DeMille had to add a meeting to the weekend schedule. Sundays are important, since the regular routine is at odds with a day our Western civilization has traditionally devoted to devotional stuff. You know, the whole getting cleaned up, properly dressed, and traveling to gatherings in which the topic of eternity and the role of our own insignificant lives is a matter for discussion and demonstration of resolve.

There is still a tradition of that out in our Piedmont, even if Arlington and the swath of civilization that now exists around the Capital of the Free World no longer does so. The Belmont Farms Distillery is closed on Sunday, part of an effort in country places to allow time for Church. It also has been adopted in spirit for adherents to Temple and Mosque, even if those specific meanings have also changed. At Refuge Farm, there is a smaller but analogous ritual in which the Writers Section honors the traditions of the past. Some places this includes coffee or tea and donuts. In ours, it may include a dose of Gunfire Breakfast’s gentle liquid charm and relaxation of the stern imposition of Article 88 restrictions. So long as such rhetoric does not lurch into public dissemination that could cause trouble.

That is why DeMille asked Amanda, our young almost-admitted-to-the-bar attorney, to join him for a quick strategic session. “We have the start of Spring to deal with. You can see it as the hopeful bright green begins to envelope the sturdy dark bottle-green of the pines that ring the pasture. It is appropriate to speak of hope and growth this time of year, and to celebrate the miracle of reproduction for all the species that live here.”

Amanda nodded. She had an understanding quite different from that of the grizzled vets, one that accompanied her status as…well, we will use the old term so disparaged lately. A female human, a woman who has the capability to bear young. And become what we used to call a “Mother.” She laughed at that simplicity, since that is not a singular issue for her or her sisters. Careers, work and passion are spread across other areas in the parade of life that offer choices.

“OK, Mother’s Day is coming up. Marlow sent us one that we will publish, since it is funny, but we need to take a moment with everything else to honor the central mystery of human life. So, get those old coots to talk to Melissa and Agnes about how this really works, and the challenges to being the vessels of continuity and change all wrapped up in one side of our species.”

“OK, we can do that without worrying about interference, at least in celebrating the old model. But that is under significant challenge. The old term of the War on Women seems to have become some sort of weird attack in saying that women are so special, so unique, that men can claim to be women and honored for their courage without actually having to do the hard part. Weird. But what about the other stuff?”

“An example was yesterday. We got to talking about some some of it yesterday, and had to run a story with the good part all marked “Redacted.”

Amanda recalled blacking out the dangerous stuff in the Chairman’s remarks. DeMille shrugged. “Yeah, I wanted to mention one of the changes to the nation you people served, but there is now a function in which some kinds of ‘speech’ can be governed in Washington. The whole hoo-rah about Elon Musk and his acquisition of Twitter showed part of it.”

“The dramatic change in the numbers of people following certain kinds of people, overnight and all at once?”

“Exactly. It demonstrated something about how things worked with no transparency. ‘Invisible algorithms’ is what they say did it. Remember when the Chairman was complaining about his Facebook Account disappearing? He had it for a long time and there was all sorts of stuff on it. Pictures, contacts, spontaneous musings that may be inappropriate. Gone overnight. That was right after Google censored one of our daily stories for even mentioning that disturbance in January of last year. They just sliced a picture right out of private communication because they felt like it.”

“Who felt like it? That was a question that led directly to more redacted portions of something we are not supposed to know about. And certainly not mention.”

DeMille was clearly uneasy about things. “I would not be able to say what I think anywhere near that thermostat in the Bunk House. Apparently it is always listening to us, and we have no idea who else it is reporting to. Sort of like our Government. We have people in positions to which we have been warned not to be critical but it doesn’t seem that they are actually the people running the system that would be used to punish us.”

“That speculation would be something we were warned about. We are supposed to just be mildly surprised when a Ministry of Truth in DHS was established.”

“That is going to get redacted, since we are not supposed to notice.”

“Fair enough. So, aside from the miracle of Mothers and the subversion of a great Republic, what do you think would be insightful and worth development as story lines?”

“We got a couple letters-to-the-editor yesterday about the fall of Saigon. Maybe we should run that picture of the Chairman inside the gates to the old US Embassy in Saigon. Those letters were amazing in the emotion of losing a war in which we lost 54,000 Americans.”

“They Media says the Russians may have lost almost 30,000 in just over a month of fighting in Ukraine.”

“That would be a matter for another story. They say one of the reasons the Russian advance was so slow was failure to perform maintenance on the tanks and trucks. And someone inside the Russian defense structure was selling the high-quality tires on the vehicles and replacing them with inferior products from China.”

“We should be thankful we are a free society in which corrupt practice is discouraged and punished.”

Both DeMille and Amanda had to smile at that one. It was a great line, and they both felt they were just about ready to talk to the rest of the Writer’s Section about the nature of Miracles in the season of re-birth. Or some sort of spontaneous re-generation eligible for any participant, depending on who is describing it.

Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
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