Hi friends, This isn’t a real post. This is just my every-few-months blogkeeping post, to help you keep track of what I’ve been up to and how to follow and support me. This summer has been quiet and beautiful, with a trip to Moundsville to see the ancient burial mound and trying to keep peace among the neighborhood children. I have been reclaiming my love of reading. Jimmy’s boy has been visiting to help me in the garden and... Read more
The first thing you must know is that killing is wrong. Period. Defending yourself, even with deadly force, has its place if you’re in a situation where your life is in danger. But direct killing, assassination, shooting a man in cold blood, is always a mortal sin. And leaving morality out of it just for a second, it’s also a serious crime. It’s not something that can be tolerated, no matter what. The second thing you must know is... Read more
The lights went out at midnight. Michael was at his night shift and Adrienne was asleep in bed. I was sitting on the sofa with the computer on my lap, trying to coax myself to finish some writing. The lights flashed twice, and then they went dark. The electric fan and the window air conditioner slowly groaned to a stop, and then the house was silent. All of a sudden, there was no light but the glowing laptop screen.... Read more
(Just a warning to my readers: this post is going to describe some graphic violence.) I saw a man shot today. If you have social media, you couldn’t possibly have missed that video of the shooting of Charlie Kirk. I was scrolling through the news and there it was. It started to play automatically. There was Kirk, the notorious right-wing influencer who once called Martin Luther King “awful“ and “not a good person.” Charlie Kirk who said “I think it’s worth... Read more
So: now, we’ve seen Trump’s drawing of the girl in the Epstein book. Just yesterday, a congressional panel published a redacted copy of the infamous book that convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell put together for the wealthy pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. Maxwell had all of Epstein’s friends contribute pictures and notes for his book; there are all kinds of famous names in there. We learned about the book’s existence in July, when the Wall Street Journal... Read more
The noise began as I was driving to the bank. In fact, I was driving to the bank to withdraw the money for the very last payment on my car. And my car was the thing that was making the noise. It started with a loud, rough, squealing sound whenever I hit the accelerator. It wasn’t until I opened the door to let Michael out to get the money, that I realized the engine was also knocking. I told myself this... Read more
Our country has a law, and the law ought to count for something. It’s not that laws can’t be changed. If you and I think a law is wrong, we can work to change it. But laws are important, because if you don’t have any law at all, then your rights will not be recognized. That’s what laws ought to do: protect people’s rights. A law that does that is a good law. The law of our land is this:... Read more
The sunflowers are drying out for the year. Some of the Lemon Queens and the Autumn Beauties are still giving me a firework display of blooms, but every one of the great big Mammoth sunflowers is drooping over. I’m keeping them upright in the garden as a feast for the birds. Last year I had only one goldfinch on my sunflowers, and this year I have at least six, plus my friends the cardinals. When I come out to pick... Read more
They say the mad king is dying. I don’t know exactly when the president’s frail health stopped being an observation that a small group of people were pointing out, and became a mainstream joke. I feel as if it happened within the last fifteen days or so. But now the pictures of his badly bruised hand have become a meme. His increasingly unhinged rants at press conferences have become a punchline. The vice president mentioned, in an interview, that... Read more
A nation that kills its own children is a nation without hope. A nation that kills its own children is a nation without hope. A nation that says that soothing the paranoia of grown-ups is more important than safeguarding the lives of children is a nation without hope. A nation that says that fattening the bottom lines of stockholders is more important than saving the lives of children is a nation without hope. A nation that says pacifying gun... Read more
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