Odds & Ends / Call For Subscriber Only Questions For the Dispatches Mailbag
Hey all, happy Thursday. I’m putting together questions for the second installment of the Dispatches Mailbag. The first installment was a good time that touched on climate change, wealth taxes, how I keep place in my books, and featured an exclusive look at the first eight pages of a novel I’m writing.
If you’d like to hear me expound on some topics or are curious about whatever, just reply to this call and I’ll get to some of them in the next mailbag.
In the meantime, if you haven’t already, check out my latest “A Culture of Fear and Paranoia: The GOP, the NRA, and the American Disease of Gun Violence” on why the Right refuses to take any action on the existential problem of mass shootings and how it endangers all of us.
This Sunday, at 8pm eastern, I’ll be doing my bi-weekly Bourbon Talk Political Q&A Livestream. For those who’ve not watched before, you’re missing out. It’s a good time. I open up a bottle of bourbon, take questions, and talk about current events, history, and ways we might make the world better. You should give it a try if you haven’t before. It’d be good to see you.
And if you haven’t subscribed yet, please consider doing so. Dispatches From A Collapsing State is an independent project for me and in order to keep it so, away from editorial outlook or intrusive, unethical advertising, I need your support. Thank you so much, and let’s finish this week out strong.
I just heard on your podcast that you got your vaccine. Congrats! I just got my first one. This might be a cliché question, but do you have any reflections yet on how the pandemic and the shut-down has changed your reporting, writing, or social media usage? Will you keep doing Bourbon Talks? Will you do more YouTube lectures? I think it's too soon for me to reflect on the past year+ because it still seems kind of unreal when I think about it. Cases are still going up; it's not over yet.
I may not be remembering this correctly, but I think I remember you writing about trying to run away when you were very young and packing a backpack full of books. Believe it or not, I did the same thing. I packed as many volumes of an encyclopedia I could fit, along with my copy of The Boxcar Children and a sandwich. Do you remember what books you packed? If this wasn't your story, what books would you pack now if you were to escape to a deserted island?