As I write this missive, the talking heads warn us a massive storm is set to wallop much of the nation. For once, it looks like the winter snow wallop will spend much of her time south of us. So far, it looks like we should miss the wallop. For me, any day the snow shovel is in the garage is a banner day.

Although the nation is ready to welcome Grandpa Don back to the White House, the nation will spend the next several days remembering the 39th president, James Earl Carter Jr.

Jimmy Carter grew up in the impoverished south Georgia town named Plains, the son of a peanut farmer who raised his kids in a house with a back house out back. Jimmy attended the Naval Academy, married his high school sweetheart, and became an engineer on nuclear submarines. When his dad died, Carter resigned his commission and moved home to take over the family peanut farm business. That led him to the Georgia legislature, the governor’s office and, surprisingly, to the White House.

If you ever got a chance to meet Jimmy Carter, you will most likely smile when you hear his name. People seemed to like him.

He was a Christian who not only read the Good Book and taught Sunday school, he practiced what he preached. Much of his presidency was spent dodging the entrenched Washington establishment as he spent much of his time on foreign affairs. At a time when the Arabs wouldn’t utter the name Jew, he brought the leaders of Egypt and Israel to the mountain top, Camp David, and got them to sign a peace treaty that is still honored today.

Iran was not amused. As part of its revolution that kicked out the Shah, Iran invaded the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage. Despite failed diplomatic pressure and an abortive rescue attempt, Carter’s gang was unable to obtain the hostages' freedom until the day Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the next president.

Carter left the national stage, moved to the little house in Plains, and spent the rest of his life helping others. I am not going to list his accomplishments (I urge you to look them up), but suffice it to say, as a Christian, he not only talked the talk, he walked the walk, going so far as to get on his knees, pick up a hammer and saw, and build homes with Habitat for Humanity.

As we pass the fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6 whatever you wish to call it, an insurrection or a not-so-peaceful rally that maybe, just maybe, got a bit out of hand, we will witness the peaceful transition of political power. It is an event seldom seen in our complicated world.

Think of it for a moment. Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris will preside over the counting of the ballots from the 50 states and declare that her rival has been elected POTUS.

Compare that to other nations like Syria, where longtime President Bashar al-Assad recently skedaddled out of town when his people decided his time in office was over. The writing on the wall was pretty clear when Russia pulled the plug, threw him under the bus, and walked away from its good pal. Russia did allow him to hide out in Moscow. I guess a winter vacation in Moscow is preferable to facing the ire of his former beloved subjects.

We all wonder what the new POTUS will do when he takes the oath of office. We have heard a lot of claims from his supposed close associates and big-money pals. And he has made lots of claims that he will do this or that on day one. We note that over the years, some of his claims are a bit exaggerated. For the record, Mexico still has not paid for the border wall, and household cats and puppies are still alive in Springfield, Ohio. The nation is watching to see what he does and how he does it.

We live in dangerous times, maybe times as dangerous as our parents and grandparents faced in the 1930s.

The world outside our borders is rumbling. They are sounding war drums in Europe and the Middle East as the specter of China lurks over the other side of the globe. At home, we have knuckleheads on all sides of the political spectrum who have easy access to things that go boom and pick up trucks like the one whose driver recently killed several people on Bourbon Street in NOLA.

I hope and pray the new POTUS has a successful run. For when the president succeeds, America succeeds. No one wants to think about the alternative.

God bless America.