There's a reason I'm always a little wary of people who toss around the word "Revolution!!!" a little too flippantly.

Anything you break that lightly and build that lightly will break again with the same ease.

I'm looking at chaplaincy and writing self reflection essays, which does mean rifling through your brain like it's your grandparents' attic. Plus musical training and an autistic knack for hoarding trivial information.

And that was a fine tune you guys sang. I dug it.

And of course, hoarding is also shit for the regional economy, because people paid in scrip can't grow the economy. Nothing grows outside the controlled economy. It's everything they said goes wrong under socialism, but with capitalist overlords.

Bloody hostage situation.

When I was in undergrad...here's another random connection...I think it was @davekarpf.bsky.social 's a capella group In-a-Chord did a fine rendition of this tune mashed up with "Fever" by Peggy Lee. They go well together.

Extortion much?

I went to seminary in the heart of NWU (or that's where it was at the time, not technically part of NWU.)

Unprocessed grief can do very strange things to a person.

Black bear
Cooper's Hawk
Copperhead
Large-billed crow
Skunk

It's true. I will grumble and I will accept goodwill where I can get it.

Sometimes I think he's just flailing.

Trouble is...I like Cumberland. And for a big powerful place like Chicago to pick on a struggling little place like Cumberland is kinda pathetic. We're better than that. And we are.

It'd be punching down, and that's just not something I do.

I think there's something narcissistic about born again theology. "I'm saved!"

Of course, I'm a different sorta Christian and I hate judging, so I'll try not to get too much into that.

But some of us really are trying to do better and I'm sick of watching the fundamentalists hog the spotlight.

Like...did you notice how unfathomably evil that was before you realized you had a child with a diagnosis? Is this what it took for you to suddenly realize it mattered to some of your constituents?

I'll take support where I can get it, but...*stims violently*

As someone who works in the field and has a deep well of outrage...

It's kind of a thing when people act it's an issue because it's their kid, and they hold their kid up like a stage prop.

I do have an autistic kid. I can do that sometimes. But it's a little cringe inducing.

Well, there's more money in mistakes.

Last time I was my uncle he sees me and says I'm from "SHIT-cago." Conversation continues normally and we actually do compare notes in a more civil fashion on the pros and cons of living city versus small town (Cumberland area.)

It's a bit surreal. My kids weren't there, thankfully.

You'd think they'd have learned that from how the Taliban turned out.