(If you’re wondering what this is about, read this.)

My five random words for today’s exercise are toast, giant, cliff, caper, senator.

Chosen word for free association: cliff
fiscal, sheer, wall, tall, fall, winter is coming

Exercise:
It seems to me that something shifted in 2016. I posted on Facebook in June that it felt like the world was at a tipping point, and that the security of everyday men and women around the world was rattled. It certainly was a strange year, with Brexit and Trump and numerous celebrity deaths flooding the series of tubes that is the internet.

When I wrote that post in June, I think I may have been feeling the looming Zeitgeist; if I had to identify exactly where the tip happened, I would probably have to say it took place on election night. That night, it felt like the world closed itself up, like a roly poly bug, individual nations and people retreating behind their armor and walls, even as talk of even bigger walls burned up the ‘net.

In June, I wrote that if there was ever a time for us to exercise compassion, it is now. I still firmly believe that is the way through our current global debacle.