Thank You, Molly

Observation 1: My daughter-in-law, Molly BD Stern, posted a comment on Facebook a week or so ago in which she asked when I was going to return to blogging. This proves that God put our in-laws on the Earth, a generation or so after we'd become set in fixed behavioral patterns, in order to push us in directions immediate family members knew better than pursue.

Observation 2: My good friend and prolific blogger, Charlie Leck (chasblogs.blogspot.com), has often noted that he writes to give his grandchildren insight into their grandfather, preserving an ancestral log for generations to come.

Observation 3: Today is January 1, 2014. As the first day of the year, tradition dictates that we make resolutions as we look to the future and acknowledge shortcomings of the past.

Observation 4: Tying it all together, God willing, 2014 is the year in which my daughter-in-law will make me a grandfather for the first time. I have resolved, again, to follow Charlie's example and to acquiesce to Molly's request, and spend some time this year pondering from the prairie.

My failure to maintain this blog over the past couple of years did not result from a lack of opinions. It resulted from the inability to overcome the sense of futility felt at the prospect of sharing opinions with a public not interested in discourse outside the scope of propagandistic soundbites. I love to write. I do a lot of writing as part of my profession. But it is excruciatingly difficult to allocate time to the process when you feel like you might as well be baying at the moon.

We shall see how this goes. My plan is to write frequently, but briefly. My plan is to post links on Facebook and LinkedIn and encourage discourse. I may not always be civil, nor always politic. I will respect the opinions of others as long as they result from honest introspection developed from reasoned analysis. I will not hesitate to express my own reasoned analysis to ridicule charlatans and politi-bries (my word) who promote themselves by taking pages from the Joseph Goebbels' Big Lie playbook. And, to keep it light,  I will rely on puff pieces from time to time, likely to highlight my photography or personal relationships.

Somehow, January 1, 2014 seems like the perfect date to relaunch Prairie Pondering. In 2014, my son will become a father, my daughter will become a bride, my friend Rick Nolan will seek well-deserved reelection to Congress and (to be continued).

G. Keillor's Underwood Typewriter