Roiling River Peace

When you live beside a river, it goes up and down. My brother- and sister-in-law have had to design their house because the original owners built to close to the river. Most of the time it’s a lovely place to live… and some of the time it’s a carry the furniture upstairs and call the moving van for the heavy bits. In the Spring you watch the water for floods and hope the snow, if you’ve had it won’t melt too fast.

That’s the river.

It’s sort of politics, too, isn’t it.

We have to make the Peace as we can. And we have to prepare ourselves to act. And then we have to act.

Painful Partisan Politics and Bad Manners

Dear Bartender and Priestess,

I am a second semester freshman, thinking about majoring in political science. I love trying to understand how our policies actually work. I’ve been doing projects with local campaigns and for our town commissioners since 9th grade. I’ve found that even the people whose views weren’t mine were usually good people, looking to do a great job. In fact, the woman who was my best mentor was one with whom I share very few political views, but she loves the process and the privilege of the work and was really encouraging. Continue reading

Partisan Politics at Home

Dear Bartender and Priestess,

I am a second-semester sophomore at college. To save money and make life easier for my parents, I am attending the college in our town and living at home. It’s been a lot of fun and with one exception has worked very well.

My parents are Democrats. Continue reading