If you’d sequestered on a ten-day writers’ retreat, leaving home on Friday evening, July 12, and returning Monday, July 22, the United States’ political landscape tilt-a-whirled.

• On July 13, at an outdoor political rally, to which Trump is prone, a young man attempted to kill the presidential candidate, with a live round nicking his ear.  Many, led by President Biden, openly decried the violence while the MAGA throng spouted conspiracy theories and hate. The sympathy for Trump, calls for a full investigation that led to the resignation of the head of the Secret Service, and reprehensible recriminations filled the air.
• On July 21, aka National Ice Cream Day, President Biden posted a letter on Twitter, expressing his patriotic decision not to seek re-election and handing the reins in the race to his Vice President, Kamala Harris. Shock and awe! Dignity and grace… but a mad scramble to make sense of it all. The presidential campaign did a 180-degree turn.
• 

The title of a famed British TV newscast That Was the Week that Was seemed apt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Was_the_Week_That_Was

And, boom, we have a smart articulate friendly woman who laughs and smiles spontaneously! Her messages resonate. It’s refreshing to follow a candidate who glows rather than glares.

Truth Socially – a Prosecutor vs. a  Felon.

When Old Orange called her a lunatic and said she’d destroy the country, it made no sense, not even in The Villages housing development in Florida, a MAGA stronghold. He talks about whatever floats through the transom of his mind, embarrassingly so, becoming the rambling oldster that he used to call Biden  It only made Old Orange more lamentable in many voters’ eyes. Harris vs. the Harasser starts to look like an unfair contest.

She’s got a future, he’s only got a past.

But. We all have to endure 100 days of campaigning…

At least we have the summer Olympics to lift our spirits.

Positive energy, hope, enthusiasm, camaraderie, inclusion, and competitions in which no one spikes anyone else’s spirit.