My uncle Dale is one hell of a writer. I’ve known this ever since I discovered a book of his poetry on my dad’s bookshelf. I think I still have that book. (Sorry Dad — I promise I’ll return it!)

He now writes for the Chicago Sun-Times and for a few other outdoor publications. I read his column occasionally. Most of the hunting & fishing references go right over my head. Like my father, I got passed over for the Bowman hunting gene. But his writers voice always grabs me. This week, his column, “Harvest moon brings stark realization: Life is precious,” grabs me at a point pretty deep inside.

Waking is hard. Mornings are usually a wash of NPR. Consciousness slowly floating back to the surface accompanied by reports of my fool of a President rattling sabres at Iraq, news of the foundering economy (but it’s getting better, we promise!) and the happy knowledge that things are still bad in Afghanistan even after we bombed the crap out of them (as if flattening all their buildings will fix the problem.) It’s no wonder my mornings are a morass.

I do wish I could write coherently about this sort of thing — about the fact that I’m beginning to fear my own government, about my latent pacifism, about my growing desire to emigrate to Germany. They’re all layered on each other, these thoughts. They spin around as I ponder them so they’re never in the same place or facing the same way when I get back to them. It complicates matters.