Citizen Writers Fighting Censorship by Helping Americans Understand Issues Affecting the Republic.
Sean Dietrich 
The young man was quiet. He was a lowly fry-cook, salting endless baskets of French fries. Flipping acres of patties. Dropping pre-fried, shrink-wrapped, chemical-preservative-injected chicken breasts into nuclear silos of boiling synthetic lard.
The transmission of her car has given out. Every day, she hitches a ride to work because she is broke.
She works hard. Too hard. And when she’s not cooking in the kitchen of the medical rehab, delivering trays to patients, she’s a full-time single mother.
In the summer of 2099, researchers developed a new groundbreaking drug. When ingested this new medication impaired one’s ability to judge others.
I was at a barbecue. There were lots of people around, eating, and at some point one of my cousin’s kids rode their Schwinns into the yard. One boy leapt off his bike and sidled up to me. “It’s so quiet out here,” the boy remarked in stupefied wonder.
The email came in this morning. “Sean,” the message began. “You are a social media attention whore….” Great way to start the day.
It’s raining hard. Thundering loudly. Like the world is falling apart. And yet there is a mockingbird outside my window. The bird is unfazed by the downpour.
But in the end, the Camino de Santiago is just a road. That’s all it can ever be. The difference is, of course, when you’re on this road, you’re actually THERE.
“What scares you most?” was the question asked to members of Mrs. Devonshire’s fourth-grade class. The little hands went up.
The old preacher sipped his thermos of coffee, holding a fishing rod in the other hand. He asked what I wanted most in this life. I stared at the lake surface and told him I wanted peace. I was young, I came from a broken home. Peace was all I wanted.
I’m talking about the woman who isn’t used to being The Patient. Who used to be so full of dutiful energy for helping others. Who would do anything for anyone. And did.
Don’t shoot the messenger. But in America, one third of children have never handwritten a letter. And it’s not just kids. Nearly 40 percent of adult Americans haven’t written a letter in the last five years, while 43 percent of Millenials have never sent one in their lifetime.
His dad was murdered. Just outside Tulsa. You probably never heard about it. It was an average winter night out in the country. No snow. Cold as you-know-what. Harry Aurandt and his buddy, Ike, had been rabbit hunting….then…
My truck cab was filled with three barking dogs and one idiot. The dogs were in the backseat. The idiot was behind the wheel.
“Sit down!” the idiot kept saying.
“My daughter’s inside shopping,” the old woman tells me. “You’d better not talk to me. Whenever my daughter sees me talking to strangers, she always says ‘Mama, quit bothering the man!’”
New research reports that, thanks to smartphones, kids are smarter today than their ancestors ever were. “Technology,” the article said, “is expanding the American IQ.”
In light of all the negative headlines, civil unrest, and the international political upheavals, I know many of you are anxious to know what I did for National Kiss a Ginger Day. Or maybe you missed this particular holiday.
When you’re having a bad day, think of her. She was born in Agawam, Massachusetts. One year after the Civil War. The daughter of Irish immigrants.
I see her on the street. She is a hospice nurse. I know this because she is standing directly beside her company SUV, which is covered in vinyl logos, parked outside an older house. She is mid-40s, wearing scrubs. And crying. Face-in-her-hands crying.
The annual World Happiness Report recently ranked the happiest countries in the world. The U.S. dropped to number 24, its lowest position in the report’s history.
Help us to love one another. Help us to find beauty in each fellow human being. Beauty within each soul who crosses our path today. Teach us to find beauty in our enemies.