Photo by Paul Brown, 2025

Greetings to you, Substack subscriber. I hope you are making one step at a time, finding some time to refresh body and spirit each day, and focusing with courage on the challenges around us.

You can’t do everything, but you can find useful, productive things within your capacity to do.

Yesterday Terri and I went to our dance exercise class at the local YWCA, where the diverse, equitable, inclusive vibe announces itself at the door: “Eliminating Racism. Empowering Women.” We love the community, and maintaining good all-around fitness is crucial to us and any work we do.

Today we will attend an all-day workshop with our local Indivisible group, training us for deep canvassing. This is an effort to help bring folks in communities that recorded low voter participation last fall into the process of helping to operate a democracy. Last fall, I did a lot of canvassing for votes in often-ignored neighborhoods. This goes deeper, and a lot of it involves listening to what others feel about their lives, government, and the intersection of the two.

I hope you can find something good to do for someone else today, and for yourself. I encourage you not to give up in these very challenging times. We still have chances to rescue representative, accountable governance in the United States. In order to do so, we need to remain focused healthy, generous, and good natured. We need to show others that a democratic society is ultimately a healthier, happier, more prosperous one.

A simple look at the economies and societies of the United States and Russia proves my point. But sometimes, fairly obvious truths can become lost in the noise of our multimedia environment.

My comments here continue to be free of charge because I’m a retired citizen with the expected low-grade rickety-ness of a person of my age. I have worked plenty of early factory shifts, plenty of overnights in newsrooms, and met plenty of deadlines in my life. They were important. But now, I write when I can, when I have something to say, and within the bounds of maintaining health.

Whether you are religious, non-religious, or somewhere in between, I hope Sylvia Myers’ essay here will be of help to you at this particular moment. Anger is easy to rise when leaders at the top levels promote division and resentment. You can still choose to be happy, encouraging, uniting, and magnanimous.

I’ll report back on some events I’ve attended, and what I learn at today’s workshop here in North Carolina. Meanwhile, best wishes to you.

— Paul