THE MOUSE HOUSE

     Ah, the mouse house. That special place where magic truly occurs and multiple times daily! Where even the cranky kids and grouchy adults seem to disappear and long lines on hot days are accepted as the norm, so why fight it. It is a place where the heaviest decision is where to go first and who is the fastest runner to go get fast passes for the group and for which ride. Politics? Huh? What is that?
     But on lines, waiting with other families from all over the country and the world, sometimes with the oddest people, without discussing politics, without the trigger words that set off arguments, one does get a take on the temperament of the world. And guess what? Despite all the shouting and the posturing, despite all the demands, the nasty words and faces, much of what we all want is the same. We want good times for our families, money to send the kids to college or for training for other jobs. We want peace, freedom to live our daily lives. We want the politicians to stop their blustering and do the right thing, however many times it is demanded of them.
     And is that not what we all want, whether we are lucky enough to get to visit the various mouse houses or not? Yes, the magic is catching and I suspect that all those who try to look oh so cool and blasé, who deny the magic of the house, who claim to dislike it, are bluffing for some reason. It is the magic that we need to import into our daily lives and yet we refuse to accept that.
     So on we continue with the nastiness of the outside world. On we continue with the immorality of so many of our leaders. On we continue with the marches against violence and unfortunately they arouse truly vicious opponents and aren't they the big brave adults when they call these survivors, these hopes for the future, all sort of nasty names. Wow, it makes one so under impressed!! And we get the huge and growing divisiveness that is afflicting our country.
     We must hold onto the magic for what that magic is really is the magic of America and its position as an ideal above all. Yes, there are rusty spots in that ideal, bald places on the lawn, but it is an ideal still filled with hope - until the 
Scrooges come along and want to deny it to all other than themselves, their families and those who are just like them. It is the country of the apocalypse but in real life. This is what we must fight against. And those two kids at the Seattle Mariner game who sang the anthem yet took a knee at the same time tell me that the magic of the mouse house does still have power outside its Florida and California and Paris and Tokyo and wherever they all are.
     So off I go to gather up the family and the food and the hopes and expectations of the family, armed with decisions already made as to where we go, who gets the fast passes and making sure that we use the ones we already have. I love these problems and I love the looks on the faces of us all as we look around and wonder what we will see today at the new Pandora place in Animal Kingdom. Ahh, I love the mouse house!