It has been a while since I’ve made much comment on one of the day’s observances–a little over five years, in fact. I’m not sure what, if anything, I have to add to my earlier comments; I still find things…fraught, perhaps more so now than then, although I think that’s not an uncommon thing, either. That is, I find a lot of things more fraught now than before, and I think other people have similar perspectives on them to a greater degree than previously. Or it seems so from where I’m sitting.

Where I’m sitting does remain much as it has been. That is, the Texas Hill Country is very much like it used to be, at least in the small towns, and much of that is deliberate. There is a sense of hanging onto how things were, for certain values of how they were and for whom. There is a sense of what things ought to be, for certain values of ought and for whom. And neither of those senses have much changed in the last many years, not that I can see.

It makes for some frustration, to be sure. After all, things cannot get better if they do not change, and I and others in the local community are trying to make things better. The way they used to be done might have worked when things used to be done that way–I was not here, so I cannot say much on that score–but they have not been working so well where I can see them. It may be that things get worse, admittedly; there’s always a danger that changes will not improve things. But it is certain that they will if things do not otherwise change, and, again, they cannot improve if they remain as they are.

Just because things have always been done a certain way is not a reason, in itself, to keep doing them that way (even as the fact of newness does not make something worthwhile). I want things to get better; I work to make things get better. I could stand to have an easier time of it than I hitherto have, and I think I am not alone in that. How that works with all of the other stuff going on…I don’t know, but I’ll try to figure it out.

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