The silly season

Normally on Thursday night I write a piece for the Patriot Post. But this week my editor came to me and said that the news was so slow I had the week off. Basically they’ve covered their fill of Ferguson and the Islamic State, and it’s sucked most of the oxygen out of the news cycle. It’s all about people behaving badly these days, I suppose.

And I think the general public senses that as well. I’ve seen a number of exasperated people on social media being grateful for a football or baseball game to take them away from the news cycle. Even if it was a Philadelphia blowout over the Steelers last night, it was three hours people could more or less escape and talk about something else for a change.

It’s times like these I’m glad I don’t do wall-to-wall politics. Last night I did my penultimate Shorebird of the Week for 2014, as their season is rapidly coming to a close. Tomorrow I will have another record review and Sunday I review my other blog. Some may call it filler, but I consider it sanity. Indeed, we live in interesting times.

I don’t often get writer’s block but it’s worth pointing out I have done and redone this opening set of sentences three times. Mentally I think we just all need a break from the two top stories, particularly Ferguson. We need to remember that one man is dead, another scarred for life, and dozens who made their livelihoods from affected businesses have taken a financial blow as well. Yet there’s not really a political solution to the problem because it’s more a question of culture and upbringing: the ending of Michael Brown’s short life was the compounding of multiple bad decisions on his part. And they came not just on the day of the incident, but for hundreds of days prior and perhaps his whole life.

I don’t profess to be any sort of expert on raising children, but the one I was most involved with is married and has a steady job working with mentally challenged individuals. I can guarantee she and I don’t always see eye-to-eye on political issues, but she seems to have a good sense of right and wrong and a solid work ethic, so if I had anything to do with that I’m grateful to have helped out. If only all children were given that same direction and desire.

I’ll return with political direction and desire over the coming weeks, but for now it’s a couple easier days. Sometimes it helps to just start freeform to deal with writer’s block.