On what you can do, writing comes to mind. You are one of the finest writers I’ve ever had the pleasure to befriend.

Although I could also see you making a pretty good professional agitator, a perpetual thorn in the side of authority. I’m not sure how one gets a gig like that (or who pays you), but somehow I think you’d take to it pretty well.

Maybe herein lies the problem, to be community minded, one must first feel like part of a community. It’s easier to find ways to be involved when you already have connections to a community (whether it’s geographic, social, cultural, etc.). I feel like this in Lawrence. I live here, I do stuff here, but I’ve never really felt like a part of Lawrence, so I don’t feel any particular need to do work to try and improve the place, or help out.

So, the first question may not be what can you do, figuring out where you should be.

I had some witty “form follows function” tie-in here, but lost it along the way.

I really do believe in all of this “it’s going to take sacrifice on the part of all Americans to make the country better” stuff, but I can’t for the life of me pin down exactly what it is I can do. I just gave some change to a bum, but that doesn’t really do much.

I do know this: A couple days before I left Salt Lake City I was talking to my friend about how it’s not okay to be cool again. We had a discussion a few years back and decided that being cool was okay, but with the state of affairs as they are, looking good in fashionable clothes, knowing about the hippest bands, and going to raging parties with ridiculously attractive people seems pretty inexcusable as a life pursuit. Now we must be more community-minded, but again, what does that mean?

Now that I’m in Chicago maybe I can go be a community organizer on the South Side and be president in a couple of years.

I listened to the coverage, the concession speech and the victory speech on the radio. An old 1970s model I picked up at a charity sale for my garage. I worked on my house, ripping out sheetrock and old wood as the nation found its new president. I didn’t have to be alone, working, that night, but it’s where I wanted to be. Trying to make my own future better while the nation did the same. Tearing out the bad to make room for the good. And hoping that I know what the hell I’m doing.