The day began like many other days, without a sniffle in the world. Rushing the kids to school, rushing to replenish and drop off their middle school team's rolling cooler with sports drinks and ice, and rushing to work, screech go the tires into the parking space, blah, blah, blah. Followed by a too infrequent lunch with my brilliant best pal, whom I cherish and is getting old, so each lunch is more than just a lunch and is also an attempt to remember forever how special he is.

Then as I was traveling after lunch to another nearby town in the Deep South to do some work, it began to hit me. A tightness in the chest, difficulty breathing, dry throat. I got to my destination to meet with several desperate, sad people with whom I needed to meet, and I started to feel my nose swell and my voice become winded. I decided I'd do another rare thing and buy a bottle of soda pop, or cold drink as we call it down heah. I was going to buy a Coke but joked with a co-worker that I needed to see a doctor, so I bought an ice-cold Dr. Pepper and started slugging it down.

I met with the poor otherwise friendless folks I need to, then got in my beaten-up 2004 Prius to race across the county for the late afternoon sporting event. By that time, my nose was running like a ... help me on this ... kid running across a court in worn out sneakers dragging and squealing to get to the ball. Half way through the sporting event I was starting to turn heads and distract the other parents with my incredibly loud and uncontrollable sneezing. So I dashed away to a local drug store and bought cold relief capsules, a bottle of juice, and Fig Newtons, the last because I was by then in full spoil-myself mode. Then a quick dash back to see the end of the sporting event, which went longer than expected.

Then got one of the kids into the Prius to race to not be too late to evening guitar practice back halfway across the county, but it got canceled on the way because we were running so late, so we drove home. My partner of 20 years recognized my being in bad shape and made them all dinner and allowed me to go to bed to rest, hydrate, and wait for my next round of cold relief, the nighttime version that puts you to sleep if you're lucky. I put up my smart phone and lay on the bed and did yet another rare thing, lay in bed by 7:30 pm without dinner or desire for dinner and with no energy to do anything except sneeze frantically, wipe frantically, drink ice water with lemon slice, urinate, and between urinations, watch MSNBC.

God what an abysmal joke. Chris Matthews was signing off, and for the few minutes I saw him actually was somewhat accurate in talking about Clinton's difficulty associating with a clear agenda that captures the attention of today's desperate, sad voters, contrasted with Sanders. Chris Hayes looked and sounded pathetic and too doltish to be insecure. He was all about Trump except when he was doing a Clinton infomercial. Then came Rachel Maddow, who was mostly about Trump when she was not doing a Clinton infomercial but did give a few intelligent minutes to the Panama Papers story, about which I'd myself written a little piece yesterday when I saw the story on the Guardian online.

At that point, I said to myself what the hell, I might as well blog through the misery and took my phone off the charger by the front door and brought it to bed. By then Lawrence O'Donnell was on. I have to say that he was intelligent and relatively worth watching. Near the end he had a mini-debate of Barney Frank for Clinton vs. Nina Turner for Sanders. Turner was great and Frank was full of tired but slick disingenuousness and distraction just like I expect a Clinton surrogate to be, and it was entertaining but not enlightening.

And then O'Donnell did something quite important. He reminded his audience including the stuffy-headed me, who'd recently been to Memphis and visited the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, that today is the anniversary of when Dr. King was shot and this was the time he'd been pronounced dead and shortly thereafter the soon-to-be-assassinated RFK rose up to share these remarkable and remarkably sad words:

[video:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BCrx_u3825g]

Thank you Lawrence.

That is all. TV off. Peace be upon you and me, but let's also each do our part to "work and fight until justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream." Solidarity.