Greetings, friends. (VIII)

Greetings, friends. How are you? I woke up groggy as usual but I’m feeling pretty good this morning. AutoSleep says I’m down to 4.4% sleep debt, which is my lowest in months. I think Besha’s good habits are rubbing off on me. I actually like getting up early now, even though this is my first time living north of the 45th parallel, which means rising before dawn in the Pacific Northwest winter. It makes me feel virtuous and productive.

Speaking of virtuous habits, I have been keeping up with Hal’s half-marathon pre-training program. I can run almost two miles without stopping now, and a good thing, too, because [fanfare] Michelle and I both got tickets to run the Brooklyn Half marathon in May! I am unreasonably excited to be cursing myself and my foolish ambitions of self-improvement about ten miles in, somewhere between Bensonhurst and Gravesend.

Meanwhile, I’ve gotten some lovely responses from several of you in the last week that I’d like to touch on.

Eric and Jana, I hope you’re paying attention, because here’s some Latin for you.

Our old family friend Clayton, whom I have known from birth as Uncle Clay, sent me a couple delightful emails, which included the following note:

It was (obviously) before your time — you may or may not know I met your dad when he was XO of one of the companies I served as Chaplain in 1/315th INF (MECH) in Germantown.

I did sort of know. I was aware that their acquaintance originated during my father’s stint as a footslogger in the US Army Reserve. Also somewhere in a box of keepsakes I have an officer’s brass lapel pin bearing the infantry’s crossed rifles and the surmounted designation “315”.

I looked up the history of the 315th Infantry Regiment, which includes the liberation of Cherbourg from Nazi occupation in WWII. I also found the insignia of the 1st Battalion, 315th Infantry (Mechanized), which looks like this:

The regiment’s motto, Qui me tangit paenitebit, is rendered by Google Translate as “Whoever touches me will regret it”, which is an appropriately pugnacious motto for a fighting outfit. But, after talking it over with Besha, I think a more colloquial translation into the parlance of our times would be:

Fuck around and find out.

Which I truly love.

More responses. Jean sent me a charming TED talk on Planting the Seeds of Happiness the Danish Way. I am all about Nordic social democracy, so this struck a chord with me, but it seems like the unspoken prerequisite for Rydahl’s prescription for societal happiness is… being Danish. By which I mean that the shared social norms she highlights are, to some extent, contingent on a high degree of cultural homogeneity. It’s easy for the Danes to trust one another to, well, be Danish. In a heterogenous society like the United States, it’s a lot harder to trust that a stranger adheres to your set of social norms. I still think that Nordic social democracies present a stepping stone to the post-scarcity, Star Trek world we all deserve to live in, though.

Ping had a great question about my assertion that privileged folks like me have a duty to armed defense of our society.

Play this out for me (I am sincerely trying to understand). You have a duty to own a firearm... so that you can do what exactly? The post has me imagining you defending our infrastructure from domestic terrorists; is that what you had in mind?

Well, I didn't say that I personally intended to defend public infrastructure. What I said was: "I can own firearms safely, learn to use them, teach others to use them safely. To help them learn to defend themselves." I mentioned the terrorist attacks on public infrastructure to highlight the fact that the threat of militant White supremacist terrorism in our country isn't hypothetical, but an actual reality.

Ping, whose intellect and heart I respect tremendously, has worked in disaster response, as have I, where one learns that preparedness should ideally be proportional to the risk, which is the product of hazard and vulnerability. Hazard is the estimated likelihood of a disaster; vulnerability is how damaging the disaster would be if it were to occur.

Let's suppose I'm wrong and I've overestimated the hazard, and that American neo-Nazis are actually mostly clowns. Does the vulnerability of people of minorities to violence by militant White supremacists warrant my stance? You tell me.

On writing, Jeremy pointed out:

An outline helps with remembering what the 3rd thing [was]. Also a trick from journalism: use "TK" as a placeholder for some specific details to fill in, or some hyperlink you need to search for, or some idea that you haven't fleshed out that you can focus on later in the process.”

This is great advice, and I actually did write an outline for this post, which helped me remember everyone’s great commentary, but didn’t help with my original ambition for this journal, which was:

I get bogged down with the weight of what I wish I were writing that I eventually get overwhelmed and wander away. Therefore I intend to treat this as an opportunity to disentangle writing from editing, and treat them as the two different practices they probably ought to be.

Bahahaha. Oops. Once again I am over time and over word count. But I am still enjoying myself, and, most of all, enjoying all of your thoughtful responses. Please keep them coming!

I will leave you with another thought from Alka:

Pickles will always be there to be made...

I sure hope so, Alka. I sure hope so.

If you’re reading this, I send you my love. Ceterum censeo pro vigilum imperdiet est. Have a wonderful day.