Meg works at a local store in Ripon but she grew up in New Jersey, married a Brit who is a chaplain in the Royal Service. When she was young, she worked in D.C. for the Senate Chaplain. Did that for many years before leaving it and heading off to Oxford to study theology herself. She’d met the Chaplain she’s now married to years ago, but as happens in life, they followed divergent paths for a good long while, found each other again and spent a few years getting to know one another again before marrying.

She’s happy to be living in England, especially now. But she does routinely return to the US where she has extended family. She’s vacationed in Portland and in Bend. Family reunions and such. It’s been unsettling watching from afar as America falls into Stephen Miller directed fascist state. Holidays with the family can be stressful in ways it never was before. “All the old people love Trump; all the young people hate him,” she said.

Like a lot of Americans, and ex-pats, Meg’s had to find a work around. Not a lot was said at the last family gathering. The MAGA group were pretty silent about their dear leader, that helped. They seem to be growing more silent as the government-funded terrorism increases. Have you noticed that about your own MAGA friends and family? Still there’s worry that the murders will increase, Homan or no Homan. Miller is set on it. So is that slog of a man, Bannon. Two people who deserve to be thrown into a dungeon full of rabid rats.

“Have you been to the cathedral?” Meg asked. We had not, so she gave us directions and we set off, but not before telling her to read Patti Callahan Henry’s book Becoming Mrs. Lewis, a must for every C.S. Lewis fan.

At one time it was hoped that Ripon would become a destination for scholars, a University of the North town to rival Oxford and Cambridge, but Elizabeth I never got onboard with that plan. Over half-a-million people pass through this part of the Yorkshires every year on their way to visit the UNESCO site of the Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Gardens .

My friend, poet/writer Jayne Moore Waldrop was the first to tell me to be sure and visit the Abbey. We had hoped to get there last year while in Hebden Bridge but didn’t make it. We have yet to make our way there, but are waiting for a day that is a bit more conducive weather wise. It was supposed to start snowing last night. It hasn’t yet but I’m not as hardy weather-wise as these English locals. I see those trainers riding past my bedroom window every morning, without a lick of fat on them, and I just want to run out and take them a warm blanket.

Not a mile from where I sit typing this missive is Gallows Hill where 300 Catholic rebels were hung in January of 1570. That’s about ten or more hangings a day. And that was only half the rebels, another 300 were slaughtered. (Too bad they didn’t have Social Media, I guess. They could have recorded their outrage with one another without the mess and nasty work of slaughtering, hanging and beheading folks. Without running water or a washing machine around, you know that had to be some lowly servant’s job to mop up).

Here’s the thing I want you to remember, though: The country survived all that infighting. Bad Kings and religious differences and political betrayals and man-made violence. The country survived it all. Ripon survived it all.

Not without cost, mind you. Many, many innocent people died because of stupid selfish craven vile men. Women. Children. Elderly.

Just like in Palestine.

Just like in Minneapolis.

Just like in Portland.

Innocent people are always the “collateral damage” of the ruthless ambitions of craven men like Miller and Bannon and Kushner and Trump and Vance and McConnell and so many other Republicans.

Historically, however, men like them often ended up beheaded, dismembered and put on display for public viewing. There must have been some sense of karma in that, eh?

This morning, while eating jam and toast and drinking a cuppa in a local coffee shop in Ripon, I listened to Ian McKellen recite Thomas More’s soliloquy on the Colbert Show. Did you watch it?

Salty tears streamed down my face as I thought about all the people I love who have embraced Trump, a racist and a rapist, a man who unleashed demons upon America. McKellen’s performance reflected back the depths of how far we have sunk as people, how Americans have become so depraved that they chose a man who raped young girls as their leader. A man so depraved he protects those who rape young girls.

Here in England the talk is that Keir Starmer is sure to lose his job over his part in appointing Mandelson despite his chumminess with Epstein. I wish Americans were as keen to hold their leaders responsible for the cabal of sex abusers but it seems the only thing MAGA Americans are keen to do is rape, pillage and slaughter those outside their cult.

All this will come to an end one day, as it always does. Miller will die. Bannon will die. Trump is already dying. As is McConnell.

The wreckage they leave behind is immense. The country is littered with victims of their craven ways.

Yet, good people are rising up. We must continue to rise up. We cannot let despair destroy us, too. We possess the power to quarter, dismember, and display every wrong they have done.

And to set our country right again.

Soon and very soon.