November 26, 2025

Dear Stephen –

It’s been a while since I wrote. There was Halloween and I knew that you, the patron saint of the horrid and the ghastly, would be super busy getting ready. And then I got diagnosed with Macular Degeneration and decided that I had more important things to do with my eyes than write to someone who probably doesn’t even read my letters, let alone take my advice.

But here I am, once again trying to wake you up from that toxic, demented slumber you seem to operate in. What inspired me was the Ken Burns PBS series “The American Revolution,” especially the last episode. All the episodes were excellent although the battle parts got kind of repetitive, the red dots move this way, the blue dots move that way, they clash and leave hundreds dead or moaning and move on to spill huge amounts of blood all over another beautiful piece of eastern landscape. But I stuck with it, because I just had to find out how it ended, which was pretty amazing. I took the following 5 lessons away that are useful for us today and might help us get out of the pickle you have put us in.

• You don’t have to win, you just have to not lose. The point is that you just have to keep going, get up after a loss and plod on to the next battle. Figure out a way to stay alive through the frigid winter when you have nothing but torn trousers, and a ragged shirt and you’ve resorted to boiling your shoes for dinner. Keep writing letters to your wife not knowing if she will ever read them, or if when she does you will already be dead. Tell her to remember to feed the chickens unless she’s already eaten them, and to take apart that shed for firewood to keep warm, and to tell the children that he loves them. Remember, this is your land (well, sort of, if you don’t count everyone who was on it before you came), and you are not going anywhere. Just hang on.
• Women don’t get off easy:  If you are at home waiting for this hell to be over, you do your wifely and motherly duties as well as you can. And if you are unlucky the battles will come to you, and you will be responsible for hustling out to the body-strewn field as soon as the armies have moved on. There you sort the dead from the living, tend the wounded, bury the dead with as much dignity as possible, and carry survivors to your home where you try to nurse them back to fight another day. All this while trying to keep a roof overhead and food on the table for your children. Those hungry, frightened children are your best hope for a bright future because when you are gone – and it may be sooner rather than later — it will be up to them to keep not losing.  A few women turned their backs on this grueling role, traded their dresses for a shabby uniform and went to war. I get that.  
• You neighbor is not the enemy.  The vast majority of battles were fought between all-American neighbors, loyalists (pro England) and rebels (anti England). If it weren’t for England, you could have had a nice potluck, or a barbecue, a few pints of ale, watched the children frolic in the meadow and enjoyed yourselves. Don’t let the enemy tear you apart. Keep talking to each other, decide what’s really important, and stick to it. We need to store up a lot of food so we can all eat this winter. OK! We need to pool our money and hire a school teacher. OK! There were some communities of Quakers and others who just didn’t want to be in the fight, didn’t want to turn on their neighbors or go to war. They wanted to live their lives peacefully and wait for the madness to end. Whether they ended up under a king, or under something else didn’t really matter to them. But that was not acceptable, and many lost their homes, businesses and land, or their lives, because they would not take a side.
• If you were there first, too bad.  The real losers in the revolution were the Native Americans, who desperately tried to figure out which side was going to do them the least harm. They were fighting for homelands that had been already gobbled up, or were next on the menu. Different tribes made different choices, meaning that they killed great numbers of each other, particularly tragic for a population destined for extermination. Both the agreement to ally with France and the Treaty of Paris in 1783 to end the war with England ignored the existence of the many tribal communities west of the Allegheny mountains, granting to America the right to those lands all the way to the Mississippi River. Thus began the westward expansion which trampled the rights of, or just killed, the original citizens of the continent.
• Do not let a despot take over. The Constitution is sacred and as long as we all agree on that this experiment might work. But the last message of the series is “Beware.” The framers of the Constitution warned that the republic – made up of all the people described above– is vulnerable to a despot, a tyrant, a charismatic lunatic. Yes, this wonderful mix of people does not always move in the right direction. Just as we turned on our neighbors in the late 1700s, we can do that again, demonizing the other to the point of violence and insanity. And on that fertile ground, an ill-intentioned, egomaniac could fan the flames and create chaos and panic. Ignoring the constitution and the authority of the carefully crafted three branches of government, this evil-doer could seize power. Such was the worry of those crafters of the Constitution, may they rest in peace… which is probably hard when they are rolling over in their graves as we speak.

Well, Stephen, on that ominous note, I remind you that mischief is afoot in the land. May you have the Thanksgiving that you deserve.

Sincerely,

Lucy