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You don't have to spend much time reading online comments about political news stories to understand a fundamental difference between the far left and the far right in North Carolina politics.

(Author's note: I originally wrote this as an exercise in utilizing the flashback, but once I created the character I couldn't bring myself to send her to file 13.)

Maisie dug into her purse one last time to make sure she had her keys, and then glanced again at the knobs on the stove. Because they were old and somewhat worn, the knobs looked like they were pointing to the “high” setting, instead of “off”, so she waved her arm back and forth over the burners to be sure. Satisfied the house wouldn’t burn down in her absence, she turned in the direction of the garage door, and almost tripped over an extremely large black cat who had stolen into the kitchen silently.

The cognitive dissonance of Thanksgiving slays me every year. With a thin branch of my family tree being Native American, it's hard to get excited about a holiday rooted in invasion. But I have much to be thankful for, and today is as good a day as any to express that gratitude. It is good to be home with family.

For fun, we're using a page of "story starters" my sister-in-law found in AARP's magazine. You'll find a sampling of the questions below. And a lot more here.

From the good old days.

I'm back.

After nine months living in Rising Sun, Maryland, I'm back in Chapel Hill. After nine months of helping my father-in-law die, I've returned to North Carolina, resolved more than ever that this beautiful state will not meet the same fate.

During those months away, I traveled to New York City more than a dozen times by train to meet with clients in Manhattan. I've been working with these clients since 1997, so we always have a lot to talk about, ranging from family to ACC sports to the weather to the economy and more. But this year, a new topic crept into our conversations. It started last spring with a question from an executive at a global professional services firm. "What the hell is going on in North Carolina?"

After years of admiration for our commitment to education and environmental stewardship, this person has taken notice of the extreme about-face imposed on our state by a radical Republican agenda. This person influences hiring and expansion decisions not only for her company, but for many other businesses as well. This person has already written North Carolina off.

Special thanks to Thom Tillis, Phil Berger, and Art Pope. In one short year, they have done what most states couldn't accomplish in decades. We're number one.

Words matter in politics. So do promises. Damned right, Social Security and Medicare are entitlements. And damned right the people who pay for them are entitled to what was promised them in return.

Do not let Republicans turn "entitled" into a bad word. You and I ARE entitled to Social Security and Medicare. We cannot stand by and let the Party of Greed unilaterally renegotiate the contracts we have with the country we live in.

Many things have been lost in political discourse lately, things like civility, facts, sanity, and such. But the thing I miss most in the new Tea Party era is the thing called logic.

Last week, Mitt Romney famously said, "Corporations are people, my friend," giving voice to the private thoughts of so many privileged white men, men who have exploited the emergence of corporate personhood as a tenet of free market extremism. That exploitation has been so steady and so effective that corporations today have more privileges and rights and fewer liabilities and risks than simple human beings. In short, corporations and the men who rule them have mastered the art of privatizing rewards while socializing risks. When corporations get things right, their owners get rich. When corporations destroy communities and environments, they walk away with a slap on their non-human wrists.

Consider it done