2017 is off to a rough start, if you’re in America. If you were born after the country’s bicentennial, you may have suddenly woken up to the fact that institutions you thought were in place are being threatened, you and your neighbors are fighting about political things with the passion resolved for life and death, and that for many life and death seems to be a very literal part of what we’re doing.

And in the middle of it all, we’re looking for something that makes sense.  I don’t have answers, and I wish I had them, mainly for myself. But I think, more than ever, people need to go back, read, and support the institutions that we let languish as we typed nonsense at each other with our thumbs.

Or not.