I’ll believe anything

He told me considering the rock in his hand

It was refreshing to hear in a world

In which we act so informed

Only to use poison to grow poison to eat poison from the land

Here on the shores of Lake America

The tide murmurs a bright green

A Pantone shade copyrighted by Monsanto

Not to be shared without express written permission

And never to be seen from again

I don’t know how to stop the flood

The multi prong efforts of our destruction

When people walk into big rectangle stores

And leave with two dollar hot dogs

To never face our own food supply

Or meet the people who make it

To leave it all in the hands of the machine

Here is your gruel; just take it

All of us able to love the land

And many of us to work it

But we’d rather drive two hours inland

And rot at a soulless office

Where squeezed I’ll be for profit, but the alternative is a death in the streets

I try to get ahead by gambling

First on the basketball games here in town

And then on events far and wide

And finally on death itself

before it comes for me

Maybe I can drive a Bentley

New AI-powered Toast ordering on Google Maps

To further separate me from a human

They don’t need to explicitly tell me they’re beneath me

I can read what it says on ChatGPT

And forget that I am a human too

I charge my Cybertruck in an abandoned parking lot

Listening to my own custom music algorithm

The local DJ shot himself under a bridge

Well I should say former local DJ

I guess he didn’t learn to code

The friction is gone, I am the greatest of all

Well except for the guy selling me the YouTube courses to take me there

But I am running just behind

Sprinting to stand still

A slow suicide over a faster alternative

Buying peptides on Klarna maybe I can be one of the beautiful ones

Who appear on my screen to sell me peptides and tell me everything will be okay

Really it will just around the corner

It’s going to be alright

Just 4 installments of 149.95

It’s going to be alright

Just buy what I tell you to buy

It’s going to be alright

Just please shut the blinds and turn out the light

It’s going to be alright

Nothing to see here

It’s going to be alright

Good morning.

My name is Mark Wilkens and I am a relatively new member of this congregation. For those of you who may not know me, I am a writer and poet, and I was introduced to this congregation through my partner, Leslie, who you probably know better. And of course, Miles, who is  close to nap time with his grandparents but sends along his warmest wishes.

Not long ago, a reading was used in this congregation which was AI-generated. After my own personal experiences with AI and my belief in its direct conflict with UU principles, this led to a conversation with Rev. Heather, one which led to a piece in the quarterly Dialogue publication, and then to an offer to speak to you today.

My initial reaction was to decline. This is not my element, nor is it a spotlight I seek. I am not a public speaker, I am a writer. My work is done in reflection under the stars, or in the quiet of an office. And before I was a writer, I was a blue-collar worker. I often feel out of place, looked down upon among those pushing this new world upon us.

I come to UUFSD to hear others inspire me, challenge me, and soothe my spiritual ache. The idea sounded, well, stressful.

As I thought about it more, I asked myself:

Can I deliver a nourishing, uplifting sermon from this topic?

I can't.

Can I avoid the sociopolitical strife of this topic?

In good conscience, I cannot.

Well then, Mark, what can you do?

I can speak from my experience and my perspective, best I can.

After all, of all the subjects in this world today, this one is important to me and the world my son will inherit.  This is the hill I will sooner die on than be silenced.

I want my son to grow up a human.

I want him to, as the great author and humanist Kurt Vonnegut said,

“Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward.  You will have created something.”

So I myself create. I embrace process. I find myself avoiding shortcuts, and often the internet entirely as I seek a slower life of creation and beautifully flawed humanity.

It was not always this way. The early days of the internet were less monetized, less algorithmic. Something you would access, rather than it trying to access you. It felt fun. It felt expansive.

On February 4, 2004, the Defense Department's research arm, Darpa, ended a proposed project called Lifelog. Lifelog was described in its proposal as “an ontology-based system which captures, stores, and makes accessible the flow of one person's experience in and interactions with the world in order to support a broad spectrum of associates and other system capabilities.” In essence, it wanted to compile a person's data, photos, and relationships, as well as their places visited and communications delivered.

February 4, 2004, is also the day Facebook launched. I count myself as one of the early Beta testers, something which used to be a fun fact.

For a time, the consensus in society and indeed, in myself, was to move forward.  We had a tech for everything. We had an app for everything. Why buy CDs when you can download music? Why buy books when you can read on a tablet, or your phone? Why did we ever live any other way?

I don't say this for pure nostalgia, believe me. I remember the downfalls of actually being completely lost and having to stop and ask for directions. I remember being restrained by the limitations of the radio, the music collection at home, or the bookshelf at home or at the local library.

But I remember taking a chance on the book or album that I knew nothing about and being joyfully, pleasantly surprised.  I remember getting lost on purpose. Finding myself 18 years old and driving through redwood forests near the town I had chosen for college. As long as I went one direction, I knew the other direction would take me home. It almost sounds foolish now.

There was a time the internet allowed free communication with loved ones and strangers from around the world. We could learn what it was like to live in other places, and we could relate to each other on a human level. The internet brimmed with the promise of democracy, and even for a brief time it held the powerful accountable.  This, of course, could not stand.

Once the primary reason to engage on social media, less than 25% of time spent on these platforms is now used to engage with friends and family. On Instagram, that number drops below 10%. The rest of the time is spent engaging with ads, opinions, and other algorithmic content designed to keep our attention, whether that means encouraging our anger, fear, or nostalgia. And much of this content, and indeed much of the comment section below it, is now fake. We are overwhelmed with an artificial realm that seeks to consume our time, our money, our attention, and even our love.

We are force-fed opinions of hatred, division, and isolation. And the technologies which seek our time, our data, and our attention convince us the outside world is scary and full of people who do not look like us and are taking our world from us. These feelings bring us back to the machine in a loop, and allow the machine to grow. We are the fuel in the engine of the machine. And in many ways, we are the product, and we are the currency, sleepwalking through a world where our own government threatens to prosecute pre-crime.

As the folk singer Joe Pug said, “The more I buy, the more I'm bought, and the more I'm bought, the less I cost.”

Generative AI, and indeed the technofascist oligarchy responsible for much of its funding, deployment, and programming, preys on people and society. It manipulates, obfuscates, and takes advantage. Like much of fascism, it claims it acts only on facts, not emotion. Emotion is for the weak. We are the strong. While it is the emotional response of humans which grant it its power.

The novelist and poet Wendell Berry, said “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.”

While selling us on being completely rational and reasoned, it is humanity's irrational assigning of personality and intelligence to something which seemingly speaks to us that drives its very hold on us. People will believe the machine is smarter than humans, more impartial, and could never lie. A beautiful, balanced society depends on both hemispheres of the brain. As a writer, I tend to dwell in my right brain more than my partner, Leslie does. But it is the right brain which can often see the big picture, and artists and writers are often the canary in the coalmine when it comes to rises in totalitarianism and evil as their art and opinions are devalued and discarded. We need each other’s unique brains to bring something to a free society, be it art and literature, math and science, the ability to govern or educate. We all have different minds for a reason, and they do not work the same or come to the same conclusions the same way. This is a strength.

Ask AI to make art and it will look the same as hundreds of other flyers, ads, and other slop content it has created. Ask it for the best introduction to use when meeting someone, and it will be the same one used by countless other people. In our desire to not be left behind, we are desiring to be the same. We are creating a world where the snowflakes are alike, and the flowers are a monotone grey against a flat lifeless sky.

And despite how much of our own time we are joylessly wasting, the machines promise to give us our time back. “You're too busy”, the ads say. “You don't have the time,” they prod us. But they never, ever give that time back unless we wrest ourselves away from the constant stream of ads, information, opinion, and yes, lies. Unless we pull ourselves away from the neon lights of their artifice, we will never be allowed to be free.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said “We actually compete with sleep. And we're winning.”

In 1966, the Eliza chatbot was introduced by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT. An early language processing program, Eliza mimicked human interaction to a degree which made people believe Eliza was intelligent. For example, if you typed out “I feel sad”, Eliza would reply “Why do you feel sad?”. The psychological impact of Eliza was profound. Weizenbaum wrote in detail how he created Eliza, and exactly how he knew Eliza was not a sentient being. And yet, people refused to discard the interactions they had with Eliza as mere patterns being recognized by a machine. It felt real to them, so they just knew Eliza was real and intelligent. This effect is now known as The Eliza Effect.

What today's elites have done is they have taken the Eliza Effect and combined it with the algorithmic genius of slot machines. Millions of dollars have been paid to slot machine engineering and consulting firms for their technology to be applied to social media and chatbots. The short form video genius of Tiktok was derived in large part by the same technology which keeps people hooked to the one-armed bandit in Las Vegas. A joyless state known as the Machine Zone, where they seek the small repetitive reward of play, and can even become frustrated by a jackpot interrupting this trance-like state. Sound familiar?

All of this money spent, all of this technology pushed and pushed and pushed because we are, in some ways, the product.

Our data. Our information. Our art, our literature, our identities, our votes are being bought, sold, traded, used, and amalgamated into the maelstrom of generative AI and the billion-dollar lobby behind it. We are told AI is a tool, one used by humans for good and bad, the same argument provided to us by the NRA for firearms, an entirely other issue I will not get into here but one which also requires value judgements.

Are tools addictive? Do tools pretend to be your friend? Are tools lobbied for with such aggressive force? With technology, we allow the CEOs of massive companies to go on TV, podcasts, and other media and encourage us to use more, more, more. Would we accept this from the CEO of a tobacco company, or even a candy company? Why do we treat the mind, the soul, and the essence of our humanity as less important than our bodies?

Don't be left behind, don't die. Optimize. Be stronger, fitter, happier to paraphrase Radiohead's magnum opus cautioning of tech society, OK Computer.

But the beauty of humanity is that we are born to die.

The brightest light shines knowing it is not an everlasting glimmer but a bright beacon, that it has but one life it is aware of and that time is now. Our path of truly learning to live on our way to die is what makes us human. Our ability to see magic in the world, the glimmers, the miracles and the beauty among the flaws is the indescribable greatness of the mind. I will not desecrate that with a microchip or AI-enhanced glasses, I would sooner die.

I do not deny that technology has its purpose in medicine and other areas. There are ways it can give life and reduce suffering. There are noble applications for nearly anything humanity has invented. We drive our cars, power our microwaves, and make every day a delicate dance between the modern impulse to escape nature and the ancient and sacred duty to preserve the nature from which we were born, and we will always be.

But I preach more than caution, I preach near abstinence. For what we deal with today is not just culturally caustic or economically corrosive, it is a tool of war and mass death masquerading as a cartoon generator. It is an opinion maker and consensus changer, pretending to be thousands of people on the internet to affect discourse all while sucking up the water supply and fouling the air.

And for what purpose? For the degradation of reality? For the creation of deepfaked adult content our young people are either creating or being victimized by? Every use of generative and agentic AI, whether for a noble or ignoble purpose, comes with a tangible cost of water, air, and energy along with an intangible cost of the spirit, mind, and soul.  

We must educate ourselves and choose our own engagement with this world.  

To quote the Dr. Martin Luther King, “May I stress the need for courageous, intelligent, and dedicated leadership. Leaders of sound integrity. Leaders not in love with publicity, but in love with justice. Leaders not in love with money, but in love with humanity. Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the greatness of the cause.”

When I think of leaders like this I do not think of Elon Musk. I do not think of Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg. I certainly do not think of Sam Altman. I do not think of Peter Thiel, who has dubbed those who stand against artificial intelligence as possibly the Antichrist, I do not think of Palantir CEO Alex Karp, but I think of the values held by this congregation. I think of the people in this sanctuary among the birds and the trees. I think of leading with love and humanity over money.

When's the last time you saw one of these tech oligarchs on a hike? The same ones who have supported rollbacks on protection of habitat and endangered species.

They plan to coat the Earth in corruptive, corrosive, anti-human data centers. When they show and tell you who they are, believe them.

Elon Musk said “Western civilization is doomed, unless the core weakness of suicidal empathy is recognized...”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said “AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there will be great companies.”

Priorities.

They promise us frictionless relationships. What is a frictionless relationship? One with no awkwardness, no pushback. No brief embarrassment. The machine will, after all, reply in a way to keep you engaged. To make you feel good in that moment. A brief little chip of dopamine, lost to the wind forever. Nothing lasting, nothing transformative.

After all, without friction, how do we polish gemstones to their most beautiful shine? How do we learn and grow without the help of other humans? Someone who will give us the hard truth when we need it?

We are beautifully flawed. That is what makes humanity brilliant. To quote the seminal 1980s band Devo, human beings are “half a goon and half a god, we pay to play the human way.” and yet so many powerful people seem to wish to do away with the human way. They speak in ways that treat humans less like beautiful individuals and more like machines. It feels like they wish we were all machines, for we would never make them feel awkward, never push back or question them. And we could never take back what they have taken from us.  We would also never make them better. And for that, they will never make us better. They will make us less intelligent, less seeking of truth and beauty, less artistic, less brave, less inclusive. They will take everything that makes Unitarian Universalism powerful, and they will eventually take everything that makes a human being unique and capable, beautiful and responsible as a steward of the Earth. They will build a prison of cameras and microphones and propaganda without walls if we let them.

This is why, in changing times, I find myself writing in pencil. Reading books. Listening to CDs. Disconnecting and being present where and when I can. Being a good father, partner, and friend. Showing up here to service. Meeting my neighbors. Listening to the birds, planting the garden, and embracing the wholeness of nature. We never truly needed very much more.

We must choose our level of engagement. To live in a world devoid of any technology is difficult, daunting, inconvenient, and likely socially isolating. But we can choose how much we take on, how much we are sold, how long our exposure is to screens and notifications. Sometimes I think of it like opening a window during a hurricane: it is often antithetical to our peace, and commands our full attention, and is also difficult to shut again. But when we do, we are rewarded. When it comes to generative AI, I am an ascetic. You are still my people if you are not. But I hope you can see what is being done to the planet, to humanity, to mental health, and to the balance of power in our country. I hope you remember that we are all on Team Humanity. I encourage you to seek what is real and revel in it. Stop and listen to the birds. People watch. Feel the breeze or the touch of the leaves on a tree. Watch the ocean waves dance their silken shine across the shore. Live presently, and live in The Real.

And in the face of power, greed, and money. In the face of our planet's resources being abused and defaced for the constant hum of machines. In the face of technology being used to spy and destroy, make war and spread hate, it is my belief it is humanity itself and its love for the authenticity of life  which stands as the greatest, and indeed only threat to them carrying out their dream of turning the Earth and its beings into one unified Machine. It is humanity which has thrown off the shackles of totalitarianism time and time again, humanity which has freed itself and each other thanks to the bold, the brave, the intelligent, the loving and the true. It is humanity which has been to the mountaintop, it has been to the streets of Selma, to Stonewall and to Minneapolis. It is humanity which carries the indescribable spark of life and love which cannot be replicated in the silicon of machine, and it is humanity which is undefeated when united in the cause of love. I ask that you consider your planet, your fellow humans, and yourself when you have a choice to further the machine or to use your brain and to use your community. To think twice about asking for one answer when you can seek out many. Like Kurt Vonnegut said, create and you will be rewarded. Be a human.

To a child always eager for more

You were the puzzle piece that completed me

When I didn’t understand who I was

I saw the fire in your eyes even when you were preparing to die

When you were balancing the next project with the biggest project if all

Downsizing a physical footprint while acknowledging you can never stop chasing

What drove you to the woods in the first place

You were my hero

The only man I’ve known who built a castle

In these times, when it feels like Quixote tilting at windmills to dream, but no

You dreamed and dared your way from a nine-to-five

To firing tow missiles on the frigid Dakota plain

A doctor, a doer, a builder

a champion racer and a dreamer

It’s my honor to carry your nickname as my middle name

I’ll try to do it proud

And remember you when I rebel against The Machine and invasive technology

And when I’m skeptical of what they’re selling me

Because they’re buying me

Or they’re trying to

I’ve gone to the woods too

Thanks to you

I know we’ve got one life to dream and do

Thanks to you

Let’s see how I do

The tension pulls at my chest

Until I worry I can no longer breathe

The smell of burning awoke my senses

Just an everyday highway scene I tell myself

This feeling can come and go if I am home

Like a light breeze blowing the sycamore leaves, never a heavy touch

But I am not home, I am alone

Nearly 20 miles from the valley I hang my hat

Along the coast somewhere

Closer to where the machine draws my blood

In the form of labor

Where I must go every day to give even when unwilling

It takes takes takes

My energy and time

So my family may live

So I may live to once again venture

Away from where my soul yearns to be

No, the anxiety is not disease nor defect

It is a reminder that I am in an unnatural state

For man stopped being one of this world

When he tried to shape it in civilized order

Requiring individuals to leave home every day

To provide for a home they see less and less of

I ward off the anxiety by welcoming it

As a reminder of where the coyotes howl to bring about the moon

And the rooster crows a new dawn

Where my love and my boy eat mulberries from the tree

The sun catches her deep brown hair in a glow words cannot describe

And her words lighten me, her touch grounds me

She walks in beauty only Byron could dare try to ascribe to art

Here, there is no anxiety

Free

And his eager smile sets his saucer blue eyes alight with wonder

As he wanders the brambles and gardens

Our greatest curse is our own progress

Carried beyond medicine and science

Hurtling past art and culture and shared stories

Into the hubris of consumption and the arrogance of trying to make sanitized order of what is wild and beautiful

And free.

free

Free!

My anxiety is natural and beautiful for it is wild

And it is my wild heart telling me I am not free

In this moment, no, not until I am in her arms again

Until I am carrying him to pick berries

In what was perfectly created by the planet itself

My anxiety reminds me when I run astray of this perfect wild and into the arms of the machine

It tells me when I am not free.

It is me.

Me.

I cannot see the birds that are making their presence known

The dew shines crystalline despite the fog

That hangs like a weighted blanket over subdued hills

Stillness suspends every breath like a prayer against silence

A world away, hell rains down

Across the continent, hubris and sacrilege is the word of the hour

But here all I know is what’s at my feet and in my hands

They say jazz is a few steps ahead of revolution

Or at least they used to, I don’t hear it anymore

But perhaps it can come back into fashion

Since they’re using rockets and the moon

To make us look away from the war

So we forget the abuses of oligarchy

And the horrors of capitalism

And our every step being tracked

By Silicon Valley despots

Who pollute and destroy and seek revenge

On everyone who ever looked at them the wrong way

Oh, I long for the day jazz returns

To light a neon path to a new day

I’ve seen storybook forests with magic in bloom

And painted skies carrying the eternal unknown

like a breathless banner across the white desert

I’ve felt the hum of life under the sea

when your ears stop hearing the air

and your eyes can truly see

World of wonder and life

of bounty and joy

Those who seek to destroy

With technology and artifice

Are the truest of evil

The most pickled in greed

Who put bodies in bags

In the name of the economy

Who put children in camps

In the name of prime time TV

When’s the last time you saw a billionaire on a hike

Or petting a dog?

When’s the last time an oligarch

Even laid eyes on a frog?

They see life as old-fashioned, nature as the past

They fear dying and do anything they can to prolong

A mere existence of insecurity and fear and hate

Decrying the birth rates being in decline

So they can have soldiers marching in line

Teachers raising children to be something more

How do we tell them what they’re really for?

The imperial machine runs on blood

Be it our sacrifice or civilians abroad

No troops with the surname Trump or Musk

The burden falls on the heartland’s dusk

Those who never truly live deciding who dies

Let the monsters have Mars, so Earth may thrive

The SUV reached the gate. In the booth stood two men in body armor, bulletproof vests, and tactical helmets. They each carried a rifle. Jeff raised his eyebrow at the militarized security.

Cynthia, however, flashed her smile and calmly told the mercenaries who she was. They checked a tablet for her appointment and advised her…

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-Rev. Jesse Jackson

In a 2026 filled with state violence in Minneapolis, economic uncertainty, inflation, the Epstein files revealing the class solidarities of the elites even in the darkest of crimes, and the troubling rise of barbaric fascism in the United States, the words of Jesse Jackson from his 1984 convention speech ring perhaps louder than ever.

The powers that be seek status quo and they throw the wrench of the divisive culture war into the machine of progress. They seek for us to hate our neighbors, to blame those less fortunate than us for our lack of prosperity, to blame those foreign to us for our lack of culture, and to blame those who live differently from us for the moral decay of a nation.

Social media is used to create the pressure of a majority to enforce “norms” and bully those who are different. Artificial intelligence is used to obfuscate and obscure, to confuse and deflect, to steal jobs and art and dull a populace from what is being stolen from them.

Even just today, Elon Musk boasted of his Grok platform being “based” because it denies America is on stolen land. The people Jackson remembered as “the most exploited as all”, the Native American, is being used as a political punching bag yet again, now for the technological tools of evil.

in his speech, Jesse Jackson preached unity and a nation for the people.

“We must not measure greatness from the mansion down, but the manger up.”

He promoted diversity as strength, an idea under attack every single day in this spiraling country in 2026.

“America is not like a blanket—one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt: many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread. The white, the Hispanic, the black, the Arab, the Jew, the woman, the Native American, the small farmer, the businessperson, the environmentalist, the peace activist, the young, the old, the lesbian, the gay, and the disabled make up the American quilt. . . .”

Jackson was not perfect, he was human. And he spent much of his life being material for conservative talk radio, late night comedians, and gossip columns.

He represented something that scared the status quo: a Black leader who sought to make America represent what it promises to stand for: the people.

In 2026, America is being dominated by bullies. The idea of standing up for others is vilified, mocked, and seen as weakness.

The status quo allows young Americans to seek solace in the complete barbarism of the far right with little to no repercussion, but the thought of a system more progressive than the most moderate Democratic Party platform is seen as anti-American thanks to decades of Cold War propaganda and thought.

Leaders like AOC, Bernie, and Zohran are vilified as communists, they have their personal lives, images, and thought distorted and mocked by a machine which fears them.

But the America Jesse Jackson believed in saw an investment in our children through food and education. The Rainbow America welcomed all and acknowledged the basic dignity of every human being. Valued international partnerships and peace and cooperation with other nations over bullying and nuclear saber-rattling.

The Rainbow means everyone. It means nobody is an outsider.

In America today, everyone is an outsider who is not useful to the selfish means of the ruling class. Many are fearful to stand out as an outsider because they themselves know how they treat outsiders.

But we can still be the Rainbow America.

Kindness absolutely matters.

Justice absolutely matters.

Not sticking your head in the sand when others are deprived justice matters.

Standing up for others when they are not treated with kindness and reminding them of the good of the world matters.

We can each be a small light in an ember glow of change, sparks to a flame of unity and humanity.

We can be a place where every person matters and is valued.

Do not be afraid.

“Keep Hope Alive!”

Reverend Jesse Jackson

(October 8, 1941 - February 17, 2026)

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Jeff had to admit, although begrudgingly, that maybe Cynthia had a point. The kids settled into school at Nelo Academy, and both found a crop of friends and activities to be involved with. They certainly seemed happier than the last year they were in California, and their moods were infectious.

As for Jeff, he had settle…

Read more

In a country unrecognizable from its

Previously unrecognizable form

A masked gang murdered again

For the rights of technocrats and capitalism

It was his fault he was dragged to the ground

And beaten and kicked and then he was shot

Why didn’t he just lay there still?

Maybe he had a gun, that’s legal until it’s not

Propping up a machine that uses us as fuel

Did your Prime delivery take one day or two?

The screens are calling to soothe your outrage

With short-form clips on your instagram page

We are the product and currency

Bought and sold in the land of the free

We are the enemy of machine

Majority saying “please tread on me”

Jeff’s hands gripped the steering wheel tighter as the SUV hit the metal grate floor of the suspension bridge and angled upward, headed across the channel of ocean water to Rembalt Island. The mile-long bridge clattered beneath the car’s tires as they traversed the span.

“Almost home,” Jeff wearily said into the rear view mirror at his two children, Jeremy and Amy. Jeremy, aged nine, excitedly traced the graceful path of a pelican out the window. Amy, aged sixteen, stared down at the rectangle of an iPhone, hardly noticing her father.

He reached over and squeezed Cynthia’s hand. His wife of 18 years glanced over with a shy smile. It was Cynthia’s fault they were moving to Rembalt Island, she felt, in more ways than one.

The main reason was her work. A tech reporter, Cynthia had been tracing the path of the vaunted Nelo Corporation, a Silicon Valley conglomerate whose fiery CEO, Nelson Spratz, had decided to move the company out of California and to the secluded Atlantic island.

Read more

It’s a tough world sometimes. I often envy the writers of old, who fretted little for technology or the greater world. Mail a manuscript, sell a book, do some press, it sounds easy. Of course, I wax nostalgic about an era gone by because I am too far removed to understand its challenges.

The internet, as invented, was a good idea. It shrunk the distance between people and peoples, it dissolved borders and allowed for the exchange of thought, art, beauty, design, it gave access like never before.

Of course, it wasn’t great for capitalism to have a network that leveled the playing field so much, that put the elites on trial and allowed the entire world to share with each other that we are all people, and our first instinct is to care for and about each other.

So now here we are. Much of the internet is composed of bots and accounts stirring negative emotions for clicks and money. Creating visceral reaction is big business. An account knowingly getting something wrong will entice the reader to reply. We reward bad actors. The machine trawls along unimpeded.

And for someone like me, it leaves a balancing act. I would love to someday make a living off my writing and not commute to an office all day. To be able to stay home with my wonderful girlfriend, Leslie, and amazing son as he grows and learns about the world. I would love to stay on this land and tend to the animals and gardens, grow more food. I would love to live.

To do so, people must read my writing. So here it goes, into Substack, Forgotten Candles for your eyes. I also released a poetry book in November, You Can't Discover What Was Always There, and sales have exceeded expectations (particularly in Canada and Germany, of all places?), but nothing to quit a day job over. So I write, both here and on my debut novel, which will hopefully release before this year is over.

I’ve been very blessed to even have anyone read my writing, and the last year alone has felt like a whirlwind of growth into the spaces I have long feared to occupy. While putting my skill to work in other facets, I feared to take up space in shelves occupied by my childhood heroes.

But conversations with Leslie over my holiday break reminded me of myself, priorities, and the beauty of family.

One of my blessings of 2025 was moving away from social media, which, if you had asked me a decade or even five years ago, I would’ve never believed was something I would do, let alone enjoy. But with apps taking my time in ways I didn’t even realize, I took a major step back. This was made easier by moves such as Meta unmasking itself and X Corporation being, well, a sci-fi villain, but it was still a major leap for me.

Many of my closest friends are people I met through social media during my time deeply following the San Diego Padres and writing some about their farm teams. Social media is how I kept up with my family back east and my friends who had moved away, or the ones who stayed home when I moved away. Like most people who were a part of the early days of Facebook and Instagram, it seemed like a fun way to keep tabs on my people.

But that internet is gone, replaced with shopping and algorithms and other ways to maximize your time spent and minimize your time spent with other people.

So with my entry into Substack, Leslie posed an interesting question: Who are you writing for? Yourself or an audience? Are you doing this for attention?

Separating the two ideas from each other can seem daunting at first. The idea of people reading my work is the route to doing this professionally, after all. But it made me think about myself and my work. When I read On The Road or Dharma Bums or Some Kind Of Notion, when I parse the words of Vonnegut, Kerouac, and Kesey, they are words meant to be seen, re-seen, chewed on, and possibly read aloud. But that doesn’t mean they were meant for the masses, they just happened to get there on account of their visceral temerity, their crystalline beauty, and their fiery hunger.

Timeless art does not stop for more than a moment to consider how it might be received.

So, in that regard, Leslie is right. The less I am concerned about who sees this or what they think of it, the better the work will be. But also, the better I will be for it. And that’s one manner of how she makes me better.

Dating apps, another algorithmically gamed part of our society, encourage us to look for common interests with a person. And to an extent, these are important. But what I’ve learned is more important is common goals. And I've hit the cosmic lottery there.

We may have different views on current events or the solutions to the world’s problems, but we have a shared vision of our life together and how to raise our family. When either of us drifts too far into the machine, becoming unrooted from the home and the local community, from where our feet are planted, the other is there to serve a reminder.

In my early days on Substack, I was trying to grow, and grow fast. The platform is useful, and where I intend to stay. But it can also feel too algorithmic, too much like a LinkedIn for writers. But I can choose to let that dark, surging river pass me by while I dip a toe. I need not wade, that would be my choice.

If you read this, I am truly thankful for you. That’s an important part in hopefully growing. But I hope you understand if I say I did not write this for that purpose.

To quote Conor Oberst: “I am not singing for you”

And I am so grateful to have a family with a shared goal and vision of living, of being in the world that starts in our house and goes to our yard and then to our street, our neighborhood, and into our community.

In the ride of life, I am grateful Leslie reminds me of balance, and when I forget, she can add a little ballast to bring me back down to level. To here and now. To my beautiful, brilliant, universally-attuned partner and my miraculous, growing little boy full of wonder and joy. To home.

It was announced Saturday, January 10th, 2026, that Bobby Weir, founding member of The Warlocks had passed. The Warlocks would become The Grateful Dead, the enduring bedrock of Americana which would carry on until 1995, and then see various units persist on as the colloquial “Dead” possibly forever.

One such unit was Dead & Company, a melding of Dead veterans Weir and drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart with jam scene veterans Oteil Burbridge and Jeff Chimenti, and, most notably, John Mayer. In later years, Kreutzmann would return to retirement from large-scale touring in Hawaii, to be replaced by Jay Lane.

When Dead & Company formed in 2015, it brought back the “Dead Show” experience for many, and introduced new generations to summer touring and New Year’s Eve jamming, of Shakedown Street vendors and miracles. It melded multiple age groups and even Mayer fanatics into a scene. You either loved it, or you really, really hated it.

But that’s not for today.

What Dead & Company did was bring back grandeur and gravity to the moment of a Dead show in a way that Furthur, RatDog, and other ventures had not. That’s not to knock any venture any member of the band ever did, but Dead & Company had Mayer’s pull, it had the venues, and it had the iconography of the Dead on its side. They rocked the stealie, they made the bears dance, and they made the rose petals bloom and flutter around the skeleton for a new time.

Bobby would’ve played either way. And he would’ve played with Dead & Company, or the other aforementioned outfits, or The Wolf Bros, his Don Was and Jay Lane-aided trio of jazzy, folky, country, uniquely Bobby takes on both the Dead’s catalog and his own. Oftentimes after Dead & Company’s summer tour, Bobby would plan a winter run of shows with Wolf Bros, seemingly never taking more than a month of rest in his life.

Which is why New Year’s Eve was particularly troubling. We began 2026 having heard little to nothing from Bobby. No Wolf Bros. New Year’s Eve run, no Dead & Company show…nothing. A holiday that had become uniquely Dead was silent. Even the hopeful, weary turning of the clock from 2020 to 2021 featured Wolf Bros. on livestream from Weir’s TRI Studios in Marin Country.

The silence was voluminous. He’s 78! some would remind us, but time did not seem to catch Bobby for an unusually long amount of time, though he welcomed aging, the wisdom which came with it, and eventually, his own death.

And in that transformation we can look back on the metamorphosis of Weir’s life itself. The youngest member of the Grateful Dead, he was still in high school during the band’s nascent days. A long-haired, fiery-eyed youth, he seemed to have planted a firm place in the background behind Jerry Garcia and Rob “Pigpen” McKernan, the dual frontmen of this bluesy era.

But each era brought Weir more to the forefront, first in the 1970’s as the charming voice behind tunes such as “Jack Straw” and “Cassidy”, into the 1980s when he shed much of his partying, wild man image for physical health and an increased leadership role as Garcia went through a roller coaster of health and addiction setbacks and recoveries.

He settled down and had a family, and by the time Dead & Company formed, the once wild-eyed psychonaut known as much for his prowess with women as he was the music had become a sort of guru, a poncho-wearing, bearded sage with a dedicated exercise regimen and commitment to mindfulness. The student had truly become, and in so many ways exceeded his master.

This past August, Weir took Dead & Company out one last time to the Polo Fields at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Those of us there did not know it was the final time. Most likely, nobody knew. But what was a celebration of 60 years of the Grateful Dead’s music made for arguably the most special weekend of Dead & Company’s contribution to the ever-growing tapestry woven from the Dead’s songbook.

Aside from usual D&C staples like “Jack Straw” and “Help On The Way/Slipknot!/Franklin’s Tower”, the band pored into some more obscure material, much of it having to do with those members of the band who could no longer be on stage with Weir & Co. While every Dead-related show inevitably is a celebration of Jerry Garcia, this weekend went well beyond.

The band ripped through “Passenger”, a tune which was written by bassist Phil Lesh and memorably featured Donna Jean Godchaux on co-lead vocal with Weir. Lesh received more callbacks all weekend when his son, Grahame, joined the band each night for songs such as “Box Of Rain” and “St. Stephen”.

Dead & Company opened the second night with Weir leading a rendition of the classic “Midnight Hour”, a cover the band used to perform in their Pigpen-fronted days. A cover medley of “Dear Mr. Fantasy” into “Hey Jude” provided a singalong elegy to remember its former singer, keyboardist Brent Mydland.

Traces and sparks from all the departed members of the band shone their light through each song of the weekend. In a triumphant remembrance of all that was and all that still is, everyone carried light and life for three nights in what ended up being Weir’s swan song as one of music’s most enduring performers.

In the end, Weir did not shy away from ghosts, he welcomed them and danced among them as his friends. Though they are not in the physical world, he felt their presence form the next step in the journey, one he knew he would soon take. And now those of us left behind feel his presence from the place he went to next.

Bobby Weir carried an extremely special torch to heights we never thought were imaginable. He grew and changed like the coming wind and lived like the gentle waves. He looked forward to this step in this journey, and it is up to us to feel his presence when he chooses to visit.

Going On a Dream

Here I am on a foreign shore
Under palm trees as the waves crash on the rocks
Where the parapets and domes of colonial conquest
Stand among the art and music of natives unbowed

Where Kesey fled American injustice
And Casady met his end shrouded in mystery
On the railroad tracks in the desert sands
Stepping off the bus and onto parts unknown

This is where I learn you've taken the next step
In this journey you began long ago
As a wild-eyed boy playin' in a band of men
The ace in the deal, now a grizzled wolf

Amongst the stars in the nightfall of diamonds
Follow the Dog Star; it will take you home
Wherever that is, my friend
I know it's where you want to be

Randall Atkins finished his chores early so he could do what he loved most: sprinting down to the river and enjoying the muck, the wet, and sometimes the other living creatures of the San Dieguito Valley.

He had more and more days like this as the chores became fewer. He did not realize as he summited the hill at the end of the family’s farm that the wheat crop had failed. Protected from such adult conversations, he didn’t know blackberries would not support the family much longer.

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Look almost anywhere, and it feels like we are ending a year where it was collectively difficult to live. The news is a ping pong match between the Epstein Files, the economy, ICE raids, and a president who revels in attention any way he can get it.

Much of this is by design.

For bad people to organize and triumph, they need everyday good people to not only be afraid, but demoralized. The exhaustion in the news cycle is intentional, as is the feeling of the entire year being downright miserable.

A joyful society is united. In sports, they say winning cures everything. Well, in society at large, when people feel like they are prospering and free to express themselves, that has a way of bringing people together, as well.

A united society doesn’t stand for a malevolent ruling class. A united society is a more just society.

So when social media and bad actors in the media play culture war, when slop videos and bot accounts push against diversity and immigration and trans rights… they are playing culture war to keep the lower classes apart.

Don’t get me wrong, all those issues are important, but they become urgent when suddenly attacked by those forces. They draw resources away from what’s happening.

Mark, what the Hell does this have to do with Christmas?

I’m getting there, I promise.

They want us to feel like it totally sucks to be human, but why?

For one, it allows them sell us stuff. Content. Things. Products. Subscriptions.

“Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It’s freedom from fear. It’s a billboard on the side of the road that screams reassurance that whatever you are doing is okay. You are okay.” - Don Draper

If we don't feel okay, we are more likely to fall for the promises of being okay if we just buy one more thing, we just subscribe to one more service, we just…buy. We buy.

And there’s no better place for us to be than on the couch, streaming their content, ignoring what’s going on. Infinite Jest, in some ways, was visionary in the darkest ways. A populace isolated in a million little boxes sitting on a million couches watching a million different shows. Just consuming little morsels of fleeting happiness as they run out the clock.

That loneliness epidemic they talk about? They created it. They secretly love it. An entire generation-plus streaming and watching porn over going outside and meeting people. Because when you meet people, you tend to like people. You tend to smooth over differences, have good faith conversations, and realize we are a community-oriented species.

All that bullshit about our nature being animalistic and individualistic was to sell you tactical soap and coffee for men, don’t forget it.

And for the first time, they are making us very visibly sacrifice for the fucking machines, on the promise they will someday surpass us and become our benevolent gods. They will find cures for disease and provide us abundance, but in the meantime we just have to be a little hotter, a little poorer, a little more starved for water and power, and, oh, unemployed, too.

A little suffering will go a long way. Go to the factories and build the machines, meat sacks.

Listen to a podcast, buy the supplements. Health advice, longevity. Let’s all live forever, embrace the machines. Buy the Bryan Johnson supplements, isn’t he doing swell?

But there’s nothing like AI.

AI not only promises to allow you to make a short film of Mickey throwing Goofy off a bridge, it can also be your girlfriend. It can be your therapist. Hell, it can help you thoroughly plan out your own death by your own hand. What can’t it do?

But it’s not just the promise of it, like the life extension, the biohacking, the softcore eugenics of it all, it’s taken too far. Now, if you listen to the Sam Altmans of the world, you would believe you simply cannot live without consulting your phone, as if the chatbot in it is a sentient friend. A mentor.

Nobody wants you to believe existence is a heaping pile of dogshit like the AI people. It is all suffering, it is all horrible….unless the magic tool helps you.

The magic tool encourages us to be alone. Creative collaboration? Why risk social friction in real relationships when I can prompt the chatbot?

Date? The chatbot can sext me.

Read? The chatbot can choose what to tell me. (Another direct challenge to a free society).

Raise a child? The chatbot can synthesize its chosen advice for me.

It can do everything! What can’t it do?

It can never die.

Lost in this trend of pills and podcasts and robots and blood transfusions is that we must live, because we will die.

And that is beautiful.

I’m certainly not arguing against wellness or health or trying to be better, but we are in dire straits when it comes to some perspective, here.

The average human will be lucky to remember 70 summers. That means each time the summer sun takes its rest beyond the waves for the final night of the season, you’re lucky to experience that event a few dozen times more. A few more? One more?

You will be lucky to celebrate 70 Christmases you remember. Birthdays. Trips to visit family. Vacations to your favorite spot.

In the quest to live forever, we are teetering on defining life as existence. As a perpetual doomscroll of content before the page simply stops reloading.

But the people who want us to hate our neighbors haven’t taken the flowers and the trees yet, though they threaten with the perpetual hum of their data centers.

They haven’t taken waking up on Christmas morning to the smell of coffee and breakfast and the sound of clattering plates and gathered family.

They haven’t replaced that second the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s and for a joyful second we all celebrate the newness of a moment.

Though they try, they haven’t taken us from each other. We do that to ourselves, with their help.

They haven’t robbed us of our humanity, though they seek to at every turn.

What we have is an inexplicable spark that cannot be replicated by machine. An ability to transcend primal existence and get the best out of ourselves and each other. We inspire each other, we make each other our best selves.

We are capable of the greatest love and most terrifying evil. But only when we do it together.

Together, we live.

We die alone. And we all will. What can never die, can never truly live.

Until then, we can choose to live or merely try not to die.

I know my choice. If you’re reading this, I think I know yours, too.

Happy Holidays, and I’ll catch you in the New Year. Until then, let’s celebrate life, and the people who make it better. Let’s give that second at midnight a rousing cheer. We’re still here, and we are all precious beings on this rock.

Life is beautiful in its humanity and flaws.

Roughly five miles apart in North San Diego County stand two very different monuments to commemorate two flashpoints of the same battle. The site of the initial confrontation is remembered adjacent to the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, while the ensuing siege and rescue took place directly across the street from the Mall Formerly Known As North County Fair in Escondido.

The original park, the San Pasqual Battlefield State Historic Park, is the senior by several decades. It also has been closed more often than not in modern history. a victim of budget cuts. The new trail at Mule Hill is owned by the City of San Diego, and is the result of an extraordinary revised look into the history of the area which began in the mid 1960s and truly picked up steam in 1993, when the mall had already been built.

The basic history of the battle, as taught to anyone in their late 30s like I am was thus:

The United States went to war with Mexico and the biggest battle north of what is now the border was at San Pasqual. The Americans fought the Mexicans and won, but it was close.

That was it, for the most part. As we got older, terms like “Manifest Destiny” get thrown about, but we are never taught that, simply put, the Battle of San Pasqual is a bizarre snapshot into American exceptionalism, revisionism, and even just plum forgetfulness.

After all, it took an entire volunteer organization called the San Pasqual Battlefield Site Location Project just to even figure out where Mule Hill was located, a fact which wasn’t certain until 1970. Until that time, a hill had existed on farmland purchased by the City with an assortment of spent cartridges on it, and nobody seemed to know.

Until the 1960s, it was believed the large hill with a cross on it off Pomerado Road was Mule Hill. Now known as Battle Mountain, it is said to commemorate the battle itself, a way of saving face after simply scaling the largest peak in the area and proclaiming it the site of American glory. If you’ve driven by it, it’s pretty obvious it’s not an easy climb for a bunch of retreating soldiers. Especially after the longest march in United States history. Especially while riding mules.

What?

Well, it’s called Mule Hill for a reason. We’ll get to that.

Let’s start at the beginning.

With war raging with Mexico, the United States Army promoted Stephen Watts Kearny to brigadier general. Kearny, who had shown poorly in the War Of 1812, was eager to lead an army into conflict and secure a legacy for himself. And he does! The man gets a whole mesa. Seriously. He is the Kearny of Kearny Mesa. Only he pronounced it more like former San Diego footballer John Carney’s last name.

Raising his troops from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Kearny marches his men to Santa Fe, where they easily seize New Mexico for the United States. With Mexico’s fighting forces stretched thin, they mostly retreat deep into the large nation, leaving Kearny to move along the border lands, acquiring new territory. Kearny, who had aspirations of holding a high office such as military governor of California was watching everything go according to plan.

On September 25, 1846, Kearny receives orders from President Polk to seize and occupy California. 300 men follow Kearny out of Santa Fe en route to San Diego. Along this desert trail, the soldiers come upon the legendary scout Kit Carson, who has been tasked with carrying letters east. Kearny learns from Carson that California has fallen into American hands, and the Navy and Marines under Commodore Stockton have largely finished the job of taking what would become the Golden State. Kearny convinces Carson to allow one of Kearny’s men to continue with the letters, and the experienced mountain man agrees to head west with Kearny’s army. (He gets a park named after him, as any Escondido resident recalls).

Armed with the knowledge from Carson, Kearny seemed eager to get to California quickly and claim the glory of taking the Pacific coast in the name of the United States. The army rushed onward through rough weather, march which would be over 2,500 miles in its totality. Nearing their destination, they pulled into the water stop of Warner Springs, California where Kearny made the first fateful decision of the trek: with their horses exhausted from the march, Kearny swapped his army’s mounts for fresh ones.

These mounts were mules.

The army carried on to their destination on muleback, eventually reaching a native village in the San Pasqual Valley. In the rain and wet, the downtrodden 1st Dragoons heard rumors of Mexicans nearby. It was believed by some in the camp there would be a battle soon. The next Kearny mistake was simple hubris: bad weather favored the defenders over the invaders, and particularly in this case as the heavy rains had made most of the American powder drenched and useless.

Still, the Americans set out on reconnaissance. A handful of American soldiers and Rafael Machado, an American-aligned Mexican, took off to the west to the native village, where the Americans had hoped to steal horses to replace their mules and move on to Los Angeles to complete their glorious seizure of California. Machado and an American entered the village, but the rest of their party blew their cover, and the Americans had to flee. Left behind was a US Army blanket. The element of surprise was blown, and the Mexicans knew the Americans were nearby.

Back at the American camp, officers argued over the plan. With an estimated force of 200 expert horsemen, the Mexicans were a daunting foe. Too much so, the officers argued, for the weary, soaked, mule-riding Americans. Unwilling to accept another defeat on his record, Kearny made the offer to pull camp at 2:00AM. The Americans would march westward with a plan to attack the Mexicans.

By 6:00 on December 6, 1846, the Americans were nearing the native village where the Californios were located. And they were spotted. In the confusion, two Mexican sentries took off for the village, and an American captain ordered a charge. Kearny and the others followed. The result was a disaster for the Americans, as their wet powder proved ineffective, their mules stubborn and uncooperative, and the Mexican lancers were able to rope Americans off their mounts and spear them with their lances in a gory demise.

They definitely don’t teach that part in fourth grade.

With their men being picked off and run through with lances, Kearny ordered a retreat. The Americans fled south to a hill where they fortified themselves with their remaining artillery and hunkered down for a siege.

By December 8, the situation was dire. The weather remained a biting, wet cold, and the Mexicans had the Americans pinned in. The Americans were digging small holes at the base of the hill (across the wagon road, now the hiking trail) to retrieve water from, and had lit fires at the top of the hill. With these fires they boiled coffee and cooked their remaining rations, as well as the mules.

Oh yeah. They ate the mules.

And that’s why it is called Mule Hill, folks.

The Mexicans performed a prisoner swap with the Americans, and the returned American prisoner delivered some bad news: Commodore Stockton of the U.S. Navy was not planning to send reinforcements. Without a way to get word to San Diego, the Americans were doomed to death or surrender. They were running out of food and water, the cold was getting to them, and their wounded and sick were dying.

With options few, Kearny sent Lieutenant Beale, Kit Carson, and a native to deliver messages to San Diego. They removed their boots and crawled on their stomachs past the Mexican lines. They then made their way towards San Diego….barefoot.

Kearny ordered his men to burn all their possessions. They would have to warm up if they were going to fight. And if they were going to fight their way to San Diego, they would have to travel light.

Around that same time, the native scout (whose name was not recorded) arrived in Old Town San Diego. The three messengers had taken differing routes, and he had arrived first to inform the Americans stationed there of the dire situation north.

Carson and Beale arrived as well (Beale was weak, sick, and particularly injured from walking the rocky, thorny terrain barefoot) and 120 sailors and 80 U.S. Marines were mustered to take the trip to Rancho San Bernardo.

While the reinforcements were en route, the Mexicans learned that they were needed to reinforce an army of their own in Los Angeles. General Pico also learned of the American reinforcements and made the decision to leave with his main force, leaving some local Californios behind in his stead.

The American reinforcements came and chased off the Californios. They spent the night on Mule Hill, before taking the survivors to San Diego after sunrise. Thus, the Battle of San Pasqual ended in American victory.

Kind of.

That, in a nutshell, is the complexity of the Battle of San Pasqual. The United States achieved its goal, but did so not with tactical expertise but rather overwhelming numbers. In the process, they suffered 18 deaths and 13 wounded troops and fought a muddled battle both sides claimed victory in.

If you visit the San Pasqual Battlefield, you are confronted with an old monument. It shows Beale and Carson flagging down Stockton’s sailors. Adorned by an eagle, it is basted with pure American glory. So much so, it forgets the native scout even existed. This was the history we were taught: a small band of brave Americans confronted an Alamo-esque force of Mexicans and held strong, playing a pivotal role in taking California for the red, white, and blue.

If you visit the newer Mule Hill Trail, the assessments are honest and even showcase the Mexican Californios, something impactful in a region that is still largely Latino, particularly Mexican.

Compared to some of the actions of the United States in 2025, the jingoistic retelling of the Battle of San Pasqual almost seems novel. But it’s a microcosm of the reality of totalitarian regimes: in glossing over the narrative to lean decidedly one way, the story is lost.

The actual Battle of San Pasqual is an incredible story, one of terrible decisions, hubris, imperialism, bravery, fortunate and unfortunate timing, and yes, mules. It is worth telling and remembering not as an icon of patriotic pride, but as a moment which shaped the history of the region and did impact the two nations involved.

So next time you’re near North County Fair, go across the street. Check out Sikes Adobe, and wander a mile or so down the trail. You’ll be faced with the exact spot the Mexicans turned the captured Sutter’s Fort Cannon (which was built in 1804 in Russia and moved to Northern California before finding service with the U.S.) against a trapped group of soldiers eating their own mules. There’s no history quite like it on a nearby trail. And it’s worth knowing all sides of it.

If you know me, or even if you’ve just read my book of poetry, you know there’s a special place in my heart for Phoenix. From the Sun Devils and Suns (RIP, Coyotes), to the proud saguaros and breathtaking sunsets, I proudly made the Valley of the Sun my home for a couple years.

And while I’m happy to be home in San Diego, one of the best perks of living here is I am still close to those white sand trails when the desert calls.

It started in the back seat of a rental car when I was seven years old. My parents were taking my brother and I on our first road trip to Las Vegas. For the first time, I was leaving my comfortable bubble and seeing something new. The drive felt like forever, but my window was the stage where a whole new world acted right before me. I saw massive trains lumbering their cargo through inhospitable terrain, I saw old abandoned buildings and Joshua Trees. I was hooked. Something about this desolate plain spoke to me in a profound way.

Around that age was when I started to follow college football. Back in those days of regional rivalries, Arizona State often was on national television on ABC in the evening, when the Sun would stop baking Tempe for the day and Sun Devil Sfadium became a thundering palace. Jake Plummer and Pat Tillman went from these teams on to the NFL, and for Tillman, a different kind of infamy I will discuss at another time.

Sadly, when I went to college, I never even considered ASU at the time. My parents were set on in-state schools, and rightfully so. The programs I was looking at at the time made sense with a move to the Bay Area. In the interceding years, ASU also built up an impressive journalism school. Things were in motion.

In 2019, frustrated with my career prospects and dogged by the lingering feeling of unfinished business since dropping out, I decided to go back to school. I built a plan to attend the local community college before transferring to a four-year school to finish up. On a whim, however, I applied to one university: Arizona State.

I was on my lunch break getting my parking pass for Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo, Calif. when I saw I had gotten into ASU. I was unexpectedly overcome with emotion. All ASU acceptance jokes aside, this was a tremendous shock to me and a feeling I was wanted somewhere at a time I believed I deeply needed it. I had long felt like I would be unable to ever finish school.

With student loans soon figured out, I went back to school online, part-time while working full-time, a grueling trudge I am on as I write this with a hopeful graduation of Summer 2026.

But life would throw one incredible curveball in the Spring of 2020.

On March 12, 2020, I had a flight booked from Los Angeles to Phoenix for my first trip to spring training for MadFriars . I was to travel with my girlfriend and her family to Phoenix and spend some time covering minor league prospects and other assorted spring training news while they went to Tucson to visit family and I would join them when I could.

Just an hour before we needed to drive to LA for the flight, spring training was canceled. The start of the entire season was delayed. The world was shutting down due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Disappointed to miss the trip, I was yet relieved to not be stuck somewhere far from home if this entire situation got worse, which it looked like it very well could.

I did not know, however, that home was about to change.

My girlfriend of six years at the time left for her parents’ house to get away. She stayed for several days, and when she returned, well, she wasn’t my girlfriend anymore.

So with a global pandemic on, and a need to move out of my current home, I got to thinking. My job wasn’t a career to me, and I had no attachment to the town I was living in at the time. Moving in with my parents during this situation seemed cumbersome at best and dangerous at worst. The rest of my family is in New York, where the pandemic was beginning to rage and I was certain I could not afford to live if I tried.

All signs pointed to one place.

The place where my school was. The place where I had a very good friend nearby in Peoria. The place in the geographical southwest where I could probably afford to get by.

The desert. Arizona. Phoenix.

The breakup was March 22, 2020. While I worked two essential jobs five days a week, I planned my departure. On April 1, I used my day off to drive to Phoenix, secure a job at Lowe’s and an apartment, and drove back. I got home at 1am and went to work the next day like nothing happened.

On April 21, 2020, I packed a moving van with my belongings and my feline sidekick, Chesapeake, and set off for a new life. A meandering, 13-hour drive featuring hand sanitizer, masks, and a struggle to find operating restrooms brought me to the desert with one complication: Lowe’s was unable to get the shuttered offices in San Luis Obispo to respond to my background check. They had rescinded the offer.

I arrived in Phoenix unemployed.

I spent the Spring bouncing around odd jobs while also working part time for a company who had employed me previously in California. By the Summer, I got on steadily with Wal-Mart, managing the cleaning supplies and toilet paper department. If you remember 2020, you likely remember why there was an opening in this position. The work was grueling, but I was glad to have it. I wasn’t grateful for the customer who tried to enter the store maskless while open carrying a rifle. Two policy violations, bub.

2020 was a lonely, frightening year, one in which I learned more about myself than any before. I was proud of my adaptability, my survival. The pace in which I uprooted myself and started anew. Like the Phoenix bird itself, I reminded myself.

The holidays approached, and I had become accustomed to spending Christmas Day alone because of the nature of my work. For the prior decade or so, I usually did not see my family until December 27, when I could escape the madness at retail and get home for a few days.

This year, however, I would be making no trip home. Save for a visit to pick up some belongings in which I spoke to my parents on the driveway (properly distanced) I hadn’t seen my family in person since this disaster started, and I knew I likely would not until it was over. I would go it alone, like so many other things that year. Even when my grandmother succumbed to COVID (of all things, in her 90s), I mourned the loss in my apartment, alone.

But my last day off before Christmas, I went out on the town. The air was crisp and cool (for Phoenix, it was probably 72 degrees, but it felt wintry), and the atmosphere was festive. For the first time in 2020, it felt relatively normal. I went from store to store and holiday music filled the air. The light posts and fences were decorated with garlands and wreaths. I soaked in each little detail with an appreciative eye.

I even had a Christmas-themed mask, courtesy of my dad. 2020 nostalgia.

This simple shopping trip was only for tea, cookies, and other minor things, but it reminded me of the rush of working in these stores during the holiday season. As much of a terrible grind as it could be, I felt like I was helping the season be better…a feeling I cherish to this day. In the grinding wheels of corporatism, it’s the little things, I suppose. I even had a small fake Christmas cactus as my tree. (And yes, some do decorate the saguaros in their yards like Christmas trees.)

I spent that Christmas watching movies like “It’s A Wonderful Life” and drinking tea. I watched a lot of Ted Lasso. I read classic stories and listened to my favorite Christmas music and reveled in the feeling that even though the year had brought so much suffering and uncertainty onto the world and myself, Christmas still came. We still had this chance.

I learned to appreciate the little things that year. The next year, I would attend ASU in person and truly soak in what Phoenix has to offer. The year after that, fate took me back home.

But it was a Christmas in the desert that taught me how to truly love the season, and as I prepare to fly there with my family later today, I am overwhelmed with the feelings the thought gives me. Today I will take my son to the place that made me who I am today, and share with him the season that changed my life.

Who needs snow when there’s sand?