In the Blizzard

I am at best a reflective clown, and my social media reflects this. If I post something it is likely to be sincere, silly, or selling something. I am not apolitical. I call and write my representatives. When I think their judgement is particularly impaired, I have been known to meet with them face-to-face. When possible I put my money where my mind is. And should you really want to know what I think and where I stand, I’ve been working it out for some 25 books now. It ain’t chiseled in stone. More than once I’ve wished for an eraser. Sometimes family, friends, and neighbors I disagree with try to lend me theirs. Or they hand me a crayon of a color I was missing. I prefer to talk these things out with them rather than respond to some mouth athlete screeching in the distance or the comments. I am neither engineered nor equipped nor inclined to grapple with the grim issues of the day via meme, snark, or flame. Bumper sticker tribalism and punchline triumphalism are a bane on civil discourse and—eventually—civilization itself. Plus I ain’t built for it.

There is also this: Nobody asked me.

All that to say after this post it’s back to the reflective clown. But sitting here marooned in a blizzard far from home I want to get down these imperfect but insistent thoughts: You need not have a concealed carry permit to understand your rights in that regard—but I have one. You need not possess a nursing license to understand the incalculable cost of losing a good nurse—but I have one. You don’t have to be a weird kid who made his own Gadsden flag for his treehouse to know that demanding the government never touch your rights but cheer when they trample another’s is a cuckold’s compromise—but that’s the conclusion that weird kid came to. You don’t need to serve 30-plus years as a law-enforcement-adjacent volunteer to know theirs is an essential and dangerous gig in which we citizens depend on (and have a right to expect) well-trained, ethical individuals committed to protection and service—but it’s my privilege to say I have. And finally, you don’t need to have immediate and beloved immigrant friends and family members to understand the random actions and unconstitutional infringements they are being subject to and threatened by—but I do have them and in fact saw them at Christmas and was just on the phone with one of them and will stand for them.

I’m in over my head. Just like the rough notes above, I require regular revision and reconsideration. The timeline will now return to sincere, silly, or selling. But off the “socials,” out here in real life, for mi familia, the work—and the love—will not stop.

The comments are turned off. We have more important work to do.

Some of our neighbors are doing good work here.