It’s a crazy world out there, folks. And yet, it’s always been kind of nuts, just more so under the current circumstances. But, I remain optimistic. Shit, what’s the alternative? Freak out and bail on the universe? Nah, not my cup o’tea. 

As an older millennial, this is another bump in the road of life. All the wars, economic recessions, political chaos, cultural shifts and social unrest (and also the pandemic), with most of it since I entered the workforce 19 years ago.

Hello from the Trade Winds Lounge in downtown Saint Augustine, Florida. It’s 10:10 p.m. and I just finished my first Coors Light at this second stop of the evening, and right when classic rock/country gold tribute act Jackhammer finishes up its second of three sets tonight. 

What was initially an old-school tiki bar when it opened decades (and decades) ago has now morphed, more so melted in the hot Florida sun, into a beloved dive bar of legendary proportions.

At some points, engulfed in the rush of the ride, “your head feels like it’s going to pop off your shoulders,” said 2026 Remember the Removal mentor Freida Saylor. 

Saylor participated in RTR in 2025, a three-week, approximately 950-mile bike ride that traces the northern route of the Trail of Tears — one path of forced removal of the Cherokee people to Oklahoma from their Southern Appalachian homelands — following the 1830 Indian Removal Act signed by President Andrew Jackson.  

Hello from Room 216 at the Holiday Inn Express & Suites on the southern edge of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. It’s 9:30 a.m. Gazing out the window of the hotel, I can see the ancient ridges of the snowy Park Range Mountains surrounding the community in this high desert corner of the West. 

Hello from “The Ice Chalet,” a hockey rink just west of downtown Knoxville, Tennessee, along Kingston Pike. It’s Thursday evening and I find myself one of only three spectators in the bleachers watching some of the finest amateur skaters in this city go at it mere hours after clocking out of their day job. 

In January, in the middle of the week-long subfreezing temps and the snow that froze into ice, one of my sons gave me a belated Christmas gift, Alfred Lansing’s “Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (Basic Books, 2015, 416 pages). Originally published in 1959, this account of explorer Ernest Shackleton and his 27-man crew and their long battle for survival in Antarctica sold moderately well, then took off with the public after its reappearance in the late 1980s. Many of you readers have likely read this tale of heroism and resilience, but I was a come-lately to its pages. 

At 9 a.m. Wednesday, the alarm went off from the smart phone on my nightstand. Reaching for the contraption and reading the morning text messages, it appeared our weekly editorial meeting set for 10 a.m. would shift to Friday. And yet, before I could roll back over to sleep a little more, another message pinged on the phone. 

I had just finished a 3.3-mile jog along the backroads of Clinton County. The afternoon sun was quickly falling behind the snowy peaks of the Adirondack Mountains in the distance. The slow shadow of winter night soon enveloping the Champlain Valley, my parents’ Upstate New York farmhouse smack dab in the middle of it. And it was at this moment my mother asked me a question. 

Hello from my folks’ farmhouse out in the countryside of Upstate New York. It’s been mighty frigid here in my native North Country since I arrived home last week. At one point, ‘round midnight on a recent evening, the temperature dropped to around -22 degrees. Daytime temps hovered at zero for several days, with wind chills from the Canadian Arctic making critters outside hide and remain silent and those inside huddled near the fireplace, waiting out the cold.  

Ordering some item from a company like Amazon — a smock, a special coffee, cotton swabs, whatever — is quick, simple and easy. You place the order, and two or three days later, the package appears on your front porch. The same ease and speed apply when ordering your groceries from Walmart or the local food mart. You make a list, tap a key, arrive at the delivery time, put the groceries in the car and brush your hands off as a job well done.