d recommend pre-ordering. It’s worth the wait.

When Aurora Frontier K-8 School in Aurora, Colorado told students to show their patriotism by wearing red, white and blue shirts, apparently they meant only shirts the administration agreed with.

That’s what fifth grader Daxx Dalton learned when he wore a homemade anti-Obama t-shirt to school. (That’s the shirt on the left.) The school told him to turn the thing inside-out, and when Daxx didn’t they suspended him.

“They’re taking away my right of freedom of speech,” he said. “If I have the right to wear this shirt I’m going to use it. And if the only way to use it is get suspended, then I’m going to get suspended.”

The school district claims Daxx wasn’t suspended for exercising his right to free speech but, rather, for “willful disobedience and defiance” when he wouldn’t wear it inside out.

Frankly, I think this calls for an entirely new t-shirt:

We knew McCain’s masterful chess move of adding Palin to the ticket would cause Obama’s camp to have conniption fits. Between the anti-Palin media bias, the racism disguised as threats against her, the hacked email — they’re afraid. Very afraid.

But afraid enough to dump Biden from the ticket under the guise of poor health as some bloggers thinks the Dems are planning in early October?

It’s quite a stretch to point to the lack of Obama-Biden merchandise as proof the Big O plans to dump Joe. More likely it’s just further proof that Obama doesn’t want to keep reminding his voting base that part of his plan for change and proof he’s ready to lead involve partnering with a long-time Washington insider whose experience dwarfs Obama’s own. And then there’s that whole “sounds like” issue.

Sure, Biden’s health is of concern: the man had two surgeries to remove brain aneurysms… twenty years ago. I suppose it’s possible, as some suggest, that Biden will suddenly take a turn for the worse next month, allowing Hillary to come riding to the rescue as the antidote to Palinmania. And perhaps the assurances that Hillary didn’t really want to be VP, made by Bill Clinton on The View yesterday, were designed to deflect.

But if an early October Biden-Clinton swap does occur, think about what it does to the objections and attacks Dems have been making since Palin landed on the GOP ticket.

Clinton supporters were angry when Obama first passed over Hillary in favor of Biden. How satisfied would they really be knowing that her presence on the ticket was just a hefty helping of sloppy seconds? Sure, they might vote based on getting Hillary into office, but if that’s how Obama gets into the White House he’d have to watch his back. (Clinton didn’t refer to Robert Kennedy’s assassination earlier without reason, after all, and as we all know John Kennedy died in office.)

Most of all, consider what it would mean if Obama’s poll ratings soared in the wake of a Biden-Clinton switch? It means he should have had Clinton on the ticket in the first place, but that he didn’t exercise good judgment. Which would make a Biden-Clinton switch not only a sham for covering up the consequences of his mistake, but pretty much prove exactly what the GOP has been saying about him all along: he lacks the judgment to lead. Being led by polls and the likelihood of losing? Nope, sorry, that doesn’t count.

When McCain nominated Palin to appeal to female voters, Dems — seeing it as a statement that women are interchangeable — angrily demanded: “How dumb do you think we are?”

If there’s a “health problem” that leads Biden-Clinton swap come early October, I think we can all assume it means Obama’s answer is: very.

A designer vagina? Thanks, I’ll stick with my generic one. I like to think of it as “retro”.

Last summer, when Anwyn headed off to NYC for a little vacay, she arranged her own trip rather than going on one of those package holidays New York deals. Still, judging by some of the the photos she posted it certainly sounded like she had the whole Big Apple experience.

So, naturally, I wanted to claw her eyes out.

Okay, that might be exaggerating things a bit, but I am jealous. It’s been years since I’ve visited NYC. Over twenty of them, in fact. Back then I was dating a guy whom I’d planned to dump shortly after he slept through the first-ever Thanksgiving dinner I’d cooked. But then he pointed out that his parents, who lived in West Nyack, had invited us to visit for Christmas… and they were paying for our plane tickets, too.

Who was I to pass up a New York holiday, eh? It was gorgeous, I’ll say that: there’s something magical about New York City when it’s blanketed in snow. Walking around Rockefeller Center in the incandescent glow of the Christmas tree, with carolers singing in I-kid-you-not Victorian velvet garb and street vendors hawking roast chestnuts, just like I’d read about as a kid, it was one of those experiences where I felt like I’d actually stepped into a screenplay of the ideal New York holidays.

I’ve no doubt that, were VH and I to take the kids there this winter, our experience wouldn’t at all resemble the one I had 20+ years ago. After all, these days the Mayor’s Christmas tree is (not solar powered. With Wall Street crashing and most of us pinching pennies, I’m sure Bloomingdale’s Christmas window displays are no longer nearly as lush as they once were. Given how drastically Times Square has changed since I last saw it, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn NYC’s also banned the roast chestnut cards and other street vendors in favor of it’s new squeaky clean image.

But it’s still New York City, a place I’d love to visit over the holidays — this time with a man I know I’ll be keeping.

Loudly and repeatedly, Barack Obama swore off accepting money from lobbyists. This, he said, is part of his plan to bring about his much-promised change to politics: “Washington is not looking after you. They’re not fighting for you,” the candidate has said. “That’s why I don’t take PAC money. That’s why I don’t take money from federal registered lobbyists. Because I want to be accountable to you.”

So, how’s that unprecedented step of swearing off all money from registered lobbyists working for him? Well, it depends on what your definition of “lobbyist” is.

The campaign has no problem accepting money from the spouses of Washington lobbyists. A database search conducted for this column by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign-finance issues, found that more than 20 spouses of prominent Washington lobbyists have donated to the Obama campaign, including the wives of Dan Glickman, the head of the Motion Picture Association of America; Norman Brownstein, a prominent Denver-based lawyer who has lobbied for Oracle, Toshiba, and Comcast; and Stuart Pape of Patton Boggs, Washington’s foremost lobbying firm, who has lobbied for Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer, and the Smokeless Tobacco Council.

Apparently, it also depends on the lobbyist’s place of registration: although Obama won’t take funds from federally registered lobbyists, he’ll take them from lobbyists registered at the state level.

It also depends on what your definition of “money” is:

Florida lobbyist Russell Klenet hosted a fundraiser for Obama Aug. 25, according to the St. Petersburg Times. Two months before, Klenet had withdrawn as a lobbyist in Washington for a kidney dialysis company that relies heavily on federal revenue, Senate records show. Klenet did not return phone calls.

And, yes, it even depends on your definition of “taking” is: Obama is perfectly happy to accept special interest money, especially from Big Oil, so long as it’s funneled through Fortune 500 companies first.

So when Republicans say Obama is playing fast-and-loose with the truth, I suppose it once again comes down to what your definition of is is.

My latest Pajama Media article is up and it’s not open for interpre-ta-tion.

Sure, you may realize that I write four blogs, including this one. But have you been reading them? No worries — I’m starting a regular weekly feature on each blog highlighting the week’s best entries from my ever-growing blog empire.

From I Think Therefore I Blog:

• How to freeze summer fruits and vegetables - Grocery stores and farmer’s markets are practically giving away summer’s harvest. Take advantage of the low prices and stock your freezer with savings in the process.

• Five fast ways to cut your grocery bill - Simple little steps to help you save big each month.

• Next weekend it’s cheap to go camping - Plan a trip with the kids to take advantage of free admission to any national park.

• Today’s Deal: Save $99 on a market umbrella! - This end-of-summer clearance is a great buy. I know because I have one!

From Blogging for the Money:

• Search engines serving a charitable purpose - Turn your online time into a good deed.

• Cut and Paste Cleanly - Strip formatting from MS Word or other apps so you can paste straight into blog entries.

From Chubby Mommy:

• My a-ha moment about exercise - It doesn’t have to be grueling to do some good.

• When did I become a matron? - Here’s a wedding I won’t be participating in, whenever it happens.

From Electric Venom:

• Informal straw poll - What the press says about Obama’s appeal doesn’t seem to jive with what blog commenters think.

• Tippling Tuesday: The Drink Your Worries Away Edition - What discretionary spending item could you not live without?

• Word Fugue: The “Do Not Call” Edition - Got a minute? Play my addictive word-association game.

• News Flash: Republicans Aren’t Against Social Assistance - Guess who first introduced VA benefits, a pension for retirees, and Civil Rights laws? You might be surprised at the answer.

Me timbers is shivering ’cause it’s Talk Like A Pirate Day. So on wit’ ye, powder monkeys, get ye ta speakin’ smartly or I’ll lay the Black Spot on ye.

- Cap’n Venomous

Recently, I’ve had the privilege and the pleasure of corresponding with an imminently sane, inquisitive and (mostly) rational liberal female reader whose emails I’ve come to honestly cherish. After reading my review of the book Why You’re Wrong About The Right (in which I brought up the fact that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican), she wrote:

I have to give you a jab for the “Abraham Lincoln was a Republican” […] just because…well…it WAS 140+ years ago. Don’t your people have any more recent examples?

To be honest, I actually had to do some research. Like many folks, I remember things in general terms: Lincoln…good. Nixon… well, looking back he didn’t suck, but let’s face it: we Republicans got our panties in a wad when Bill Clinton, a Democrat, lied in office. Doesn’t integrity demand we be at least a bit ashamed of Nixon’s criminal activities and deceit?

But imagine my surprise, as a card-carrying Republican, when I learned that Republicans are actually behind most of the social assistance, Civil Rights and tree-hugging things the Democrats now parade as proof of their “social goodness”.

• For instance, how about Rutherford Hayes, under whom female attorneys were first given the right to argue before the Supreme Court?

• Chester Arthur initiated the International Meridian Conference which both established the Greenwich meridian and international standardized time. He also reformed the civil service, ditching the old crony system and requiring written entrance exams instead. That was a nice kick in the pants for corporations that were accustomed to putting their own employees into civil jobs so their employersd could continue getting away with corrupt practices.

• Benjamin Harrison oversaw the introduction of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which keeps corporations from forming monopolies and cartels.

• William McKinley was known for promoting ethnic diversity and yet protecting American workers by imposing high tariffs on imported goods. (Those tariffs eventually became the financial basis for the ‘era of Prosperity’.)

• So, okay, everyone’s bitching these days about how the Republicans have a Vice Presidential candidate who is a reform-minded Republican under 45 years old, totes a gun, loves to hunt and only served as governor for 2 years before being named as the Veep candidate. Guess what? It’s not the first time. Consider Theodore Roosevelt, the guy who started the tree-hugger’s pet project, the National Park System.

• Taft continued to battle corporate trusts, launching over 80 anti-trust suits. (Roosevelt got pissed with him over the U.S. Steel trust, which Teddy had personally approved.) He also created the parcel post system. Incidentally, he thought up the federal income tax idea which was initially supposed to target corporations for the privilege of doing business in the U.S. So those social programs that are tax-funded today? They hark back to a Republican’s creation.

• Harding’s not on anyone’s list of notable presidents, but he did create the Bureau of Veterans Affairs. Yep, vets who are receiving benefits and assistance can thank a Republican, too.

• Coolidge. Eh, admittedly the only good thing to say is that he supported lowering taxes and exempting more people from them.

• Hoover, for all the bad rap he gets, wrote the Children’s Charter that advocated protection for all children regardless of their race or gender; instructed the IRS to go after Al Capone and other gangsters for tax evasion; expanded the national park system; eliminated many of the tax loopholes for the rich; and doubled the number of VA hospitals. He also advocated a Federal public pension for those over age 65 which, although not enacted during his administration, was the basis for the Social Security program. That’s right, another social assistance program thought up by a Republican!

• Eisenhower expanded all of the New Deal programs then created the Dept. of Housing, Education and Welfare to administer them. (He also extended benefits to 10 million more Americans.) Those highways we drive on? He came up with the Interstate Highway Transportation System. He also supported the Brown v. Board of Education decision and told Washington, D.C. officials they had to integrate. Eisenhower, incidentally, proposed to Congress the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 and signed them into law. Although they weren’t as strong as those passed later by LBJ, the fact remains that a Republican president was the first to do something about Civil Rights for black Americans.

• Nixon. Okay, our bad. But, hey, at least he improved relations with China and helped bring along their split with the Soviet Union or I’d be typing this in Cyrillic right now.

• Ford supported a constitutional amendment allowing each of the states to make an independent choice on abortion, which didn’t win him many friends within the GOP. He remained pro-choice throughout his life, and his wife Betty (who is one of my personal heros) described Roe v. Wade as a “great, great decision.”. But that’s about the only nice thing I have to say about his presidency, aside from the fact that he was smart enough to give Betty a voice.

As to more recent Republican Presidents, well, it’s hard to debunk what people believe they personally witnessed. There is a reason, I submit, why so many Presidents are held in low regard until history provides hindsight on what they truly stood for and accomplished. And that reason is simply this: we all filter things through a thick lens of what we want to believe. It’s not until time has passed, and passions have cooled, that we see what truly occurred.

If we’re smart people, we revise our beliefs accordingly.