This season is a weird one. The political thangs in Washington D.C. make the world look like it’s about to hit a wall with the madness that’s running rampant. And yet, the crops may still grow. Though, I have lingering doubts to the effect of being concerned for the health of my nation. Falsehoods are being fed to the population in a fervor of cultural chauvinism that threatens to make this country less friendly or helpful. Unchecked greed, such as the desire for Greenland as an acquisition, is the kind of thing that could cause a war. Additionally, immigrants are not bad. We have all been one, one generation or another. Kindness should be the fad.

It’s too bad. This country had a lot of promise. That promise seems like it might just be a façade. To its credit, that façade was, at its core, aspirational. That aspiration of fairness, however missed along the way, at times acted as a driving force towards certain gradual improvements that have occurred over the years. Really, I don’t think we need to lose it. It seems reasonable enough to keep, eh?

Watching the percentage of women in the workforce, women and people of color in the boardrooms of America, as a percentage improvement since the mid 1950’s and ‘60’s; today’s numbers and presence is a sign of a better time in which to live. Even though we’ve made strides forward as a society, the balance is being fought about again. It’s not a friendly thing to face. I kinda wish people were more friendly and less exclusionary in this department for reasons that really don’t matter. More on that later.

The world is a dangerous place.

I’m working on a scanning project for my family, and I came across a letter from an auto repair shop in the Philippines, October of 1990. Not having any available knowledge of who this could be, I started reading it. The card is chilling in its description. Apparently, a short few months before, there was an earthquake of a registered magnitude of 7.8 in the area of the author’s home. It killed a couple thousand people and made the writer of this Christmas card sick for a couple months, according to the short note, seen below.

World can be good though. Every grain that lives, every family and farm, every one of them represents the life that we’re putting together.

Maintaining is a necessary element of our gift to the world so that others may have time to learn.

Some days are so chaotic that it’s hard to focus.

Agricultural anomalies. . . Nobody wants those. Being able to Maintain is truly the way.

“Keep it together, Shorty,” the song sang, and KEXP played on. Thank goodness for KEXP.

I’m writing to you, so this is a good time to give you a catch-up on what progress I can speak for.

Last week, I passed a draft of the next book that I’ll share, under the name “Takin’ the Long Road,” to a bunch of friends who are able to see the thing itself for themselves so they can give me actionable feedback before I release it publicly. I hope you’ll enjoy a copy when it’s done.

That book has taken a lot of my focus away from other people and things. Glad to have the time to focus on it, but I’ll be happy to get back to classrooms again. This is a wild break that I can say is a substantial opportunity, which I hope is being well-used. To that effect, this blog is a rare comment into the public sphere – I’ve stayed pretty private about my social dealings inside the “social media” of a Meta product, the Discord, Slack, LinkedIn, and Bluesky formats of social connectivity, and thanks to the chaos of the world, people are rethinking how much we depend on individual sources of communication. This too, is one. I’m glad you are hear, reading. It evidences your curiosity, which I thank you for.

Below is the map I crafted, is included in the book. It is adapted from Wikimedia’s open source
materials found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province-level_divisions_of_China#/media/File:China_province-level_divisions.svg, but I added a good number of places. The original had fewer country names and cities as well. I added the numbered additions from #5-#14 for the purposes of aligning with the content of my book. Also, the country names in the same font as the regions of China allowed me to both be visibly neutral on the topic of Taiwan, which is something that I have friends who have a wide variety of views about and also place into context, the places that I’ll talk about. I might add more before the final edition (lookin’ at you Dunhuang). My position in relation to Taiwan and other matters is sometimes intentional neutrality, for my goal of wider acceptance in relation to my representation of places. My goal is to discuss other matters. I will tread there, with them. People tend to say more or less on topics that mean more or less to them. This year, I will not focus on that because it is not helpful for me to do so. It’s been a long year already. The date is February 2nd. A new president has been changing the makeup of the D.C. regional control center with some pretty stunning moves. Pretty distracting. Glad I got the bulk of my writing for the next book done before January 20th of this year.

On the real, I do not like what I see in the D.C. regional control center. The misogyny and greed that is on display is grotesque to me. I would like to witness people prove to me, by their actions, how they are interested in the greater population and land of the nation when they take such a professional position. I’m disappointed with the voting population of America, and the people they hired to run the show. It’s not a very good looking show right now.

The prime minister of Denmark just told our president “in language [he] might understand: Fuck Off!” The prime minister of Denmark. We are supposed to stay friends with other nations, when we can. No?

The reduction of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs is disruptive in a way that I don’t like. A person confronted me about my support of DEI in another setting and in doing so, used a term I hadn’t heard.

I wrote back:

😏 is that a thing that people say “liberalist”? I mean, if that’s having a liberal education, in which various topics are studied and applied to social science, medical science, and humanity, well then, sign me up. ✨
We need a bit more of that, I think.
This week, I saw a coup of misogyny take over the government. General staff was made less safe and less welcome. The US government isn’t a private company that should be getting stripped for parts.
When the theft is complete and Musk goes to live in another country with the power he’s gained, we’ll watch a new movie. I wonder what that’ll be called.
Or, we could speak loudly and clearly enough to say that it isn’t right to allow the kinds of changes that are being proposed in America right now from the highest level of government.
To maintain a strong nation, one must feed all its population. We are failing in the areas of housing, medical, and educationally. We need to invest in the population through these three subjects.
The new guy is not trying to make this country strong. He’s trying to squeeze the juice out of it for his own use. That man’s got more than enough.
DEI is important.
Diversity is important.
Equity is important.
Inclusion is important.

Count me a Humanist, if you would, please.