I want to say I am thinking of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford this morning and the terror she feels. I can feel it right through all of the screens.

I do also feel some empathy for Judge Cavanaugh, mostly because he is a human being, like Ford, struggling with fear and great hurt. I cannot imagine what these days are like for him either.

Empathy is important to me, and the difficult thing about empathy is that it matters the most when you are trying to feel it for someone you don’t love or support. If you only feel empathy for people you like, then does empathy exist at all?

Our growing inability to feel sympathy for people who disagree with us is  wrenching and low.

I am discouraged the way we have come to treat one another, our whole civic process seems to be so ugly and dispiriting. I am determined in my own life to work to treat people with respect and dignity and compassion. I am committed to doing good rather than arguing about what good is.

I am not writing this to take sides in this awful and wrenching process – it seems to me that it is savagely cruel to almost everyone caught up in it, including those of us who suffer from watching from afar. It is a stain on the country that calls itself the birthplace of democracy.

I can’t find any winners in this process.

I will not be watching television this morning, that probably means very few people will be reading this. I’ll hear about it soon enough.

I refuse to submit to the notion that this awful spectacle is my news.

Is is not my news, it will never be my news.

My news was on this morning when I went out to the pasture and saw Maria talking to her beloved donkeys. My news will come later today when I bring badly needed slippers to J at the Mansion.

My news will come on Monday when I meet with the headmaster of the Albany Academy in the hopes of persuading the school to accept another worthy refugee child in addition to Sakler Moo.

My news will come on Saturday when my new dog Bud comes up the East Coast to Brattleboro, Vt., where Maria and I will meet him and bring him home. Bud has been poorly treated at the hands of numerous human beings, and I am happy to be able to change the narrative of his hard life.

Today, I wish the few people who will be reading this post peace and compassion as you navigate the poison in our civic system today and this week. I will do whatever I can from my farm to offer some brights spots for your day.

That is the gift of our animals.