There's a storm coming.

I can see the clouds hovering over my head:  the Speaker's Millennium Lecture, visits from the National Endowment for the Humanities next month, the database.  They're up there; large, dark, menacing, terrifying.  Threatening to release a deadly monsoon.  I've done everything I can to prepare for the storm and now I just have to wait.  And listen to the echoing thunder.

I had hoped to be able to pack my things and head to safer ground before the storm hits.  Somewhere with blue skies, bright sun and white, puffy clouds.  But I don't know where safer ground is.  I've sent out my white doves, hoping one will return with a sign of hope, but as each day passes the clouds grow darker and my doves seem more and more lost.

There's a storm coming and I'm waiting for my olive branch.

I am:  uneasy