Fog hung low over our home this morning. I looked out the front window to see one of our resident deer having breakfast on our front lawn. Probably a good thing I didn’t mow it Tuesday afternoon.

In normal times I would have picked up a camera and fired off a few shots of the breakfasting doe. But these are not normal times and my enthusiam for shooting pretty pictures of life in the mountains is, at the very least, tempered.

Maybe it’s the sobering images of the tragedy and horror along the Gulf Coast that spill out of our television every day. Maybe its the building anger over the government’s incredibly slow response to the emergency that festered, unheeded, for days. Maybe it’s just a general weariness over the post-mortems that are little more than partisan finger-pointing with little hope of finding a real solution to the problem. Or maybe a broken-down former journalist is depressed over missing the action, not being down there in the midst of it all, documenting the horror and tragedy in ways that can stir a nation to respond and help.

We’ve tried to help: organizing fund-raising efforts, helping load planes of food and water, offering our resources to help get more aid to the victims. But can we do more? I’m sure we can but at this point I don’t know what. As I look over the receding fog, my mind tries to focus but it can’t.

Call it tired, call it weariness, call it just being plain fed up.

Or just call it what is is — a funk.