Happy Easter and, my, how things have changed ... .

Picked Dorian up this morning to drop her off at one of the group homes owned by Harmony Homes, a housing program for mentally handicapped adults who live semi-independently. She's been looking forward to today's big event all week. An Easter Egg hunt! My sweet girl/woman loved it last year and has been talking about it all week. What's so special? Those "eggs" will each hold a $20 bill, so finding them will be exciting, indeed, and in terms that even the mentally-retarded can understand. Whatever happened to those chocolate marshmallow bunnies and jelly beans and baskets stuffed with fake grass?

What does that remind me of?

Listening yesterday to the pundits chewing over the results of the dollars raised by the presidential hopefuls that now indicate who the "real" leaders are in what may be fast approaching the status of a flag-draped charade. What ever happened to the formal exercise of the electoral process of a great nation as in caucuses and primaries? They may have become something other than what we've intended; an anachronism, with the real results determined far in advance of those determined by the ballot box -- electronic or otherwise. Determined by what is predicted to be our first "... billion dollar presidential election."

Is my cynicism growing?

Maybe.

But I'll still work hard for Senator Barack Obama in the days ahead while waiting for Lady Liberty to begin to recover her balance -- and pray for a restoration of her wonderful sense of humor -- of whimsey. How else can one explain the election of George W. Bush to be leader of the free world? Arnold Schwarzenegger???

Think I'll go find myself some jelly beans... . Oh, yes ... that was our Governor Ronald Reagan wasn't it? -- another inexplicable folly to this aging Californian who remembers marching along Telegraph Avenue in the People's Park protests years ago -- watching smiling young women placing flowers down gun barrels of the National Guard troopers while his tear-gas-spewing heliocopters stalked and bombed from overhead. And how we watched in disbelief a few years later when the nation chose him to lead the world as our president!

Again, Happy Easter to you, and may the God in whom you believe continue to protect us from ourselves.

Peace.