I went to my room last night to check the Cardinals score before going to bed and heard an owl close by. In the tree right next to our house, right next to my room. The soft mutterings of a duet- the local owl man says this is their courting time, and this “duetting” is one of their courting behaviors, renewing ties before they undertake another year of raising young. Or maybe this is a young pair, just getting established. I went outside to hear and see better, lay on my back so I could look up at the trees and sky, and saw one of them fly from a tree at the back of the yard to join the one in the pin oak next to the house. As I went to bed I still heard them calling to each other, their soothing sounds interspersed with gunshots a block or so away, a local dispute of some sort, not terribly uncommon. And the Missouri legislature in its infinite wisdom has decided we need the right to openly carry firearms. I’m sure that will help things, and as if we don’t have more pressing legislative issues. It all feels pretty hopeless to me sometimes, our so-called democracy. And to top it off, last night we watched an episode of Dr. Who via Netflix that takes place during the depression in New York, the Daleks were abducting people from the Hooverville in Central Park and turning them to their own purposes. Then we flipped to a local station, where they were showing a documentary of the Depression years, the bread lines, Roosevelt just coming into office. Coincidence? I think not. Daleks, Koch money and media fear-mongering, are they so different?

Ah, but it all makes me glad those owls are there.