It’s 7:30 a.m. on a cool Wednesday morning, no wind, gorgeous
Arizona sky. Plants I started from seed --now ready to be potted up -- beckon
me to the patio, but they must wait a bit longer. My neighbor is out with her
weed whacker annihilating the newly sprouted weeds along the alley that popped
up after a heavy rain two days ago. Having neighbors who are meticulous about
their yard pleases me for the aesthetic but machinery before 10:00 a.m. irritates
the hell out of me. If I were queen…
Instead, I close the slider door to the patio, open the cabinets
of the living room bookcases, take a deep breath and stare at the unsorted
collection that’s been on my ‘to do’ list since I moved here in December. I sort
a stack for cookbooks, another for travel, classics, art, spiritual/religion, and
one for random genre… I can sort about a dozen books this way but invariably
one intrigues me so that when I open it, there is a message I cannot ignore. It’s
this one: The Book of Questions, by Gregory Stock, 1987 with a bookmark
inserted on page 83…
Just now remembering those many years ago how friends would
gather in the evenings over wine and we’d randomly open the book and attempt to
answer a few of these soul-searching questions with honesty, deliberation, and often
levity. Question #93 is a challenging one to ask ourselves today…
While in the government, you discover the President is committing
extortion and other serious crimes. By exposing the situation, you might bring
about the President’s downfall, but your career would be destroyed because you
would be framed, fired, and publicly humiliated on other matters. Knowing you
would be vindicated five years later; would you blow the whistle? What if you
knew you would never be vindicated?
