Even an optimist as I am has to face reality, and in the nation’s current circumstances the reality of our country’s overall combination of threatening problems and confused information is creating a murkiness that makes clear thinking difficult.

Consider where we are:

Our battered economy seems to be reviving, although unemployment, at just under 10%, is severe.

The war in Afghanistan grows tougher to deal with, and Iraq isn’t exactly a peaceful countryside either.

Congress, at a time when its national reputation is very low, is close to approving major health reform legislation that is understood by few and questioned by many.

All of the above is happening against a background of diminishing U.S. stature in the world, including a lessening of the power of the dollar. The world is also waiting anxiously to see just how deadly the swine flu pandemic turns out to be.

The United States embodies more pluses, from its sound underlying principles to its success in providing material well being for most of its citizens as well as opportunity for all, than any other country. Even so, at this stage of its history it is a debtor nation, having borrowed hugely from other countries, especially China

In brief, we are spending much more than we are taking in. That can’t last. We have Medicare and Medicaid health programs that protect millions but are also close to gathering in fewer dollars than are being paid out.

The sheer massiveness of the many problems is so great that there are no easy answers. But, it seems plain that we need to spend less at the same time that we emphasize freedom to allow our heretofore robust free enterprise system achieve its potential, doing so with reasonable government protection of the common good.

Our best course could be to go step by step instead of trying to cover whole distances in gigantic leaps.

Now back to the customary tenor of these scribblings.
*****

While attending Catholic University in Washington I came to know fellow student Vincent Sheehy and as the years went by I noticed how large the Sheehy group of car dealerships in the D.C. area had become, winding up with 14 stores, 23 brands and annual sales of $900 million. The latter information is from a Washington Post story.

The Post was running the story because one of the brands is about to be discontinued. Sheehy Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Upper Marlboro, a Washington suburb, is closing next month. Paul Sheehy, a third generation family member, indicated he just doesn’t have confidence that the Fiat purchase of Chrysler will work out. He doesn’t see good new products coming up.

Learning about this happened on the same day that son Paul, who lives in Arlington, mentioned that in driving over he tested the mileage he gets in his nearly five-year-old Honda Civic hybrid and found that on the highway he drove 82.8 miles at an average of 62.4 miles per gallon.

The question popped into my mind: If this degree of gas savings has already been achieved, why haven’t carmakers done more to make their vehicles more interesting and attractive to customers?
*****

I’ll have to admit that another story in Sunday’s Washington Post got me to thinking. Did you see that a discovery has been made of, to quote the Post story, “a vast and underappreciated cache of financial documents from the life of the first president”?

Until this time President Washington has been known for other writings and record keeping but not for his personal financial records. These papers serve to document the lives of ordinary people and supply considerable detail about daily life in the 18th century.

Of particular interest to me is this prime example by our first president of the virtue of never throwing anything away, an area of occasional controversy between me and the lady I live with.
*****

Many years ago Mary and I took a few family members to lunch at the old Washington Hotel in D.C., which was a comfortable place with a special location — the White House was less than two blocks away and easily visible from the room where we ate. A location like that apparently deserves a grander hotel, and the now named W Hotel has opened after a $90 million renovation.

Business may be scraping along elsewhere in the country but on a recent visit to the nation’s capital we could count six building cranes while standing in one location. It seems that the recession hasn’t had such a negative effect on the city where the nation’s business is conducted.

And Congress has not exactly set the tone for spending more conservatively. Its annual expenditure for its affairs is now a little more than $4 billion, up over five percent from the year earlier.
*****

Always looking for a Delaware connection, we stopped Saturday in Easton, Md., at the Academy Art Museum craft show and found that one of the booths was that of Arden M. Bardol of Dover, who dabbles in creating fine and unusual jewelry while not at her daily work as an architect for the Becker Morgan Group in Dover.

My sister Florrie and her husband Jerry of near Sarasota, N.Y., were visiting and we were taking them around part of the Eastern Shore.
*****

Wife: “Judge, my husband is the cheapest man in the world. He hypnotized me into thinking that I was a canary and then fed me birdseed!”

Judge: “Well, sir, what do you have to say for yourself?”

Husband: “I could have made her think that she was a sparrow and then she’d have to hunt for her own food!”