Cecile Richards died today.

And what I realized while listening to Big Star's "#1 Record"

Tough day, huh?

The daughter of Texas Governor Ann Richards, former President of Planned Parenthood and founder of Supermajority, a champion of progressive causes, has passed away from an aggressive form of brain cancer.

What a symbolic day for that to happen.

Don McLean talked about the day the music died.

January 20, 2025 is the day a lot of things will die, too.

I’ve been wrestling against my own resignation with the political landscape. If 2016 was about resistance, the New York Times said yesterday that 2024 was about resignation. Is it because we are tired? I know I am.

I think the Bible says not to grow weary while doing good.

That helps me remember that doing good is an exhausting enterprise.

(It must be absolutely exhilarating to do bad.)

As most of you know, one of the reasons we closed the brick-and-mortar shop was so I could finish my doctoral degree and get my manuscript published. As much as it pains me to admit, I have had a very difficult time getting traction with a publisher or agent. That discouragement has been snuffing the creativity and joy from writing out of me.

But I realized something yesterday while listening to Big Star. One of my goals for 2025 is to listen to every album in Rolling Stone magazine’s Best 500 Albums of All Time. The entry for “#1 Record” reads:

“Big Star didn’t sell many records but did become a crucial inspiration to underdogs like R.E.M., the Replacements, and Elliott Smith. As Alex Chilton (band member) said later, ‘If you only press up a hundred copies of a record, then eventually it will find its way to the hundred people in the world who want it the most.”

This week I’m back at my alma mater to cook for the new Creative Writing and Public Theology cohort, the same program I graduated from this past Spring.

While serving pot pies, I reconnected with a then-prospective student visiting campus last June who attended one of our public readings. That night, I shared a piece about the King of Prussia being in the closet, a very personal narrative that took a shit ton of courage to share on a public stage.

He told me that hearing that piece solidified his decision to do this program.

And who knows where his writings and creativity will lead?

Maybe I’m a bridge.

I have to battle against the capitalistic mindset with writing that it only matters if a wide(r) audience reads it, if I have an agent, if I’m on a bestseller list, if I will a contest, if I have an ISBN number to my name and an entry in the Library of Congress.

It’s the little things we do that incrementally can alter circuitous routes.

Cecile Richards did big things.

I do little things.

We all have to do something and believe that it matters, somehow.

It’s about noon now. I know something is happening in Washington DC but I’m sitting at my laptop in Pittsburgh, taking a break from cooking, writing these words, hoping my words find their way to who wants them most.