Trying to recover from transitions. Adios to Hattiesburg. Also, saving the Republic is all well and good but you can't accomplish anything if you're dead.

This week has been filled with stresses and strains. I'm exhausted from the struggles of trying to protect my friends from their wife-beating arsonist son-in-law (successfully) and yesterday moving Zoe back to Birmingham from Hattiesburg to take another job (also successfully, although the exertions in the heat with a mattress and box springs that wanted to leap off the top of the GMC Jimmy in what turned out to be a seven hour trek darn near killed me). Today will be taken up with the rearrangements attendant upon that move in order to get her settled. Thus does the Vanderboegh family finally say "adios" to the college town of H'burg -- thank and praise the Lord. Not that we don't have Southern Miss to thank for a lot of blessings, but there is a darker side to most college towns, not the least of which is the present-day "party" culture. Hattiesburg also has a lot of town-gown conflicts/crimes that go deliberately unreported by both university and local press, exacerbated by the recent rising boil of racial animosity ("Black lives matter, but F you, honky mofo.")

These past two weeks have also convinced me that I must crank back on some of the work I have been doing with national groups and events and see to my health and my own family responsibilities, both of which I have abused terribly this past year or do. Saving the Republic is all well and good but you can't accomplish anything if you're dead. That is not to say that I will be ceasing my efforts at national armed civil disobedience (and the fun part, smuggling) but I am going to have to moderate some. The zombie apocalypse portends, and my own preparations to see to my family have been sorely neglected because of time, energy and especially monetary resources that have been spent on larger (but not necessarily more important) issues. Indeed, I have fallen down on my responsibilities to my own family. I must remedy that.

A big part of that is finishing Absolved, as I am unceasingly reminded by y'all. The black dog banished by the motivation of looming events, I have been working fitfully on it even throughout this hell week and also an essay wrapped around this T.R. Fehrenbach quote:

To make a war, sometimes it is necessary that everyone guess wrong. . . A war is made when a government believes that only through war, AND AT NO SERIOUS RISK TO ITSELF, it may gain its ends. (Emphasis supplied, MBV) -- This Kind of War, pp. 32-33.

I'll try to have more later. Now, just exactly where do I put the stuff from Hannah's old room and how do I find the the time and energy to crop back the jungle in the back yard? It is times like these that I realize that even the Founders likely had to remember to feed the dog, carry out the garbage and make sure the family horse was fed, watered and curry combed. Of course Sam Adams didn't worry about the bills -- he just didn't pay them. Not an option for me, I'm afraid.