I was struck earlier today while looking over weekend photos, taken when the computer wasn't available to download them onto, by what a remarkable thing the dandelion is. If it bloomed sparsely and didn't seed itself so lavishly, we would treasure it, encourage it, coddle it. As it is, we deplore it, cuss at it, then spray it --- dead.
This dandelion reminded me of a sunrise, and it's been an experience during my unwired week to rise early and read in silence for an hour or more --- then watch the sun come up. It made me nervous at first, all that disconnectedness, then I got to liking it.
By Monday, it had occurred to me that so long as the sun rose there was nothing really that needed to be urgently known.
So I learned from Steve Scott while drinking midmorning coffee that Osama bin Laden had been killed overnight during a U.S. military raid in a suburb of Islamabad. That was soon enough.
It is a death that cannot be regretted and I expect that its manner was just. But there's no joy in one more bloody corpse.
Images have circulated since of impromptu celebrations that broke out in various places, including Iowa State University in Ames, when the news of bin Laden's death broke.
These celebrations were something bin Laden would have understood and approved of, an oblique form of victory for him in this ongoing war on terror, a title that is in itself a paradox.
Pray for peace. Practice it.
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