Oooh! - look at the kitty!!!

I have tremendous respect for professional columnists & bloggers who are obligated to write something regularly.
It's hard work, coming up with something entertaining or significant to say on a routine basis.
... well, at least I know I can't do it!

My mind wanders.
(... and I have no reliable lasso to help rein it in.)

Once-upon-a-time I really enjoyed presidential election years. - Watching the campaign was FUN!
Sadly, that time has passed.
Now I just get depressed.

I'm at a standstill on my hobby - documenting "H.M.S. Pinafore" in America.
I've completed two YouTube vids, but have a third - final - one that is not yet even "in the works".
Sigh.
... On the bright side, I gave a talk on "Pinafore" at Harvard a couple of weeks ago.
... well, it was given for the Harvard-Radcliffe Gilbert & Sullivan Players, as part of their 60th anniversary celebration (at which Pinafore was presented).
I'd like to write an article about Pinafore and the California gubernatorial election of 1879.
... the material is assembled, it's the WRITING thing that gets in the way.

Current debate on immigration recalls America's long history of anti-immigrant paranoia: The Alien Acts of the late 18th century, "No Irish need apply", anti-Chinese hysteria, anti-Italian sentiment in the 1910s & '20s, the Espionage Act of 1917.
For a country that promises this:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

... we don't do so great.
(... and even Benjamin Franklin railed against the indolent Germans in Philadelphia!)

As mentioned above, I just get depressed.

... and I get distracted.
Oooh! - Look at the kitty!!!