This has been a rough year. There’s a complete d-bag in the White House. The current North Korea situation has me bug-eye panicked when I pause to think about it. I don’t actually do my job anymore—I just surf the web for the next terrible story about terrible people and wonder how blind we all had to be not to notice how broken this nation is. I spent a long time in my 20s thinking that the US was Rome and that the fall was coming, but that’s when I was in my 20s and had read two whole issues of the Utne Reader and whatnot. Even that was a white male fantasy of The Great Collapse—not the actual blow-by-blow destruction we get to enjoy now.

It’s just... exhausting. It helps to write this, and it helps to see Portlanders turning to each other and asking, “How can I help?” I’ve witnessed countless small kindnesses, and I’m heartened every time. I love y’all and I hope you’re monitoring your own numbers of fucks that you have to give. And please, please, please don’t imagine that you’re the only one with an empty bucket. We’ll find ways to fill them back up together.—Anonymous