I love Bruce and Mark

I'm trying to work back up some hope for America, so I picked up a couple of Bruce Springsteen albums and a Mark Twain book from the library yesterday. Springsteen's "We Shall Overcome" and "The Rising" are both brilliant, and I'm loving Twain's "Letters from the Earth", but I don't think it's working in terms of hope. "The Rising" was his post-9/11 album, and it has actually been incredibly depressing to listen to it while I'm reading the morning paper, with the headlines about Iraq (where both of Angel's brothers will be within the month). It's such a proud and hopeful album, but you've got to give Bruce's hope a big "oops" in the short term. How'd we end up here only 6 years later?

Twain's always great, but "Letters from the Earth", published posthumously, starts off with a systematic dismantling of Christian mythology, which is once again quite depressing for a cloudy Friday morning. It's good stuff, but I really should have just stuck to the travel book I was reading, because I'm just not ready for all of this heaviness.

Now, I'm off to breakfast with my friend the Katrina Survivor. This hasn't been the best start for my quest for a renewed sense of American pride.