Today, two of my lifelong dreams were realized. First, I was interviewed on NPR about my new book. Second, in that interview, they had to beep out a swear word. It wasn’t even my fault! Cynthia Canty, the host of my very favorite Michigan Radio show, Stateside, handed me my book, mid-interview, with a highlighted section for me to read. It had the word “shit” in it. So I read it. And it made me so happy.
Possibly premature lessons from a government shutdown. That just started.
The government has been shut down for almost 20 hours now, so why not start thinking about what we’re going to be saying to ourselves after it’s over? I mean, nothing any of us peons out here in the American public can do a thing to resolve this mess, so we might as well start considering what we can do, which is use our power as “the people” (as known from such oldies but goodies as “of the people” and “by the people”) to avoid this type of disaster in the future.
Here are my ideas:
The Fall of Roam
Surely I’m not the only one contemplating the fall of Rome today. But in an effort to avoid the hyperbolic fray of the government shutdown, I purposefully shifted my thinking from large-scale crises to small. Though I doubt the Washington drama will result in the end of civilization as we know it (fingers crossed! Survivorship skills aren’t top on on my household’s list of talents.), the end of a personal era is definitely upon me. And it’s making me a little itchy.
Natalie Burg 