We are a little gray, increasingly creaky, but we try to avoid the idea that there is some twisted advantage in being old farts. We try not to get too cozy with the notion that we might get out just in time.

We connect by e-mail. We get angry together in a modern way.

We could probably meet for coffee somewhere, but someone would inevitably start pounding the table and swearing and we’d be asked to leave.

That can happen when we start talking about the country being brought low. We get worked up and hit the nearest solid surface and turn a little crude. It is best to behave that way in private.

So we meet on our computer screens and reconfirm that we are still rippin’.

Yesterday was one of those mornings. We were coming off the latest painful appearance by Incurious George, our president. He had claimed national airtime to compound his colossal failure in Iraq. He announced he was sending more troops into the meat grinder.

Some of our loosely connected group confess they simply can’t watch the man anymore. It is maddening to see and hear that bland, inarticulate, disconnected drone and think about the damage already done and the damage yet to be inflicted in the next two years.

Never before has there been a president so painfully embarrassing to watch on a TV screen.

My friend Tony DeLuca in North Kingstown refused to watch. He knew what was coming. He would not add visuals to the misery.

Like so many Americans in the fearful uncertainty immediately after 9/11, DeLuca, a former member of the National Guard, called a military recruiter and asked if there might be a slot for him in the war on terror. The problem was, he was 64 at the time and admitted to having some ailments. He was turned down.

Jump ahead five years and he is out with a flashlight on a dark, rainy election night, searching for voters and urging them to head for the polls.

He is a retired teacher, a former Cranston city councilman and three-time state representative.

He has dealt with the madness and his fear for the future by getting active. He needs to feel he is working to make a difference. He is not unusual. Many in our technically linked circle have found, in our 60s and 70s, that it is just not acceptable to sit on the sidelines and watch this country that has been so good to us get dragged down. We watch Keith Olbermann pound the president’s record on MSNBC and head to our chosen positions.

Even before the attacks of 9/11, DeLuca was a Gore delegate to the 2000 Democratic convention. In 2004, with the war clearly a misguided disaster, he pounded the ground in New Hampshire for John Kerry.

Last year, he volunteered for Sheldon Whitehouse in the U.S. Senate race. He likes and respects Lincoln Chafee, but there was the need to change the numbers and send a message.

And when the question arises as to whether we might enjoy the luck of the years — that we have seen the best of it and will be darned near gone when the whole world stumbles and falls – Tony DeLuca says we simply can’t think that way.

We can’t think that way because of his children and their children, the ones whose pictures are part of the gallery of family pictures that fill the house in North Kingstown.

“It’s not about me,” he said. “It’s about my grandchildren and their sons and daughters.”