Citizen Writers Fighting Censorship by Helping Americans Understand Issues Affecting the Republic.
Sean Dietrich 
I receive a lot of remarks in the form of emails, private messages, obscene hand gestures, etc. There’s no way I could answer all comments individually. So occasionally, I compile commonly asked questions and answer them in this column.
Today, my wife and I will become pilgrims. We will walk the breadth of Spain, upwards of 500 miles, over Pyrenees Mountains, on foot, to visit the remains of the apostle James.
There were ghosts everywhere. That’s what I kept thinking, while standing on Shiloh battlefield. Ghosts. You could feel them. You could almost hear their fraternal laughter. You could smell their gunpowder.
My dog, Marigold, and I have been walking a lot lately. It’s not easy, walking. We have very few “good walks” inasmuch as walking in a straight line is impossible when you can’t see.
It’s overcast. I’m with my wife and my dog. We are on the wide porch of a vacation rental house. This is the main road which cuts through this small town. There are sounds of kids laughing, playing. Easy traffic.
Six years ago. The Waffle House was packed. There were customers everywhere. Shoulder to shoulder. Sardine-like. I don’t know how the waitress managed to find a place for us at the counter.
People from all over the world are traveling to this sacred place. Farmers and peasants. Lords and ladies. Rich and poor.
As a boy, I’d awake to find my mother already in the living room, snuggled beneath a lamp, where she’d been reading for hours. The cat in her lap would just stare at me with moral disapproval.
You slap the power button on TV. The old Zenith console warms up. The television is cased in a faux wooden cabinet, with warped oak-grain veneer from a bygone Dr. Pepper someone once placed atop the television, even though this someone’s mother told them to NEVER set ANYTHING atop the TV, not that we’re naming names here.
Sean gets lots of letters asking some pretty interesting questions. Herein, he answers some…in his own special way.
Today is a big deal.
If you don’t read any further, just keep repeating the above sentence in a loud, clear voice until it sinks in and your spouse begins to wonder whether you’re clinically insane.
I have always wanted to see the Chesapeake. My whole life, actually.
It all started because my dad was a reader. He read books obsessively. You’d see him sitting in his chair, poking through some thick volume.
Five years ago I was in Huntsville when the world shut down. Five years. Almost to the day. I’ll never forget it.
It was a small town. Somewhere in the Southeast. Big shopping complex, off the interstate. Best Buy, Red Lobster, Ulta, Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse, Target, and all other franchises that transform American towns into carbon copies, from Oil Slick to Shining Oil Slick.
I remember my first cellphone. I felt like one bad hombre.
I was in my mid-20s. The cellphone retail salesperson outfitted me with a state-of-the-age phone about the size of a residential General Electric refrigerator.
The young woman sits in my truck passenger seat. She is 19. Her hair is red. Scottish red. Luminously red. People always comment on her hair first.
Her classroom was out of control. Had been for a while. The kids in her “at-risk” fourth-grade class were about as organized as a prison riot. That’s what we call them in today’s world. “At-risk youth.”
I have been doing a lot of walking. More walking than I’ve ever done in my life. More walking than I thought possible.
I awoke early and went for a walk with my dog. The sun wasn’t up, I let my eyes adjust to the darkness of Birmingham.
I have here a letter from 19-year-old Erin, who lives in Bristol, Virginia.
“Dear Sean,” she begins, “I want to be happy, but I’m not…
“My family is stressing me out, big-time. Especially my mom.