Deflated pumpkin, home

Yesterday, when Stasia and I were getting ready to "turn over the year" by turning over the garden, my sharp-eyed granddaughter noticed a pair of definitely deflated pumpkins, each of which had graced an entryway in front of our outside  doors. She found their fates quite amusing, but in looking at them today, I'm finding them more of a metaphor for a twin species of sadness. The first, of course, is the fact that Stasia's back home and the ridge in now a much lonelier place. The second is news I woke up to that one of the first acts of the returning Congress, now controlled by Darth Vader, Voldemort, and other Dark Republican Lords, was to attempt to gut the independent Office of Congressional Ethics and free the legislators from the "burden" of being watched and held to account. Pumpkin Metaphor #2: a sign that government itself is deflating. There was, happily, a fierce public outcry that forced the Republicans to reverse course and drop the proposal, so maybe there'll be ethics in the new regime. For now.