Update from Pen
Wherein I discuss why I am tired and where I am trying to get
My goal for this publication is to post every Monday. For the last few weeks, I haven’t met that goal. I apologize, especially to my paid subscribers. Thank you for the patience you have gracefully shown me.
I work full time at a state facility that provides residential and medical care to intellectually challenged adults who also have behavioral diagnoses. Things get chaotic. Timelines get disrupted. The work is meaningful, and that’s why I stay. In the smallest of ways, I am helping people who cannot help themselves.
I’ll share more in time, but for me, the big news this week was that I got elected to my town’s council. Position 5, Utilities, to be specific. I have this dream that one day, in the USA, access to the Internet will be treated with the same energy we now give to demanding that any fool can have as many guns as he or she, or they want to have. If we can have the best gun collection in the known universe, why can’t we have the best Internet in the known universe?
Access to other humans and new knowledge, digitally, is to me is sacred. When information is controlled, societies stagnate. When information flows freely, individuals have the choice to grow and become wise.
So, anyhow, AI isn’t good at generating images related to the topic of free information flow. I tried, I failed, I wish I was a better artist! Just know that I never wanted to hold office. Of any kind. That includes being on a town council in a tiny former coal mining town in the Pacific Northwest.
Trump taught me that political apathy is dangerous though. Trump’s idiotic, malevolent four years of grifting, rambling with his word salads, and spreading mind toxins through the ranks of the most gullible Americans made me realize how valid that trope about being the change I want to see in the world is.
That’s why I ran for an elected office. I cannot stand by while a minority of small-minded, fearful humans flush this planet down the toilet and end the species I am a member of because of fear and ignorance.
I’ll be working on bringing community municipal Internet to my town for the next two years. Expect to hear about the journey here. I hope I won’t bore you, and thanks again for letting me and my stories into your head.
I promise I’m trying to say something meaningful every Monday!
If Chattanooga, Tennessee, can have municipal Internet at reasonable prices, so can Wilkeson, Washington! I’ve lived both places. The lesson I learned from Chattanooga’s incredible, against the odds Internet infrastructure story is that it can be repeated anywhere. Will and way. Stay tuned.
Pen, Understand. Staying with you, will read anything you have to say, even if I might not always agree I can learn from you. That's what it is about, right?
Oh, and congratulations and thanks! The fascist party's agenda is to dominate every elective agency-- including and especially state and local, so we need critical thinkers--like you--to inhabit said agencies for us....
Pen, no worries here - still a loyal follower :) But I do feel better now that you have updated us.
The town next door to us holds special meanings. It's the place where a "shot was heard around the world" - where the American Revolution was symbolically launched. A few patriots died in the effort. A ton of history around here.
It's also the town where my wife raised her two fine kids - middle aged now. It was my second chance at fatherhood. I will always be grateful that they "signed off on me". Without their approval I wouldn't have gotten past the first date :)
I bring up Concord because the town has its own electric production and its own fiber optic internet service. On the odd chance that they could be helpful, here is the website:
https://concordma.gov/467/Concord-Broadband
Also, I love the direction your life seems to be taking. You are adding value to the world in multiple ways.
Kudos! I am impressed.