This land is far from being overpopulated. If you doubt that, take a drive and notice how mile after mile is woodland and farmland. Even New York State–which I crossed this week and will do so again Monday on my way South–is mostly one big city and a lot of rural countryside.

The corridor from Washington, D.C., northward through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York City has the worst mishmash of interstates and toll highways imaginable. If you doubt this, get down your atlas and stand in awe. Some of the interstate segments are so scrunched in with the others, the pages have no room for the numbers. I missed a sign in New Jersey and went 10 miles out of my way before turning around and at the last minute finding the correct turn. The tolls coming up (from Washington to New England) figured out to something like 20 bucks.

One of the best traits of human beings is our adaptability to difficult situations. Drive through any of the interstate corridors in and around Washington, D.C., and be amazed that people who grew up in “normal-land, USA” can adapt to such killer traffic patterns and go on to deal with it every day. That’s one of the most admirable traits of the human animal—and the fact that we put up with it one of the worst.

You’d think that after a while, a person would decide, “The stress of driving in this traffic is destroying my nervous system and dooming me to an early grave; I think I’ll move to a quiet town somewhere.” The fact that we don’t, that we hang in there for the sake of a job and money, speaks volumes about us, and none of it is good.

In New Hampshire, the leading newspaper reports two somewhat contradictory trends. First, nearly 70 percent of the population of NH has no confidence in our current president. Then, on a separate page where they report news from many years ago, they ran something from the 1932 paper. FDR was running for his first term, campaigning against Herbert Hoover, the incumbent. The paper indicated that a high percentage of New Hampshire residents favored Hoover over Roosevelt, feeling that no one could have done better than Hoover and FDR didn’t have the qualifications for the job. My conclusion is that the residents may end up being as wrong on Bush as they were on Hoover. Time will tell.

The same thing applies there as pertains to the retirement decisions I will find myself making in a few months in anticipation of retiring at the end of April. Guidestone offers so many alternatives for one’s retirement income–take the interest only from the corpus, buy a guaranteed policy for 20 years, and so forth–that the decision on which to select would be so simple if we just had one more missing piece of information: What does the future hold?

I grant you there are a ton of things I do not like about the present setup in the nation’s capital, so don’t read me wrong here. And my hunch is that no matter how much some of us like Senator McCain, even if we elected him over Senator Obama, I fear he would be forced to appoint many of the same bunch that has been running things for the past eight years—and if anyone wants that, I’d be surprised.

The Concord paper ran a feature on a youth group from a community church that raised money for their trip and spent a week gutting out three homes and helping to rebuild them in New Orleans last week. An impressive group, an admirable task. Oddly, the article gave not the first detail on what agency the church worked with, where they stayed, where the houses were located, anything that might help us know a little more about their work. Even so, we appreciate their faithful service to the Lord and our people.

A friend who had visited New Orleans in the last few days said every taxi driver he talked with seems pessimistic about the outlying neighborhoods being rebuilt in the next 10 years. I had to agree.

We’re coming up on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and must admit that the people of our city are impressed that we’ve held pretty much center stage on the nation’s consciousness for most of this time. We’re grateful another hurricane has not visited us, or for that matter, done much damage anywhere else to draw away needed resources for our massive rebuilding effort.

Today in the Laconia, NH, restaurant where our family was dining, I sketched a number of friends of my 19 year old granddaughter Leah Peters. One was a waitress named Katrina. She laughed, “You never hear of anyone being named that any more.” I said, “Not in my part of the world, that’s for sure.”

The papers all speak of Alaska’s Senator Ted Stevens being indicted for not reporting some major financial assistance a constituent provided for him, presumably in return for his influence on some projects. We Louisianians have our own problems with politicians under indictment, but having heard over the years of Sen. Stevens’ high-handed ways in running the Senate Appropriations Committee (“Anyone who does not do it my way will pay the price!”), we cannot resist repeating the adage, “Pride goeth before a fall, and a haughty spirit before destruction.”

When you pray for your political leaders–you do, don’t you? We’re commanded to do so in Scripture–ask God to keep them focused on the servant roles they are occupying temporarily. As with pastors, senators and congressmen are only interim caretakers for the positions they hold. One day they will walk away from that job and another will move into their office. I believe most want their successors to find they have served well with integrity and faithfulness. But, as with Louisiana’s politicians, it’s the few who forget the nature of this stewardship and morph into pigs at the trough who mar the image and destroy the confidence built up by the others.

My granddaughter Leah will be flying to New Orleans to visit us this October, more than likely. She asked me today, “What are the people like down there?” I said, ‘Like the people here. People are much the same wherever you go” She said, “Do you find the people of New Hampshire friendly?” I told her I do. I said, “I smile at people and speak pleasantly and they do the same.”

Our middle granddaughter, Jssica, showed me the file near the computer where she prints out these blogs and stores them. With nearly 1900 miles separating us, the internet brings us closer and lets her get to know her grandfather so much better than if it didn’t exist. And for that, I am more grateful than I can say.

So much to give thanks for. So many reasons to pray. So great a God, so big a task, so good His grace.