Editor’s note: This is a post about nothing. I’ve scoured all the papers, and I can’t find anything political that strikes my fancy, so this is what you get on a sunny Sunday morning. Don’t like it? Scroll on down and read what Abdul has to say.

We have a beautiful city.

Yesterday, despite the cold gloom of mid-November, I went out for a five-mile run around Downtown Indianapolis and the near-Northside.

I’m not a runner, but we dropped our YMCA membership last year, and the remaining bits of post-preggers flab aren’t going to vanish without some hard work. So, I run.

The best part about running outside is that you get to see the pieces of our city that you miss when you zip by in a car: the volunteers raking up leaves at the Julian Center; the library book sale where you can score some amazing deals; the little park area I never knew existed near Fall Creek Place; the winter farmers market at 25th and Central; contractors rehabbing the gorgeous old homes where Indy’s corporate elite used to live; new businesses; people out putting up holiday decorations; parents with bundled-up kids in tow.

The little stuff, if you will, that makes Indianapolis sing.

It’s not all happy little memories in the making. We’ve got poverty and litter and fights and shuttered shops and the dog that chased me for half a block before its owner noticed.

But those things, which require our attention and resources, are also what make us a city.

I spent the first years of my life in a town-later-turned-suburb in Hamilton County, where the biggest news all week was who’d been seen coming and going from the local trollop’s house.

This is not to disparage towns, but towns aren’t cities, and as cities go, Indianapolis isn’t Chicago or New York or Los Angeles.

But we’ve got plenty to be proud of here in the heartland.

I know, I know. How can the girl who takes every available rhetorical shot at our city’s leader be sitting at her kitchen table writing a missive on why Indianapolis is great?

Because until Greg Ballard stumbled into office, we were a great city on the rise, nurtured by four political generations of visionary mayors who knew that it wasn’t enough just to dust off the sidewalks and do whatever we’d already been doing.

There’s a lot of work yet to be done, but we need capable leadership to get us there.

I’m afraid that as they have outside, the leaves have temporarily fallen off our city, and we’re going to spend three more years embracing the status quo before someone steps up — on either side of the aisle — and renews our commitment to what the future can hold.

As I finished up my run yesterday, I reflected on what I’d seen: pockets of activity, the everyday sparkle of a city that has so much to offer.

In order to bring it all together, though, we have to have someone at the helm who can connect those pockets and show off that sparkle, a cheerleader of sorts, but a cheerleader with a definite vision and the determination to make that vision into reality.

We don’t have that right now, and as much hope as I have for this great city, I don’t think we’re going to find those qualities in Ballard.

But we can’t do anything about it until 2011, so in the mean time, I’d urge you to bundle up, get out of the house and soak up all the things we have to be proud of. If you have the time, give back to our community by volunteering or helping in other ways.

Above all else, make a personal pledge that you won’t lose faith in this diamond of the Midwest. We’re just taking a breather. Quoth the tortoise: There’s still plenty of time to catch up.