Sick

That's what everyone has been around here, for what seems like weeks. I got the flu; then week passed, and Caitlyn caught a stomach virus which had her throwing up everything. Then once she got through that, it was passed around again, to the other girls. (I've been up three times tonight with Megan.) And now Melissa has it. Ugh.

In the meantime, I've been doing a lot of thinking. I think that I'll be able, over the few days, to finally get out the "manifesto" posts which I described as "upcoming" more than three weeks ago. I think there will be three parts, each built around a different blog post or article (or several such) that I've read over the last few months and which have stuck in my head. First, I need to lay the groundwork for my basic political orientation, which means talking about Marx and socialism and communitarianism. Then I want to put that into the context of American populism and tradition, which means a focus on religion and conservatism as elements in our current class and culture divide. Finally, I'll try to pull all that together into an observation or three about the Democratic and Republican parties today. Much too much, of course, and I'll just have to eat these words (or, more likely, embarrassedly delete them) if sickness gets in the way of my writing these posts. But I promise I'll give it a shot.