It’s been three years, but it turns out I’m still here. So, what happened? Well, not to get too specific, but I’ve spent the last three years pouring myself into a venture I thought might be The Thing: the endeavor that would secure my family’s future, ultimately bringing us financial independence and allowing me to […]
I’m working on a response to Wednesday’s attack. But this is Courage Counts, not Mediocrity is Adequate, so it may take a while. It’s already the longest post I’ve made here, and by the time it’s finished it will probably be two or three times as long. Thank you for your patience, and I’m sorry […]
We’ve had a lot of opportunities to be afraid this year. Most of them don’t worry me all that much: COVID-19 is serious, and taking reasonable precautions against it has upended our lives and our economy, but reasonable precautions seem to be a pretty good defense; The economic impacts of those reasonable precautions are a […]
It’s hard to know the right thing to do these days. Hard to plan for the long term when the short term looks so bleak. Hard to remember which way the moral universe arcs when it seems to be bending back on itself. Hard to trust the process when so many people seem to be […]
Epic Quest progress report: Today is day 22. Total words: 4,934. We have everything in our control. At least, that’s what we’ve all grown up believing. We control the weather, or at least the weather we experience: we set the temperature to something comfortable and close our shelters to all but the worst of the […]
Epic Quest progress report: Today is day 12. I broke my previous streak at Day 61, so had to start over. Total words so far: 1861. It’s fashionable right now to dwell on the sins of our fathers. It’s a well-deserved shift of focus, and probably overdue after two centuries of myth-making. But it’s easy to […]
Epic Quest progress report: Today is day 44. Total words: 14,762. Yesterday, James Mattis, retired USMC general and President Trump’s former Secretary of Defense, published a short statement condemning the president’s behavior toward protesters in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. In his statement, Secretary Mattis makes clear, after years of unimpeachable professional silence, what […]
Epic Quest progress report: Today is day 42. Total words: 14,003. Fear is a daily fact of life right now. As we start the fourth month (for most of us) of the global pandemic, we know fear. Fear of what we or our families might be exposed to in the days to come. Fear of […]
Epic quest progress report: Today is day 30. Total words: 12,268. There are a lot of ways we can negotiate this crisis. We can mock the president, blame him for acting too slowly, make fun of his off-the-cuff remarks that sound so unlike what we expect from a president. Or we can mock those who […]
Epic quest progress report: Today is day 28. Total words: 11,144. I am not a survivor of sexual assault. And the words Me too are powerful beyond their application to any particular group. See, most of us grow up knowing–knowing–that we’re supposed to have the answers. And if we don’t have the answers, we’re supposed […]