It’s black everywhere when I wake up this morning, and while I don’t mind winter’s early evenings, I heartily dislike getting up in the dark. But I have an idea to write about “my Hillary problem,” to explain that I have never been a fan – that the emails and the foundation shakedowns are part of an ugly sense of entitlement the Clintons have acquired over the years – but also that she seems now the one candidate for whom the world is a complex place. The desk at which I sit faces east, and when I turn on the light, the window reflects my face looking out at the spreading dawn and simultaneously looking back at me. I am part of what I see. It’s the shortest day of the year; the winter solstice will arrive 12 minutes before midnight. I sit, with my coffee growing cooler, watching the sky turn from black to light blue (which the dictionary says is also called sky blue or angel blue) to gray and then to pink. The light frost lifts from the ground. There is no sound, not even the noisy geese who winter here now are up.

I glance at the morning’s news, but the world outside the window seems immune to the atrocities it reports, just as the press seems too often oblivious to the beauty of the dawn and the resilience of goodness.

I’d like to dwell on that thought. The days are growing longer again. My children are coming home.