Ironically enough, this is post 1900 according to my weblog software.

So, the obvious explanation of my hiatus is that I got fed up and simply stopped posting in a hissy fit.

I wish it were that simple.

For those who haven’t been following the drama, I was in France, and on my birthday last year (that is, 2005) I found out that my father was in the hospital with some kind of intestinal blockage, along with (quite literal, although strangely poetic) rain in my kitchen in my apartment in France because of some plumbing problem in the vacant apartment upstairs.

Soon afterwards, I learn that the surgery to remove the blockage in my father’s intestines revealed what I most feared, which was more cancer, likely arising from the bladder cancer he was diagnosed with less than a scant month before I moved to France in April of 2004.

In the first week of November, 2005, I inform the management of my company for which I was on the expatriate assignment in France that my Dad is seriously ill and I need to return to the US. I manage to make my move back to the US in less than one month, shorter than anyone else before or since.

I return to Memphis late in the evening on December 20, 2005, trying to comfort my mother who breaks out into tears upon the sight of me coming up from the arrival gates at the airport.

On December 22 I go to Target to buy my Dad new bathrobes, sweatpants, and sweatshirts to give him less threadbare clothes to wear in his illness.

On December 23, my father collapses twice and we call an ambulance to take him to the hospital. The ER doctor says he has not seen a man more ill than my Dad.

On December 25, in the morning, after my Mom has left and I will soon follow, I say to my father, “I love you, and I will take care of everything.” His reply, “Thank you.” I never speak to him again when he is conscious.

At somewhere around 11:00PM on December 25, I return to the ICU to begin a vigil that will last until the early hours of December 26, when at last the exertions of the brain-dead body of my father is finally relieved of life by an injection of morphine that I had discussed with the nurse hours before my brother was willing to accept the reality of the situation.

My father’s funeral was on December 30, and I was late to it because I had to bring my Mom, who as near as I can tell hasn’t been on time to an appointment in around 40 years.

Since then, I have been dealing with moving back from France to the US, the death of my Dad, and all the changes associated with both events, changes that involve more than a quick evaluation might first indicate and revelations that I do not care to make in this venue.

Relationships in two countries both severed and forged, all subjected to strains unanticipated, dealing with situations that seem to be uncomfortable to any culture.

When it came to blogworld, it seemed that even independently of the new perspective forced upon me by the death of my father that many weblogs whose authors I formerly respected had degenerated into mere sniping against the supposed follies of their political opposition.

Then I saw Random Fate moving in that direction.

Hence, my taking a step back, taking some time to see whether I could learn to express my ideas in the realm of fiction rather than commentary. I have been reading, watching, learning, and I think I have grasped a way of including larger ideas into stories while avoiding simplicity and the construction of straw-men that ultimately end up damaging ideas presented rather than promoting them.

So, I’ve been trying to find a way to express my ideals, my feelings, my fears, my hopes, grasping for something I feel is productive rather than merely sniping, a tendency which is far, far too prevalent in blogworld already.

As a part of that effort, I have been continuing my decades of studying history, reading different novels, short stories, readings of how to write novels and short stories, striving to convey the ideas and ideals that my mind informs me we have lost connection to and belief in because of the emotional reaction to that deadly cocktail of fear and anger that was created by the attacks of September 11, 2001; a gut, unthinking reaction renewed so effectively by the Bush II team striving to maintain political supremacy instead of addressing what is best for the nation, contrary to what their Republican forefathers illustrated when confronted with a far larger crisis in the 1860’s. An exaggeration of a threat presented “the terrorists” that have been such a boogey-man in the last half-decade, something incredibly short when viewed by a realistic perspective that has been used as a lever long enough to move the world by those who are masters of manipulation but proven horribly incompetent at execution of the arguably illegal policies of the Executive acquiesced to by a supine Congress.

Which do you choose, to drink deep of that cocktail of fear and anger that is far more seductive than the self-destructive kool-aide presented by the partisans, a cocktail first mixed by terrorists and then mixed to a drink even more potent by politicians with an agenda that was focused not on the future of our nation and culture but instead upon their own personal success, or do you choose to think for yourself?

It is past time to make that choice.