Regarding the complete absence of writing in these pages, I attribute it to the fact that there are only so many writing minutes in the day for me, and for the last three years they have been taken up with writing 200-1500 word responses to Opinions in the NYT, as well as responses to the responses. Sometimes I'm posting 20 or more a day.

Bill Scott would have loved that forum, because it's an entire community with various actors, similar to the community of about a dozen obsessive letters-to-the-editor writers in the Middletown Times Herald Record in the 1970's/80's. In this case there are dozens of repeat writers. My sport, I guess you could say, is to relentlessly push back on the more egregious supporters/apologists of the current administration. So if there's an excuse for an absence.. there it is.