Here are to topics for the week: priorities; empires; The Donald from the right; red moon; Denali.

Ordering your priorities. Is it fair to ask a candidate and/or legislator how he/she would arrange these categories from this alphabetical list: family, friends, nation, party, self, state. 

Empires, then and now. Talking recently with friends about our respective visits this summer to Athens, Rome, and Ephesus, we agreed about the marvelous architectural achievements of the ancient world. True, later denizens of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century empires were also builders, but one cannot but  wonder what evidence of these later empires will exist 2,000 years on.
     The Roman, Mongol, and assorted other empires were extensive, but pale in comparison to America's current far-flung footprint. Much of our overseas construction has already vanished or been changed beyond recognition.

Trump, seen from the right. Conservative columnist George Will surveys the sobering numbers candidate Trump's might face in 2016. Sobering, of course, for everyone except Donald who seems to view himself a "master magician," even the "chosen one." Trump might do well to remember that in 1912 the Republicans turned their back on a still beloved Theodore Roosevelt, who headed the third party Progressive ticket -- throwing the election to the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson. In 2016, the GOP is unlikely to choose a political novice who veers more often than not toward the absurd, especially not when there is no incumbent president in the race.
     In a recent column, conservative-leaning Michael Gerson commented, "A number of thoughtful conservatives are attempting to take the good parts of Trump’s message — his unapologetic nationalism, his identification with working-class discontents — while minimizing the parts that appeal to the lowest human instincts. They prefer their Trumpism with a little less Trump."
     Eugene Robinson, left-leaning columnist noted that two even further-out ideas had surfaced. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R, WI) said that [building a wall to the north] was “a legitimate issue for us to look at.” Not to be outdone, Gov. Chris Christie (R, NJ) that "...as president he would have the chairman of FedEx 'show these people' at Immigration and Customs Enforcement how to track visitors the way his company tracks parcels."
     Rock on!

Smoke gets in your eyes. Last Friday evening's moonrise over the Denver skyline was a sight not usually seen, thankfully: full, sharply outlined, and nearly blood-red. Smoke and haze from the fires burning to the west provided this dramatic scene. Many of our recent sunsets have been similarly fiery.

Sad history remembered. "How Emmett Till Changed the World," was the headline of this Daily Beast story. The story continued, "The brutal lynching of a black teen in Mississippi helped shape the civil-rights movement and became the first Black Lives Matter case. Before Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, there was Emmett Till."
     When  Emmett's body was returned to Chicago from Mississippi, his mother demanded an open casket service so the world could see how her son had been brutally tortured, shot, and hanged in Mississippi. "The graphic images were published in Jet magazine and Black newspapers. [Ms. Till's] decision changed the course of history." Indeed, even J. Edgar Hoover's FBI was unleashed on the case.
     "Two months after Milam and Bryant [both white] were acquitted for the murder of Emmett Till, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, sparking the 381-day Montgomery bus boycott and the beginning of a Civil Rights Movement led by a young minister by the name of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. The fight for civil rights, which had mostly been a legal strategy up until that time, had become a mass movement. Soon after there were Freedom Rides, sit-ins at lunch counters, boycotts, demonstrations, and marches...[A]ll of this can be traced back to Emmett Till."
     And to his very brave uncle, Mose Wright, who stood up in court and publicly identified Milam and Bryant as Emmett's kidnappers. Blacks simply did not do that in those days, especially not against whites and surely not in open court! Mose quickly left town for relative safety to the north.

Denali or McKinley? What's in a name? The re-naming of North America's highest peak has been accomplished, re-designating Mt. McKinley as Denali, the "Great One." Native Alaskans have used the peak's Koyukon Athabaskan name, Denali, for centuries. William McKinley, America's 25th president and for whom the peak was named, was from Ohio so naturally John Boehner, Senate majority leader (R, OH), and other Ohioans, just like Denali's wolves, are howling in protest. Ohio Senator Rob Portman has expressed his discontent with the name change saying decision was "another example of the President going around Congress." Really, Senator? There is a 1947 US law on the books making the re-naming quite legal. Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank called the issue the "newest Republican molehill."
     Milbank continued, "The [real problem for the opponents of renaming]...is that Alaska, run by Republicans, want the name to be Denali and have been trying to make the change for decades. The Alaska delegations — Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Rep. Don Young, Republicans all — heralded the move (even as Ohio's Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who represents McKinley’s hometown, joined the opposition)."

Thanks for reading and enjoy waning full moon during this first week of September.