“Slow down” are the words I wrote in the front of my 2025 engagement calendar.
It was warm in October when I wrote those two aspirational words, after two years of writing and rewriting a book of history and my heart. Slow down, body and breath and mind. Yes, ssslllooowww dddooowwwnnn. Slow down, you tired old writing woman with stacks of novels waiting for you.
Slow down sounded so goddamned good.
Before the election.
Before November 6th when I woke before dawn in a panic.
Not good at all, slow down. Slow down? Never. Not now with a madman occupying Abraham Lincoln’s office.
There is no slow speed speed for a liberal political junkie when the people on the good side of good and evil are out of power and evil is destroying our government.
No down time, no do-nothing time. Not so many novels now that there is more political reading and doing and calling representatives and screaming. Not much chance of slowing down for this historian of American stories when America is in jeopardy and history is in crisis.
What now? What then, what words? What word? What theme for this new era of Nero? What aspiration when America burns and Republicans fiddle?
There may be no political peace this year or next year or, goddess help us, maybe never.
But personal peace is what I will need now more than ever.
Peace is my new word. Peace. Among family. Peace. In communion with friends and dogs, birds and soon with flowers. Peace. Of community. Peace. Inner peace. Peace. Peace. Just give me a little goddamned peace.
Peace of mind and peace of home will fortify my body for battle.
Peace is the word I rewrote in the front of my 2025 engagement calendar.
It was cold in January when I wrote that aspirational word, a new want, a better offering, after just one week of the political hellscape, America’s fading landscape, fear pressing its awful shadows against my body and breath and mind. Yes, peace. Pretty please, peace. You must seek peace wherever you can find it, you tired old warrior woman, because this is war and your country needs you.
Mary McDowell and Jane Addams weren’t fucking around in 1915, and neither am I in 2025.
Being Mack's Momma Bear 
Dear Stacy,
I just came across this very heartfelt ode to your daughter and nature. What initially drove me to this site is our shared interest in history and concern about the state of our natural as well as human-drive worlds. Both are inextricably linked and consequently under unrelenting assault.
Navigating life as an aging boomer (I actually remember rotary phones, black & white tv, life without ubiquitous, increasingly intrusive and invasive technology and affordable everything–movie tickets, breakfast, ballgames, yes even housing, and the like) one is continually faced with the rapidity of change and endless loss. I still grieve for Badger, my kitty companion who passed at age 19 almost eight months ago and daily deal with the empty, quiet apartment. My heart aches and know there are sadly too many other beings desperately waiting to fill the void Badger’s left. My only hesitation being not wishing to dishonor his memory. But, life does go on and we face each day like it’s the first or the last. There’s really not much difference, is there?I
Another connection is the relative normalcy of life in the Midwest, at least when compared to the frenetic Bay Area. Back in the mid-1970s I attended SIU-Carbondale, having enjoyed my time in IL and surrounding areas, still longing for times like those again. As a native New Yawker (sans the accent) seeing cows and such was equivalent to the Masai Mara which I was fortunate enough to actually visit a few years later, thanks to my time with Pan Am. God rest its soul.
Unconnected to any of this I am proud to say that I recently finished reading Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, albeit in English. What an immense accomplishment on his part writing it and more humbly my having read every word. If you have not done so, I highly recommend it. While I love the musical, having watched the 10th anniversary production many times over, there simply is no substitute for the book, as daunting as it may seem at first.
Okay, that’s enough from me. Write back if you like and let me know more.
In affinity with the animals,
Ron Landskroner
Oakland, CA
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