Not writing. It’s a year to the day since we returned from Eastern Europe. I’ve just realized that I’ve now been blogging for more than a year, but I’ve been away for more than a month. I need to write here again, before whatever readers I may have begin to think I’m dead. Here are some things I’ve been thinking about while I’ve been not writing, not writing being an actual activity. It might be fun to undertake a defense of not writing. Maybe I’ll do that one of these days.

Ted Kennedy. My coffee table sometimes holds a copy of Splash Kennedy’s book about his senator. As I looked around this morning, thinking about the book, which is charming and witty and altogether a hoot, especially if you love dogs, I was struck by the meanness of some of the commentary about it when it came out. All tne more struck now that Edward Kennedy’s life has entered a new stage. I expect Kennedy would be among the first to acknowledge that politics is a rough and crude business. In fact, Splash announces on the second or third page of his book that he owes his relationship to the senator to a familiar saying: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.” I, on the other hand could take the photo of Kennedy and his dog that appears on the back of My Senator’s dust jacket as the way I want to remember this man, who is my senator too. God bless him.

Tim Russert. And while I’m thinking of folks I hope will be blessed, God bless Tim Russert. I think it’s possible to agree in principle with Alexander Cockburn in The Nation that Russert wasn’t a progressive, that he often spoke for the political establishment–and at the same time to wish that Cockburn had held his peace for a while. What Cockburn calls “The Canonization of St. Tim” has revealed what many knew about Russert, that he was a devout Catholic who took his faith’s exhortation to serve very seriously, and a serious family man and father. Friends at Boston College say that he could often be seen wandering the hallways waiting for his son to finish class so that he could take him to lunch. I believe Russert was a good and decent person, who died far too young, and not a bad reporter. I miss him.

Plenty to drink. Both the Post Dispatch and The New York Times today carry stories to the effect that Anheuser-Busch is preparing to fight the takeover by InBev. Here in St. Louis we’re hoping that can be done — the city and region stand to lose a good corporate citizen whose relations with workers and other local businessses have on the whole been good over many decades and whose philanthropy has shaped other local institutions so numerous that one can’t even attempt to list them. If the takeover goes through, A-B will be replaced by a corporation whose relations with workers recall those of Wal-Mart and whose willingness to continue A-B’s philanthropic relationships seems questionable. All this to benefit a group of stockholders who for the most part don’t live here. InBev has now filed suit in Delaware Chancery Court to establish its ability to approach A-B stockholders individually, “to ensure that Anheuser-Busch shareholders preserve their voices.” No doubt we’ll be invoking sainted grandmothers with a few shares of A-B stock protecting them from the wolves as beneficiaries of the InBev raid. But the real wolf is InBev, itself.

High water. While the flood waters have yet to recede entirely upriver, we’re pretty dry in St. Louis. The city is built on bluffs. It’s outlying towns, particularly in areas of the flood plain where levees have broken that have suffered. And of course Iowa City, where the Iowa River rose many feet above the level of 1993, and the university remains closed with many buildings permanently damaged. The media are full of praise for FEMA’s response to midwest floods this year, but we’ve heard otherwise here. More about that later — it’s summer now. The Gettysburg Address will be on display at the new Lincoln Museum in Springfield, Illinois until sometime in August. We’re thinking of making a trip to see it.