We got a semi-big rain last night. By my gauge, it was nearly half an inch. My new roof appears to work as do the new gutters which now shed water at all four corners of the house.

As a democracy, we don’t seem to care. Voter participation has hovered between 50 and 60% in presidential elections over the last 120 years. The last time it hit 70% was in 1900.

A fair number of my friends are Republicans. And we have talked politics on and off over the years. We have discussed various issues and compared candidates. I know how some of them feel about their current candidate and I am unaware how others feel.

To me, this election is about my vision of America. Kind, considerate, gentle, caring.

Ah, the mysteries of life. I listen to the speeches of the current Republican nominee for president, and I hear nothing but vile words filled with contempt and hate. Yet, a neighbor down the street or a friend across the state hears the same speech and it’s the nectar of the gods.

In my view across the great political divide, I see signs for the other side all around the area where I live. They’ve grown exponentially with the election, but election season or not the current Republican candidates name is always there along with flags with his name on them.

I don’t know why I care about immigrants, illegal or otherwise.

My back’s feeling better these days, but my soul’s still a little sore. It feels as though some people want this election to be about God because there’s a lot of bible thumping going on.

I’m at a loss to understand how I’m someone’s enemy because I’m a liberal. I support civil rights. I want gay men and women to be able to live their lives, be married, and be happy. I want women to have the right to choose their medical care.

Last week the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post refused to endorse a candidate from either party because the editorial boards wanted to endorse the candidate of the Democrats and the tech billionaire owners said, no.

I’ve always wondered when I read the saying, Make America Great Again. When was again? What time period, what point in our history was the zenith to which we should return or bring back?

They say it never pays to stand up, because most people would prefer you sit down and shut up. And the Japanese have a saying that the nail that sticks out gets hammered down, because they really like conformity.

I voted yesterday. Then I spent most of the day in a funk.

I remember when CNN debuted. I thought it would never work. Most news is boring. Boy was I wrong. It worked, because in addition to covering the news, they talked about it.

Milton made landfall as a category three hurricane yesterday, the second to hit Florida in about two weeks. Luckily, Milton continued on out to sea and will give the east coast a break. Meanwhile, I had a nice talk with a friend about climate change.

It was 1970 or maybe 71. Fresh out of the Navy, newly married, I was attending the University of Houston on the GI Bill. I was majoring in literature for no other reason than I’d always wanted to go to college and study it. Literature. Books.

Talk about changes. The other day I watched the season finale of a series I like on Netflix, The Umbrella Academy. The only person I know with whom I can talk about it is my daughter.

The gullible, the malicious, the uninformed have always been with us. Like viruses or bacteria, they lived among us.

Here we are. The first day of another era in the history of my blog I write each day in the morning light, or dark depending on the time of the year. I should probably give it more thought, take more time, but this is what I’ve done for the last ten years.

Unsettled. That’s the best way to describe my recent feelings. About life, about writing, about everything. I’m unsure when it started. Maybe it was when I looked at my readership analytics and saw the size of my audience. Small. Tiny even.