From Maureen Dowd in today's New York Times--

The president got re-elected by dividing the country along fault lines of fear, intolerance, ignorance and religious rule. He doesn't want to heal rifts; he wants to bring any riffraff who disagree to heel.
W. ran a jihad in America so he can fight one in Iraq - drawing a devoted flock of evangelicals, or "values voters," as they call themselves, to the polls by opposing abortion, suffocating stem cell research and supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.
Mr. Bush, whose administration drummed up fake evidence to trick us into war with Iraq, sticking our troops in an immoral position with no exit strategy, won on "moral issues."
The president says he's "humbled" and wants to reach out to the whole country. What humbug. The Bushes are always gracious until they don't get their way. If W. didn't reach out after the last election, which he barely grabbed, why would he reach out now that he has what Dick Cheney calls a "broad, nationwide victory"?
While Mr. Bush was making his little speech about reaching out, Republicans said they had "the green light" to pursue their conservative agenda, like drilling in Alaska's wilderness and rewriting the tax code.
"He'll be a lot more aggressive in Iraq now," one Bush insider predicts. "He'll raze Falluja if he has to. He feels that the election results endorsed his version of the war." Never mind that the more insurgents American troops kill, the more they create.

This is really scary and just awful. I remember when my mother said that, if George Wallace was elected president she would move to another country. Well, I feel like moving to another country, but I don't want to abandon my country, I like my country and I like where I live. I just feel betrayed by the people who live in my country. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM? And I'm fearful--what is going to happen to us? We are being lead by a madman and a fool. Dowd calls Cheney "Vice."

As if I weren't feeling lousy enough this morning, I had to read her op-ed piece. I thought about my brother on the way in. I re-created the time we spent together when his first marriage ended. He drove to Connecticut to spend time with me. I was in college and we drove to see my grandfather in a nursing home. He hated living there and was so bored that he hallucinated, but he would share his hallucinations with you and was always half in and half out ("See all those those school children lined up? They all have their lunchboxes. What are they doing with lunch? It's only 10:30."). After the visit in Glens Falls we drove to Hanover to see our cousin Kox (Cam's mother). We had called to say we were coming but would get there late at night. It snowed driving over there, the kind of snow that's really distracting when you're driving, flakes that drive right into the headlights. We listened to Elton John over and over, the whole trip. Tiny Dancer. He talked about the trip out from Illinois and the hitchhikers he picked up. When we got to Hanover Kox's house was totally dark and everyone was in bed. We joked about how much the guest room was like a motel, but what a nice motel it was. In the morning Cam said she hadn't told anyone we were coming so they wondered what the Coors beer was doing on the counter (you couldn't get Coors in the East then). Turns out she had "forgotten" we were coming in the few hours after we called her. Even then she was drinking an incredible amount. Anyway we had a nice visit with all of them and eventually headed back to Bridgeport. It was trips like that with Henry that I like to remember. He had that orange Peugeot station wagon that I thought was the coolest car (so did he). We had a great time on that trip.

So now it's the 4th of November and I was 3 minutes late to work this morning. I was early 3 times and have already broken my vow to myself to be on time. Well 3 minutes is better than I've been. I couldn't get out of bed, I knew I would feel sad on the way to work, and I was right. I cried a lot (good for you, cleans your eyes, that's what my father would say when he made me cry). But now I'm ready to face the day and catalog, damn it, catalog. I've moved on to Willsboro's new stuff. Books on CD, used videos they bought from a video store and odd books. Oh my aching back. I also have to analyze circulation of our periodicals on the bookmobile to see which ones we should renew. This is a project I made up for myself so I don't have to catalog all day. I can also week. I'm in the St's now, moving right along. The S's have the oldest, least-circulated, filthiest and most-falling-apart books in our collection. I sneeze and wheeze when I handle them, but I'm moving toward the end of the alphabet and that's a good thing.

Heavy, heavy frost this morning. Very pretty. We had a bit of snow on the ground yesterday but we never really got our October snow. There was snow on Whiteface in Oct. but it never hit us. Not a problem.

I'm working on refinancing my mortgage. Have applied with 3 different mortgage companies. This is the big thing in America--you don't work with banks anymore, you work with mort. companies, and you start the process online. It's great, they call you and go over the stuff, then they do the credit check, then they call you back and talk to you. You have an appraiser come then you have a closing. No meeting with an uptight banker who disapproves of you and makes you feel inadequate. So far I have one offer that isn't a good interest rate but will save me $300 a month on a 15-year mortgage. I wanted a 10-year mort. but don't know if I can swing that and pay off my credit cards. I fear the appraisal because the house is unconventional and I hate the feeling of being judged. I have to believe it will be ok--the house must be worth a certain amount in order for this all to work out, but since I'm only financing $48,000 or so it should turn out ok. I'm hoping the house is worth $100,000--that's what the bank conjectured when I talked to them about it. $80,000 would be ok. Right now I only owe $36,000 and the original mort. was $58,000 in '92. Presumably it's appreciated in value--then it was appraised at $80k. Liza's house is appraised at $400,000, which she finds very comforting. I just love tossing these figures around. Anyway, I'm due to hear from mortgager #2 today and have #3 in the wings. Closing costs for #2 are $3000, very unreasonable. #1 only charges $1200.

And the dogs are fine. It's really a drag letting them out one at a time and waiting until they return (now TESS. now JACKSON. now CHANCES) and I have to let Tess out first so she doesn't eat everyone else's poop. She's really funny if she goes out after the others, nose to the ground running along as she follows their trail until she finds the spot where they finally pooped. She looks like a cartoon character.