To the family of Nathaniel Turner, my sincerest sympathy.
To Leslie Schuler, if even half of the news reports are true, may God torment you in hell for all of eternity.
But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
— Matthew 19:14
“The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
— Cicero, 55 BC
We all know what happened to Rome, don’t we?
Have you heard about the woman from Arkansas who wrote an open letter to our political leaders? You should. I’d like to meet her just so I could shake her hand. No partisan views. No right or left. Just a plain and simple albeit lengthy “what the heck are you thinking”… a public plea for upholding the constitution… outrage at rewarding the incompetent… and a bit of insight about changes that fly in the face of the principals that make this country great.
What’s that rumble I hear? Ah… it’s just our founding fathers turning over in their graves.
So we’re coming home from the grocery store, turn the corner onto French Road and almost hit a horse. Just wandering down the road as if a lone horse out for an evening stroll was perfectly normal.
I have no idea who it belongs to. Tried to call Mike and Zoe — they used to have a horse, but I haven’t seen it in ages. I was going to leave it be, but then I started thinking… what if the rider is laying in a ditch somewhere. Worse yet, what if he’s laying in the woods with the fox, coyotes and bears we have around here.
So I called the Henniker Police Department. Do you know how stupid it feels to tell some cop there’s a horse roaming around the neighborhood? So much so that I felt it necessary to start the conversation with “please don’t laugh, but…”. I think she may have thought I was a little crazy.
There’s something like a line of gold thread running through a man’s words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself.
— John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994
I miss you.