Mind Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action---

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

We *shall* overcome.

Yellow fog

The other day I awoke to an eerie muted yellow glow that was neither street light nor sun light, but could only be the remnants of the famed yellow fog of Prufrock fame.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
By T. S. Eliot

Vote!

Today I received and returned my ballot. Nothing like voting by absentee ballot for a list of unopposed candidates to make your electoral participation feel inconsequential. I should have moved to New Hampshire before leaving the country. On the bright side, I got to vote for an initiative to remove criminal penalties for marijuana possession in Massachusetts.

At the post office, I asked the clerk about the probability of my ballot making it past the local postal service. When I voted two years ago, they kept returning my ballot to me, because the printed address on the envelope doesn't look at all like an address. He assured me that it shouldn't be a problem, as they have so many US ballots going through that post office every day now. He said he alone had already processed four or five this morning before mine.

Living here in the UK makes me feel really privileged to vote in the US election. So many people I talk to point out the huge consequences this election will have on their lives. I think folks here are hopeful, if still a bit anxious after the last go-round.