Yes my friends, even early for alaska, even early for a mountain dweller. A bit shocked I must admit to see the snowflakes start coming down… but as they always said in the Frosty the Snowman cartoon we would watch religiously as children, the first snow is a magical snow, and the exhilaration of that first snowfall overpowered my sense of dread at the beginning of the six month slog though a north country winter.

Yes it is hard. Yes indeed I think wistfully back to how easy I had it. How easily we all have had it. But like spoiled children in the midst of plenty and lax discipline, we argued and squabbled and sought our end selfish ends most of all - and in the midst of the utmost abundance we could not be happy…. and so the famine cometh, so we can remember what is important - the wheat - and what is superfluous - the chaff.

Writing to a public audience can be daunting. Especially tough when your aim is to write about the deeper currents in our society - to prod myself and us into honestly reflecting on our community… to seek out what is false and destructive and reinforce those values that give rise to wholesome life. We all know what wholesome life feels like. We all know what it feels like when things go awry, when we miss the mark….when Johnny ends up in prison rather than working a good job…. wasting a life bamboozled by drugs and alcohol…. fathering children without the will or the means to be a real father…. oh yes, I too my friends have seen things go awry …..

The article I wrote about the shooting after the football game in Roxborough has had me particularly agitated. A benefit to public thinking…. if you say something that you don’t truly believe - there is a forced regurgitation of the idea, until you can say it again…. and be satisfied with the statement. In the post I took the mindset of a young man raised in the ghetto, with an overwhelmed mother, absent father, broken community…. and tried to justify his own thinking about this world being a cold place with no moral rules, but a concrete jungle where the boldest and strongest and most ruthless survive. And there’s some truth to the idea that the mindset dominates…. especially among the young men pulling triggers. But what bothered me were my suggestions that it was the fault of the larger community…. that their own self interest and lack of concern for others was the culprit - along with the father in prison…. Now an individual can do a little bit for the neighborhood, they can volunteer and help clean up the park, be a coach for the local sports team. At the end of the day, after working 40 hours a week and tending to one’s own family…. Mr O Malley the good neighbor can’t save the world. And still for all our wealth, the world seems spiritually broken once again. And the bummer is if you look back through history, this seems unfortunately to be the status quo - even more infuriating because in the midst of all the troubles of the world, we also experience so much joy, so much love, so much time well spent with family and friends…. celebrations and feasts over the birth of a child, an grandmom’s birthday…. a graduation and a wedding… the satisfaction of a job well done, of a child raised properly, of the joy of truly helping a neighbor…. yes so many of us have had a taste of a life well lived and the contentment therein.

And yet so much death everywhere, in the Ukraine and the cities of America. So much divorce, so much hate, so much coldness, but through the muck and mire… so much love too…

Ohlson Mountain Alaska 2022