Phew! Now that THAT'S over, we can return this space to its highest and best use, as the real estate people say. Not that you won't hear from me on the subject of some of these cabinet and staff appointments. I already adore but never want to have to meet Rahm Emanuel, whose political style Paul Begala describes as "a cross between a hemmorhoid and a toothache" -- and Begala's a friend of his. Still, we can now get away from words like red, blue, and electoral, unless I'm telling you about the tugboats and the river, in which case the first two will be handy. The third I'd like to put away for at least four years. In fact I'd like to put it away forever because I think it's a system that's outlived its usefulness, but that's for another day.

Right now it's windy in New York, after a lot of rain yesterday. The wind, high tide, and runoff combined to make the river run high this morning, its surface ridged with sharp waves. Clouds broke up in the east as the sun rose. At first, the sun picked structures on the Jersey side to spotlight: the white building on the hill above the college campus, a yellow brick tower in the new skyscraper skyline, that clocktower at the ferry terminal with the funny hat. When the wind shifted everything was shadowed again for a few minutes. Then the southernmost tower lit up. Slowly, the entire shore lit from south to north, building by building, as though a curtain were slowly pulled back. The whole shoreline sat there gleaming while gulls wheeled and screeched and a perfect tugboat, black on the sides, red cabin, white railing, chugged upriver. Totally swell.