Cutting Through:

Many people find that cutting and hauling brush is a good way to banish cares and to get some thinking done. By the time I finally finish clearing my four acres from the devastation left by ice storm '98, I ought to be a cross between Buddha and Einstein. This week, while clearing out dead wood and invading saplings in a row of cedars, I was thinking how at that very moment, President Bush could be clearing brush on his Crawford ranch, too--that he could be thinking about the same things we both probably think about every day. And then there was this little song that wouldn't stop running through my head--an old-time tune--and I thought that maybe President Bush, rumored to be an old-time fan, just might, at the same moment, be having the same song running though his head. After all, subtract a couple thousand acres and those guys in the bulgy black suits and Ray-Bans, our situations are basically the same.

Oh, little blackbird on my wire line
Dark as trouble in this heart of mine
Oh, little blackbird sings a worried song
Dark as trouble 'til the winter has come and gone...