July 31: Some Men Feared, "The West Wing," Josiah Bartlet

Santiago thinks about hurricane weather . . . 

He thought of how some men feared being out of sight of land in a small boat and knew they were right in the months of sudden bad weather. But now they were in hurricane months and, when there are no hurricanes, the weather of hurricane months is the best of all the year.

If there is a hurricane you always see the signs of it in the sky for days ahead, if you are at sea. They do not see it ashore because they do not know what to look for, he thought. The land must make a difference too, in the shape of the clouds. But we have no hurricane coming now.

Some people live in fear.  

It's an easy place to take up residence.  Living in fear means you don't take any chances.  Instead, you simply stay at home, binging TV shows or Twilight films or poetry collections.  It's so much easier than stepping out the front door into a world of killer viruses and crazy politicians and melting polar icecaps.  What I'm about to say may sound crazy, but I sort of miss that time at the beginning of the pandemic when everyone was ordered to shelter in place.

I had a shelter-in-place kind of day.  Not because I am living in fear.  Nope.  I did play two church services this morning.  Went grocery shopping after church.  Then, I binged about seven or eight episodes of The West Wing.

I was addicted to the Martin Sheen presidency when I was first married.  When the series started, Bill Clinton had just been impeached.  It ended while George W. Bush was still lying to the American people.  In short, Josiah Bartlet was my favorite President before Obama started working in the Oval Office.

Watching The West Wing now, I still get inspired by the starry-eyed idealism of its main characters.  It's a series that revolves around hope for a better world.  That particular sentiment has been in short supply in recent years.  In fact, I would venture to say that hope has been under attack, at least in the United States.  So, living in a Bartlet country for seven or eight hours today has been comforting.  

Of course, the problem with binging The West Wing is that, eventually, I have to return to a country plagued by Trumpism.  I'm not quite ready for reentry just yet.  Once I'm done typing the blog post, I think I'm going to watch another episode.  Forty-two more minutes of hope before I go to bed.

Saint Marty's blessing today:  President Martin Sheen.