So, there it is: Obtain New President: Quest Complete! Now, let’s DO something. Find something that you do well, and find a way to help people with it. Love animals? Take two hours – four sitcoms worth of time – and volunteer at an animal shelter. Good at helping your kids with their homework? Go down to the local family aid society and help THOSE kids with their homework every once in a while. Good with tools? Knock on your neighbors’ doors, ask them if they need help with something. We are SO good in this country at pretending that we don’t need each other, in priding ourselves in our self-reliant independence from each other – and that served us well for a long time. But that time is over.
We have this tremendous amount of natural ability and talent that gets employed when it is paid for, and then gets tucked under the bed while we enjoy the small entertainments of the evening. Find a place that has never seen the benefit of those abilities; bring them what you can. I know, it’s easy to wrap one’s self in the warm blankets of the Household Objects – if I spent the rest of my life in a room with a computer and a few dozen bookshelves, I’d be entirely happy – but that road, when Everybody takes it, goes nowhere, or worse than nowhere, to a slow, grinding dissolution. So, let’s all figure out Our Thing and Do It. A couple hours a week… Let’s go!
– Count Dolby von Luckner
In the meantime: “We will restore science to its rightful place…” Damn Straight.