A Brief Personal Update
A visit to the Washington Memorial, June 2017—that was a country I wanted to live in.
Bloggers have a reputation for being inveterate over-sharers, and I need to take a moment to shore up my cred. You may have noticed that the flow of content has slowed around here. It’s not a huge drop-off; in 2024 and ‘23, I’d posted 42 times through April, and this year just 37 (a 12% decline, for you numbers types). Not a huge drop-off, but it points to some changes this year.
Two factors are just life stuff. Sally had her big surgery a couple months ago, and that shifted domestic work my way. (The surgery and convalescence went as well as possible, surprising even her doctors, so no complaints there!) I’ve also been spending a lot of my time on Celebrate Oregon Beer and a big initiative I’ll announce this week. It’s a very cool project I think you’ll appreciate it.
Yet those factors don’t really account for the slowdown, not really. Starting a dozen years ago, I started writing books, and managed to maintain this website throughout. My work on Celebrate Oregon Beer is much akin to the work of writing a book, so that doesn’t adequately explain it.
Historically, I’ve been an efficient worker. This was an important asset as a freelancer, which takes vastly more time and mental energy than my previous nine-to-five job as a university researcher. But recently I have just been tired, like I’ve been swimming through glue. I chalked it up to aging, interrupted sleep, a lack of time off, and other assorted life stuff—all of which is true and part of the issue. But it’s not everything, and after a bit of thinking last week, I identified the new drag slowing me down.
Content warning: the existence of potentially uncomfortable political issues acknowledged below.
No surprise, looking closely revealed that the repressed trauma of watching my country devolve into a failed state has taken a big toll. That’s a loaded sentence, and if you want to know more about what I mean, you can explore/subscribe to my political writing. I don’t need to turn this into an op-ed, but I think the way those politics affect me—and my work here—is very much in-bounds.
Whether you like what’s happening in Washington or not, no one can credibly deny that it represents a major change in the very nature of the United States of America. It has been profound enough to scramble politics in other nations. Any change that fundamental will leave a lot of scar tissue. Indeed, I don’t think anyone will deny that causing wounds is one of the goals of this administration.
As one of the wounded, I can confirm it’s working. The daily doomscroll of news leaves its wreckage behind. I liked my country the way it was. I want to live in a country where the rule of law prevails, where the strong and weak both receive the same kind of justice, and where the marginalized are protected rather than preyed upon. I’m not delighted by the economic stuff, but I can handle financial instability. The real trauma comes from watching the the government turn into a machine of war against “DEI” (which encompasses everyone who is not white and male), immigrants (undocumented or wholly legal), queer and especially trans folks, federal workers and civil servants, professors, and on and on. I may be a middle-aged white guy, but I have far more in common with members of these groups than the people attacking them who may superficially resemble me. This attack on them feels like an attack on family, and it is lacerating.
In January, I spent two weeks working with the Oregon Hop Commission on a federal grant to help publicize “specialty crops.” I have no idea if that grant still exists. (The government has already missed its first deadline, which isn’t hopeful.) It is a small and unimportant grant when compared with the cancer and Alzheimer’s research that is also being targeted, but it is nevertheless a congressionally allocated pot of money to help American farmers. I want to live in a country where a capricious, unelected tech baron and his child interns can’t revoke those funds on a whim.
Writing about beer has given me friends and connections around the world. I want to live in a country that hasn’t become an international pariah. In his newsletter London Beer Week, Will Hawkes discussed this, astutely and depressingly (for the American).
“There are small signs already. One influential pal in the London beer world told me recently that ‘it’s hard not to be put off everything American.’” He continued: “LCBF founder Greg Wells can see that Trump’s government might present problems for US brewers. ‘Beer can be a bit like football, can’t it?’ he says. ‘People like to get behind the local team, and ‘local’ has been winning in beer here for a long time. I can imagine if I was an American brewer, it would make it uncomfortable coming over.’”
The country I want to live in has been unhealthy for more than a decade, but it still existed until a few months ago. It knocks the wind out of you to wake up one day and find that you live in a different country, one that is dangerous for you and the people you care about. I am getting up in the morning and going about my business. It’s just that I’m slower, less efficient, and exhausted all the time—and my work is suffering. Stepping back to look at the world, I have to laugh that I didn’t notice it before. It’s no wonder I’m swimming through glue; how could I not? (I bet you are, too.)
There’s no moral here, just an update. I have been carrying all this around and it seemed worthwhile to mention it. I’ll still keep getting up, keeping trying to remind myself to take joy in the wonderful things that still abound around me and which no government can ever take. And, to the extent I fail at that, my work will be worse and less frequent than it was last year. Be apprised, and more than that, be well—