November Hessel

I'll be on my way home when most of you read this blog. It's 3 AM and I want to get back in time to put in at least a half day's work. The weight of having a Catholic conscience can be great; I've come close to talking myself into hanging around another day. But all that would mean is delaying the inevitable. Heavy sigh.

I'm rarely in Hessel at this time of year. I passed through on November 8, 2023, according to Facebook memories. It offered me a short video I took with my phone from the side door of the garage as a light snow fell. But that was only a quick stop as I passed nearby for work. I wasn't around for more than a couple hours and had to be off. Before that, I don't think I've been here this late in decades.

There's a desolation to Hessel this time of year which I had quite forgotten. Other than the cedars, of course, the leaves are off the trees. There's a noticeable lack of activity as well. And needless to say (though I'll say it anyway) it is colder, although not bad. Highs have been near 50 with lows around 40. Still too chilly to sit on the porch to read, though I did manage to hang out in the garage and read for a bit. I think the walls made just enough of a wind break that, so long as I had my winter coat about me, I could tolerate things for a while.

The stars are out this morning. I have always liked that, a sky full of stars. Some say it makes a man feel tiny and unimportant. I don't understand how or why. I feel the sublime delight of being able to enjoy them overwhelms any smallness. Human importance isn't based on spatial geography anyways. Smallness does not, and I would argue cannot, indicate insignificance.

That said, I better wrap this up. I still have to pack and do the last couple of housecleaning chores before I go. I'll be back before I know it, time flying as it does these days.

Hessel Reads

Reading is fun. Even rereading can be enjoyable, if the book is particularly good and you haven't read it in a while.

Fighting a cold hasn't hurt my concentration on the books I brought to read during my last Hessel trip this year. They're all rereads too. I've finished Halfway House, the first Ellery Queen murder mystery without a nationality in the title. Prior to its publication, every EQ book was called, 'The Roman Hat Mystery' or 'The Dutch Shoe Mystery' or, my personal favorite of that bunch, 'The Egyptian Cross Mystery'. Halfway House was going to be The Swedish Match mystery as I recall, but the authors changed course. It also contained Ellery's final 'challenge to the reader' where the story was briefly interrupted to tell readers that all the facts were at their disposal, daring them to solve the case ahead of the master detective. I miss that aspect, though I was never very good at finding the culprit.

I'm in the middle of The Inklings, a book about the informal literary club which featured C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, among others. The group met regularly for years discussing one another's works in progress. It's more about the friendships, though, and is a neat peek at their lives.

If I get to it, I've also brought along The Hound of the Baskervilles, perhaps the best stand-alone novel in the business. It may be the most well known Sherlock Holmes story any way you put it. This would make the third or fourth time through it for me. A book, particularly a mystery, which you can read when knowing the outcome, is very good and very rare indeed. Interestingly, it's also the Holmes book where Sherlock appears the least!

Should I have offered a spoiler alert before that?

What book have I read the most? That would be Lewis' The Abolition of Man. I try to read that one once a year. Yes, it's that good. As a matter of fact, that will likely be my next read. But when I'm back home. I didn't bring a copy with me.

Cold Hessel

Sitting in Hessel and fighting a cold.  But at least it's Hessel.

On my way to Mass now...

The Major Point

Deron on Amazon says this about my book A Subtle Armageddon:

The title itself carries a powerful message, suggesting that destruction does not always arrive suddenly or dramatically. Sometimes the greatest changes happen quietly, gradually transforming everything people once considered normal. This idea creates an atmosphere of mystery and anticipation while raising questions about awareness, survival, and the future. What makes the book's premise particularly interesting is its potential to combine suspense with deeper philosophical questions. Rather than focusing solely on catastrophe, the concept invites readers to consider how easily stability can be disrupted and how important it is to recognize the warning signs of change.

I like his take. The fact is that changes in attitude rarely happen immediately. We slowly develop, as C. S. Lewis opines within The Screwtape Letters, and generally through forces outside of us (though we must strive hard to think for ourselves), into whatever people or peoples we finally become. To be sure, sudden, dramatic change can occur. The villain occasionally transforms into a hero within an instant. Yet we tend to be products of an extended process, both as nations and individuals.

Do you think not? A Subtle Armageddon may change your mind, and dramatically, perhaps.

Screams and Sobs

You don't see compilation videos of right-wingers screaming and sobbing after election losses: we understand there's something bigger than politics. My friends are my friends regardless of politics, especially as "little guys": in that regard, we are pawns of the system, but that's why it's far more important to focus on the bigger things in life: friends, family, faith.

Empires will come and go. Sometimes they'll be great, sometimes they'll decay. Eternity is much bigger. 

To this comment I say, Amen.

I remarked yesterday we should not make nor expect our politicians to be heroes or saviors. Those who do, well, they tend to shriek and moan when elections do not go their way. Their heroes are slain. There can be nothing save lament.

Me son Charlie, who is the author of the above quote, explains succinctly why the left are hyperbolic after elections (or certain government actions) while the right are relatively calm. Yes, yes, yes. I know, I know, I know. There are exceptions. Please don't be tedious. Because if we are honest, the screaming liberal trope is much more prominent than anything out of the right for a very obvious reason.

It's because the left take politics far too seriously. They fail to understand human frailty and thus don't see the long game. They expect the government to solve all ills. We on the right know, and I mean know, it will not and cannot. Folks do not become smarter, more reflective, more considerate and insightful, or more objective simply by having the title Senator precede their name. They're cut of the same cloth as we, those senators and representatives and presidents. And we know how we are, don't we?

That's why conservatives tend to simply go about their business the day after an election. Are elections important? Yes, very. Important enough to wrap our minds and lives around them? Emphatically not. We do not make better people by casting a ballot, neither of the electors or elected. We make better people by focusing on the bigger issues. Issues to which politics can hold neither candle nor hope.

The Day After

I'm writing this blog during Election Day 2026 even as I don't intend to publish it until the day after. Why? Because no one will listen to it as we vote. Likely as not neither will they afterwards, but such is life.

The key mistake we make in politics is in making our politicians heroes. They are not, nor can they be. At least, not the great many of them. In my life I would count only Ronald Reagan in that category at a national level, though I am also fond of Margaret Thatcher. I do like Javier Milei in Argentina based on what he's done so far. Yet it's too early in history to foist a crown upon him. Sorry, Trump supporters. I've been happy overall with him, yes, but he carries a lot, an incredible amount indeed, of baggage. It is a challenge enough to support him let alone think the man heroic.

To the point. Our politicians are human beings besieged by hundreds of others in their milieu. Can we expect heroism? Should we? Every candidate asserts in one way or another that they will make our lives better. Will circumstances let them? And why should we believe they're so damn much better for us than the folks we meet in our everyday lives anyway? 

The people I meet day in and day out treat me better than any politician ever will. I offer the grocer money and he gives me food. I pull up to a gas pump and get fuel without a hitch. Conversely, customers give me money, and I give them a chance to make a living. So begins a tremendously long list if I should choose to write it all out. But the point is this. We do not need the government for it to happen. We simply need people free to pursue their interests.

Government cannot provide that. Yet it can provide for a society in which it may happen. It can get the hell out of our way. No one I saw on the ballot seemed particularly interested in that, although I will be vaguely partisan and argue that the Republicans are generally better in at least talking the talk. But not by much. Not enough to get excited about it, anyway. Talk, as always, is cheap. That's why it's the primary currency of the politician.

But, whatever. Reagan is right, and Mamdani in New York emphatically wrong. Government is not the solution. It is the problem. Until we start voting with that thought paramount, we get what we deserve.

Young At Heart

I was talking with a young man yesterday and the subject turned to music. I'm not much on rap, but he liked it. That wasn't unexpected, considering our age difference.

What turned my head was when he began talking about older rappers. He remarked, "Eminem was very popular, I know, but he was before my time."

That didn't make me feel old. Not at all. Why should I feel my age when a thirty-year-old man opines that an entertainer who my kids listened to in high school was before his time?  There's no reason for it. None at all.

And I will keep telling myself that. With a smile, as I stare into the distance in blissful ignorance.