It's a collective truth that slavery is wrong, that child labor is wrong, that gross inequality is wrong. God didn't send it.

I'm amazed at the adolescent nature of some of the religious fanatics in our government. And they're full of double standards.

Basically, I have found that people who have tried to start communities out of good feelings or hippie-dippie abstract concepts of love - it doesn't work. But if you just concentrate on what is the identity of your town - its waterfalls, its battles, its notable mill strike or those things - you dig into what your town is from its rock formations to its history to its food. Then this thing called community happens all the time.

I think we're coming to a place where we're saying all war is wrong. We might even learn something about the sensationalism we get caught up in with people like Donald Trump.

But I benefit from the taxes I pay because I know how to access the benefits of the taxes.

I've watched towns and cities evolve and become very resilient, and fun, and unique, and prosperous on their own terms. And the secret is bridging. It's when the local church has a fun clothing swap fundraiser with a temple, and then the next year they bring in the mosque.

The summer ends and we wonder who we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And today I passed the high school, the river, the maple tree I passed the farms that made it Through the last days of the century And I knew that I was going to learn again Again, in this less hazy light I saw the fields beyond the fields The fields beyond the field