Message received....

I'm both humbled and grateful to discover that I have an audience numbering in the tens. And it's because of you, my pretties, that I must carry on.

So let us pause for a moment, while I shift the burden of good taste from one hip to the other, and delicately blot at my brow, and collect my thoughts....

While I do that, here are some random items for you to mull over:

* I belong to the University of Iowa Alumni Foundation. Because of that, I get periodic letters that passive/aggressively chastise me for leaving the state after getting Such A Neat Education there. I feel rather strongly that I need only to point to Rep Steve King (R-Moronville) as a reason to never spend another dollar in The Land Between Two Rivers. Really, people of the fifth congressional district, what are you thinking? Just a generation ago, the venerable Tom Harkin held that seat, and now this is the best you can do? Did all those pesticides in the Missouri River finally get to you, or have you been cross-breeding with a bunch of Nebraskans?

* While I certainly have my issues with Catholicism (having apparently - and thankfully - been the only altar boy in the United States in the 1970's to have not been molested) I must say that no one does either a funeral or wedding better than the Catholics. And the music - when they're not trying to be all Protestant - is hands down the best.

* I have not changed my position on divided vegetable dishes: They're both judgmental and grandiose.

* I used to believe that the key to unlocking America's Energy Security lay in finding a way to turn all those volumes of Readers Digest Condensed Books that were in the thrift shops into fuel. I now realize that that is a finite resource, but have great hopes for that mysteriously eternal wedding present, the bread maker.

That's all for now. Courage.