I was out today finishing my shopping and seeing old friends who were back in town. On the drive home, I heard US Poet Laureate Ted Kooser on NPR's All Things Considered, reading a passage from his book of essays, Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps.

He read the last passage in the book, the one that closes out the section on Winter, and it was just so wonderful, especially in his soothing poet voice, that I had to look it up tonight. The link above takes you to NPR's site where you can hear the segment in question, and you absolutely should. Kooser talks about how he wrote the essay after surviving cancer, and how the ending affirmation is how you really feel after making it through something like that, "the world is waiting for you, and welcoming you back, and that sort of thing."

If you are incredibly impatient, forward the RealMedia stream to 1:35 when Kooser starts reading this passage. And yes, I found the text through Google Print, and my cheers both to Mr. Kooser and to the University of Nebraska Press for making it available online. It was enough to send me to buy the book, and who wouldn't, given this kind of writing for $8.21?

Read and hear this with my warmest wishes for a new year that surpasses the old in every way.

Life is a long walk forward through the crowded cars of a passenger train, the bright world racing past beyond the windows, people on either side of the aisle, strangers whose stories we never learn, dear friends whose names we long remember, and passing acquaintances whose names and faces we take in like a breath and soon breathe away.

There is a windy perilous passage between each car and the next, and we steady ourselves and push across the iron couplers clenched beneath our feet. Because we are fearful and unsteady crossing through wind and noise, we more keenly feel the train rock under our legs, feel the steel rails give just a little under the weight, as if the rails were tightly stretched wire and there were nothing but air beneath them.

So many cars, so many passages. For you there may be the dangerous passage of puberty, the wind hot and wild in your hair, followed by marriage, during which for a while you walk lightly under an infinite blue sky, then the rushing warm air of the birth of your first child, and then, so soon it seems, a door slams shut behind you, and you find yourself out in the cold where you learn that the first of your parents has died.

But the next car is warm and bright, and you take a deep breath and unbutton your coat and wipe your glasses. People on either side, so generous with their friendship, turn up their faces to you, and you warm your hands in theirs. Some of them stand and grip your shoulders in their strong fingers, and you gladly accept their embraces, though you may not know them well. How young you feel in their arms.

And so it goes, car after car, passage to passage, as you make your way forward. The roadbed seems to grow more irregular under the wheels as you walk along - poor workmanship you think - and to steady yourself, you put your hands on people's shoulders. So much of the world, colorful as flying leaves, clatters past beyond the windows while you try to be attentive to those you move among, maybe stopping to help someone up from their seat, maybe pausing to tell a stranger about something you saw in one of the cars through which you passed, was it just yesterday or the day before? Could it have been a week ago, a month ago, perhaps a year?

The locomotive is up ahead somewhere, and you hope to have a minute's talk with the engineer, just a minute to ask a few questions of him. You're pretty sure he'll be wearing his striped cap and have his red bandanna around his neck, badges of his authority, and he'll have his elbow crooked on the sill of the open window. How impassively he will be gazing at the passing world as if he's seen it all before. He knows just where the tracks will take us as they narrow and narrow and narrow ahead to the point where they seem to join.

But there are still so many cars ahead, the next and the next and the next, clatter to clatter to clatter, and we close a door against the wind and find a new year, a club car brightly lit, fresh flowers in the vases on the tables, green meadows beyond the windows, and lots of people who, together - stranger, acquaintance, and friend - turn toward you and, smiling broadly, lift their glasses.

From the Associated Press:

A 19-year-old PETA staffer has legally changed his name to KentuckyFriedCruelty.com.

Chris Garnett, youth outreach coordinator for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, said he changed his name in support of the group's anti-KFC campaign.

Those damn activist judges are letting liberal animal rights activists redefine themselves! We need to amend the Constitution to preserve the sanctity of names!

When this news hit the wires today, most left-wing reaction was like this from Political Animal:

Inevitably, the right's talking points will tell us that the administration's critics are hypocrites. We wanted the Justice Department to probe the Plame leak, they'll say, but not the "snoopgate" leak. But if Bush's political allies can't see the difference between exposing official wrongdoing and exposing a CIA agent to help cover up bogus pre-war claims, there's just no hope for them.

Well, there already wasn't any hope for most of these people who spout that whatever Bush does is legal by definition. But the above argument is far too nuanced and attackable to survive the shouting heads on TV and Radio. If anyone tells you that you have to support this if you supported the investigation of outing Valerie Plame, here's how you respond:

It cannot be illegal to reveal that the government broke the law.

That's all we're talking about in the end, and attempts to obfuscate with "national security" and "all leaks are the same" are ridiculous. When Scooter Libby outed Valerie Plame, he didn't do it because she was breaking the law, he did it because her husband revealed that his bosses were lying about their casus belli. When the New York Times revealed the warrantless wiretaps, they revealed that the administration was violating clear federal statutes, something that even John Dean said was grounds for impeaching the president.

It cannot be illegal to reveal that the government broke the law. The Justice Department may have to investigate just to understand what happened, but it cannot be illegal to reveal that another party has broken the law. The law cannot allow punishing those who try to see that it is enforced.

In fact, if it is both legal and encouraged to reveal crimes when they're committed, then isn't calling for this investigation tantamount to attempted intimidation of witnesses? If it turns out this probe was politically motivated, the ones who called for it may have committed felonies themselves. And at firedoglake, Jane makes a good argument that it is political:

I mean, honestly, if they had been serious about getting to the bottom of the leak, wouldn't they have started looking into it a year ago when the WH started pressuring the NYTimes to keep the story under wraps? The closer to the leak you start the investigation, the better in terms of tracking down the leak. I'm just sayin'.

Indeed.