Recovering Roundup, September 2025
Plus: Why I have zero plans to leave the United States
OFFICE HOURS! Starting Saturday, October 11th, at 10am PT/1pm ET (6pm UK) I’m going to be hosting office hours for paid subscribers. This will be a call for us to come together, do a little breathing, and either share what’s happening for you or ask questions of me. (If you were in Hip Sobriety School, this will be a little like the Q&A format.) Registration link is at the bottom, below the paywall. The call will not be recorded.
On Not Going
Links are at the bottom. Be safe out there buddies.
A few weeks ago I was driving down our windy country road when a tiny little woman of about 80 in what looked to be a panic flagged me down. I pulled over and rolled my window down when before I knew it she was getting in my car; what she needed was a ride to the bottom of the hill to catch a bus. It ended up that she was going to get her hair cut in Woodstock next to where I do yoga, and I told her I’d drive her there instead. She is French; 84; an artist and a mountaineer. She lost her license 3 years ago from a stroke, and she does the whole panicked hitchhiking thing regularly which is how she gets around.
On the way to yoga she told me she was born in France in the middle of the Nazi occupation and that I had no idea what war does to people, what your parents do to keep you safe and fed, what her mom did with the soldiers. Before we departed she told me World War III was coming; “They want what they have always wanted which is all the humans gone, and they will succeed.” I came home and sat Jeremy down and told him I had some bad news about WWIII; it was coming.
Later that night I told a “politically connected” friend about Marguerite and asked what they thought of WWIII, and they’d just been to dinner with even more “politically connected” people who said no such thing was happening and just wait for 2026.
What struck me was how equally firm they both sounded.