We know. We apologize up front, since there was a pitch from Management to the dregs of the creative section and an alert intern from Legal to see if new footnotes were required, or worse, an actual disclaimer that would have to be inserted into the opening remarks to protect both Management and independent contract creative staff from accusations of non-mainstream thought. Marketing wanted to go to lunch, but it was too early.

The usual stuff was on the table with some new wrinkles that Legal doesn’t want us to get into. Suffice it to say, the Russia business got a little deeper yesterday with revelations on why Mr. Putin is doing what he is doing at the moment, and where he is doing it. Plus what the Ukes are up to with the incursion in into Kursk, which is to reduce pressure on the Dneiper River towns that involved the planned murder against Mr. Putin, who imposed an emergency national alert and told the Iranian to cill down on the military incursion they had been planning and which had us on alert after a string of killings down there. It may still happen, but that is based on last weeks news that somehow now seems to meeting in the middle somewhre south of Moscow and north of Nairobi. Est would be China, of course, and they have told us to steer clear of commentary on that for the moment.

Legal also said to stay away from the domestic stuff, which is jumbled up between what we knew as the “tactical,” or the equivalent of local operations up the ladder to the “operational,” or national level. Legal says that has all verged into the terrirtorty of things polite people don’t talk about at family dinner tables- sex, politics and religion. This being politics now tinged with a ceretain zeal while thinking- and acting- on the other stuff you can see out predicament. We compromised and decided to meet in the middle.

“Have any of us actually been around the world?” That had been a response to an opinion about the merging of the three formerly restricted topics into one that ws just, generally about travel.

Our had partly been of the military variety, with the operative term “deployments” rather than tours. The nature of things being what they are, the naval organization we served generally divided itself into two major components based on the oceans in which they operated. As a rule, a concetration on the East Coast, notably the Worlds Largest Naval Base at Norfolk, Virginia, was a gateway for going East. Out on the West Coast, the ships went West. sometimes way far out that way.

None of us had actually been “around the world,” and never claimed we had as an idel boats. That had lost some of the magic in the term with the first orbital demonstrationos, and the International Space Station does 16 round-the-worlds each day. So the Boeing crew that is stuck up there when the capsule started leaking will do a few thousand complete circumnavigations before they have a chance to- hopefully- make it back down safely.

So, don’t get us wrong. We were just trying to figure out whether we had done it once. Turns out we had, if you had both sides of the table join their experience in the middle. Some had been on ships that went west from California and made it all the way to Africa, via Australia. Others had steamed earnestly out of Mayport, Florida for the Wine Dark Sea and the Holy Land to the streets of Moscow, though that was by the miracle of flight.

If you turned south in Moscow’s Red Square and dropped an index finger toward your feet, you would be pointing generally toward the courtyard of the New Stanley Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. We do not know which side of the line the Message Tree in the courtyard is located, but we know the drink service is better on the east side and non-existent at St. Basil’s.

Anyway, you can imagine we were relieved no to get dragged into a discussion about why the contest fo ht most powerful job on earth, the one in which decisions will be made affected all the lives on either side of a line on some other continent, both north and south of the big fat one that goes around the middle.

There was a ceremony about that, of course, but that was a north-south one we don’t want to get into today. It would need a footnote, and Legal wants to get to lunch. We will look at that tomorrow. We are waiting on a reading from the Legal Beagles about what it is acceptable to talk about in an election that is scheduled to happen later this year. We think, anyway. We are trying to meet in the middle on that part and be reasonable, but you know that is not only north and south but the whole est west thing.

We may have to go back to current events whether Legal likes it or not, you know?

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