The End Is What Follows Silence

We are a nation that has rarely been comfortable in its own skin for any great length of time. We rarely settle and more often struggle against and beyond the very things we were happy in achieving only the day before. I think that's good when our desire drives us to be more and better tomorrow than we are today, perhaps most especially today, which is (no irony intended) the National Day of Prayer. And with the resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I can offer no other prayer but this.

I have never felt that happiness is rationed in our world or our country. That there's just so much and then 'sorry! no smile for you!' and we keep on moving. We have the power to make ourselves and one another happy, wistful, angry, and contented (and all the stops in between) and some days we seem to do it all simultaneously and sometimes we have to do it that way. I don't see any reason to apologize for any of that and even if I did, I'm too old to start doing it now.

Bryant Park, NYC, May 1, 2017

As someone who is very unhappy at the decisions that created the national politics we have at this moment, I cannot encourage enough engagement on whatever side of the equation you feel most strongly about. Actions will always speak louder than words, but words have a purpose and a part in framing any and all courses of action.

MacArthur Park, Los Angeles, May 1, 2017

I read/watched a lot of stories about 'May First protests' with varying amounts of trouble and tribulations (like this one) but am old enough to remember a time, a long time ago, where many people took to the streets and assembled peacefully to express unhappiness and dismay at US foreign policy in a nation half way around the world and how, in two separate and disparate moments of hesitation and uncertainty, catastrophe resulted and people died.

Mary Ann Vecchio kneels over Jeffrey Miller Kent State May 4, 1970

Not 'you have your own opinion,' not fake news, not alt-facts.

Jackson State University May 15, 1970

Too Real To Be Forgotten. Ever.
-bill kenny