In 2021, I need to rebuild my personal community

When my family returned to Lawrence, Kan. in 2016, there was a group of people waiting at the house we were moving into to help us move in. It was a tremendous affirmation of our decision to come "home," reflecting the relationships we'd made here during my first stint living in the town from 2000 to 2008.

I feel like I've squandered that moment.

I'm reading Timothy Carney's "Alienated America" at the moment, and early on he describes the realization that the people who had helped his family were all connected by institutions.

Even before the pandemic, I was a freelance writer who works from home and who attends church once or twice a year. It didn't feel great! I could go days without leaving the house, even, unless I made a real effort. Oh, I have a few friends I see now and again, and sitting outside the coffee shop with a socially distanced group of men has saved my sanity over the last few months, but the truth is it has been awhile since I was enmeshed in the networks he describes here. I feel their absence.

To be sure, I'm not sure how to reclaim those networks for myself. But I've come to realize I need to try, somehow.

Twitter will be the death of me

Damon Linker: "We open the app, we scroll, we hate, we lash out, we shut down — and then we do it all again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Because part of us loves to experience the addictive thrill of righteous indignation. And that, in the end, is what the app is really for."

Tuesday on the Kansas River

 

Pandemic stress dreams

I dreamed last night I went without a mask into a crowded restaurant where nobody else was wearing a mask, and realizing I probably had just signed my own death warrant.

I didn't sleep well last night.

The sources of Donald Trump's shame

The Week: "In his first one-on-one interview since the general election, President Trump told Fox News' Maria Bartiromo over the phone that he is "ashamed" he once endorsed Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R)."

Let's see:

He's not ashamed of committing adultery on numerous occasions.

He's not ashamed of failing the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.

He's not ashamed that his Iran policy has failed so spectacularly.

He's not ashamed of running his businesses into the ground, or of acquiring massive debt.

He is ashamed of once endorsing a guy who failed to assist his cheating.

Whatever.

A little theology for Sunday morning

From The Atlantic:

Rev. William J. Barber II: Well, I was trained in theology that whatever you call your spiritual experience, if it does not produce a quarrel with the world, then the claim to be spiritual is suspect.

Sounds right to me. 

Maybe it is time for the NFL to give up on this season

The astonishing thing is that it has taken this long for professional and college sports to arrive at this point. I wouldn't have guessed anybody could get very far this year, and I was wrong about that, but football -- with its rosters of fifty-some-odd people -- has too many moving parts for this not to happen.