Not Dead Yet
A vigil in Vermont
I tuned in to Dean Ball today on Ezra Klein’s podcast. Not my usual source. (Ball writes the Hyperdimensional newsletter on AI and politics and is a former Trump administration official.)
He opens his most recent piece with his father’s death and his son’s birth — bookends eleven years apart. What he learned watching both: “neither are discrete events.” Death, he writes, is “a series of sleepenings.” Some people spend decades dying. He’s writing about AI and our republic through that lens.
My mom kept copies of the Constitution everywhere — glove compartment, attic, purse — and handed them to anyone who would take one. She loved that document with her whole heart.
Tonight there’s a candle in my farmhouse window.
Our precious flame, will we subvert it, contain it, or be consumed?