Citizen Writers Fighting Censorship by Helping Americans Understand Issues Affecting the Republic.
Sean Dietrich 
Our plane touched down in Albuquerque. No sooner had my feet hit the airport terminal floor than I knew immediately—call it gut intuition—that Albuquerque is definitely a city with two Qs.
This morning, I took a drive through rural Kansas. I pulled over on a dirt road and played a song on the same ground where my father took his own life. I thought I’d share it with you.
Over the years, I’ve written about Morgan many times, keeping notes on many of the conversations Morgan and I have had, so I’d never forget the things she told me.
I have a thing for trees. I don’t know why. Maybe because I’ve always been a nerd.
I think it all dates back to my days in Boy Scouts. My cousin Ed Lee and I were second-class Scouts, and we earned our forestry merit badges one summer. Actually, I earned both his badge and mine. He mainly read Archie comic books while I did all the fieldwork.
I’ve been obsessed with trees ever since. Namely, beca
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are the victims of the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, for they are with God.
Brenda’s Barbecue Pit is about the size of a walk-in closet, only smaller. The nano-building stands on Mobile Road near Washington Park in Montgomery. It’s a working class neighborhood. They do take-out only.
No credit cards.
Dearest Morgan,
It’s four in the morning. And I’m awake. Just sitting here. Thinking about you.
I haven’t slept since your last text. Your text about how doctors placed you under hospice care. Your text asking me to come say one last goodbye.
“It’s my birthday,” the email said, “and my dad forgot me…”
The young man writing to me just turned 14 years old. We’re going to call him Mark.
Hi, God,
It’s me again. I know it’s been a while since my last prayer, so I don’t blame you if you choose not to listen to a hopeless sinner like me.
The truth is, I’m just not a very great guy. I wish I had a better excuse than this, but I don’t. And if I offered you a better excuse, you’d know I was lying.
Anna and her four young daughters were on a trip to England on the SS Ville du Havre. It was a French steamship. All iron. Built like a tank. Except, of course, tanks weren’t around yet. This was 1873.
So the idea was: After eight weeks of rigorous marriage training, couples would receive an official certificate, trimmed in gold, with their names on it. And this certificate would prove to the world, without a doubt, that couples were spiritually, and emotionally prepared to take the multiple choice exam in the back of the book.
Buc-ee’s convenience store sits outside Athens, Alabama, like a giant squatting beaver.
This Texas-based gas station place is not a mere gas station. Buc-ee’s is a dwarf planet. You’re looking at Six Flags Over Circle K.
My dad was a runner. He started just before I was born. One day after work, they say he came home and decided it was time to quit smoking and start jogging. He stabbed out his smoldering cigarette and he tore off running, right then. He finished the cigarette later that evening.
It was our place. That’s what it was. I grew up in a little fishing village, nestled in the Florida Panhandle.
This was long before the tattoo parlors, before the T-shirt shops, before Whole Foods and Bass Pro.
This morning I walked into a drugstore in downtown Nashville and bought three sacks of blue raspberry Dum-Dums.
The cashier looked at me funny. She casually asked why I was buying so many blue raspberry suckers.
So I told her a story.
I had a dream last night. It was a vivid dream. I was in a perfect place. A realm of unspeakable beauty. It was the kind of dream where anything could happen. The kind of dream where anyone could show up.
Anyone, such as, for example, Will Rogers.
Columbus, Georgia. I was eating at a barbecue joint not far from the state line. My cousin, John, insisted that this joint serves the best barbecue in the state of Georgia. He made me promise to try it.
There was an old man sitting outside the dusty bar. He sat in a plastic lawn chair. There was a dog with him. The dog was either asleep or dead.
He was whittling a stick for no reason—the old man, not the dog. This is what old men did before TikTok.
I’m in Avondale Park. I’m watching random kids play baseball. The kids pepper the field. Gloves on their knees.
“Hey, batta batta batta!” they all chant. They look like third graders. The third-baseman looks like he has to go pee.
“I am a little old woman who lives in an assisted living facility…” her email began.
Her following message was about the length of “War and Peace.” She is a woman who is as sweet as Karo syrup. But—and I mean this respectfully—brevity is not her strong suit. Reading her email took me three or four presidential administrations.
“I had a baby when I was fourteen…” she wrote.