Knocking At The Gate

 I got up just around sunrise. Before I began making breakfast, I stepped out the front door.   I found myself standing thisclose to a juvenile rabbit, who seemed as surprised as I was. We considered each other for a few minutes. I stood still so as not to startle the little one, and it stood still likely to avoid becoming prey.  This state of affairs, while pleasant for me in the instant, is not how either of us wanted to spend the rest of the day, but I figured it wasn't really my place to make the first move.  Little bun was showing admirable restraint, I thought. I expected it to bolt for the safe cover of the abundant fan palms just a few feet away, but it did not. I could see its nose assessing what it could, its eyes unblinking, its ears folded low trying to keep a low profile.  Then we both heard the sudden whip of air beneath the great wings of some large raptor moving far too swiftly for me to identify, and we both startled from it. The dive was ...

Several months after the September 11, 2001 attacks, I traveled to Washington, D.C. for business. In those days and at that airport, security screening took quite a bit of time so I made a point of showing up early. When I arrived at the gate, it turns out I was a little too early and there was only one other person waiting. With no one around us except for armed and uniformed military personnel standing post, and lots of time to pass, we began to talk. It turned out that he worked for the United States Agency for International Development in another country. It turned out that we both had young children of almost exactly the same ages. Over the course of over an hour, we confessed to each other all our worries about what was coming next, how the world we grew up in had simply ceased to exist, and what might befall our children as they grew up into whatever the new world was going to become. We didn't bother to speak of party politics, because it didn't seem relevant in that em...