Bad News and the Bills
- Mike Dickey
- 31 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Bad news on my TV screen
Bad news on the magazines
Bad news on the newspaper
Bad news on the elevator
Bad news on the street
Bad news in my car
Bad news under my feet
Bad news at the bar
All over my clothes
Under my head
On the radio
In the laundromat
Hanging in the air
Laying on the ground
Walking up the stairs
Bad news all around
No matter where I go I can't get away from it
Don't you know? I'm knee deep in it
Who's gonna believe liars and lunatics?
Fools and thieves and clowns and hypocrites
Gluttony and greed, and that ain't the worst of it
All the news you could read, all the news is filled to print
Yeah
-Lucinda Williams
An impressive predawn horizon outside my office window right now.
Kidnapping. Murder. Piracy. Our government has had quite a week. And it's only Thursday.
PT sent me a copy this morning of the latest executive order, withdrawing U.S. support and participation from a huge list of international organizations dedicated to addressing everything from climate change to global terrorism. We are now officially a rogue state.
And murdering our own people. Renee Good could've been any one of us, a mother of a six-year-old. Minneapolis could've been any community in America. A cold-blooded killing by the jacked-up, masked goons that are the new face of the federal government.
We're a bad country now, run by some of the most awful human beings who've drawn breath in this century. And if you voted for it, you're one of them. Hope it was worth the cheap eggs.
All pretty depressing.
So I navigated away from all that this morning when I saw an article in the Athletic about the love affair between Josh Allen and Buffalo.
I'm afraid it may be behind a paywall, but if so you should really subscribe to the Times. It's cheap, and they're one of the last bastions of actual journalism left.
What struck me about the article was the recurring theme up here that Buffalo fans are used to having their hometown derided as a snowy rust belt relic, and they warm to someone who comes from outside and sees what they see, embraces the community and the way of life here in Western New York. Once that happens, you're family.
It's what has happened to P and me as we come up on the halfway point of our sixth year with roots spreading in two places. We've fallen in love with the place, snowy winters and all. It's an island of good in a bad time and place.
I close my eyes and think of sunny afternoons driving down the eastern shore of Seneca Lake, of brunch and a trip to the Farmer's Market in Rochester, which is a veritable United Nations of food stands. I think of the hospitality we've been shown, two eccentric Southerners sojourning among them on the shores of Babylon as our own home becomes increasingly unlivable.
But maybe, in the end, this is home. I'm not mad at Florida anymore; the place has been good to me, we have people we love there. I just can't take the traffic and the chain stores and restaurants and identical pastel boxes they pack into the patches of drained swamp. Not for me, but I'm glad I lived it because it caused me to become one of those folks, like Josh Allen, who came from elsewhere and saw this place for the treasure it is.