Ever since the November 2024 election, I have sensed two widespread but connected emotions buzzing among family members, friends, and online—angst and a yearning for serenity.

I cannot remember a time when my inbox has been flooded with so much poetry (really good stuff too), essays on cultivating peace of mind, art and art how-tos, and folks simply reaching out to one another in a way that reminds me of the aftermath of a natural disaster. Which, in my view, November 2024 pretty much was.

Though maybe the term unnatural disaster would be a better choice.

July used to be a month of promise to me. My husband and I shared access to the river in our backyard with friends who came to swim, tube, and just hang out to escape the hot weather. We were married on the 4th, which made that day even more special.

But the allure of fireworks has faded over the past dozen years or so. They are a substitute for “the bombs bursting in air,” after all. And war is never a fact to be celebrated. Its occurrence, its consequences, and its aftermath are inhumane and unpredictable, no matter what the powers-that-be would prefer that you believe.

All people touched by war are damaged. It’s a cruel business but it is a business when all is said and done.

So how will America’s latest war in the Mideast turn out? Not well, I fear, because no war has ever turned out well. And Prez Fubar’s war on Americans? We are already eyewitnesses to that damage, and we all know there is more to come.

So we must be prepared to help with the healing. There is a greater need for that than there is for bombs.

I picked up a piece of letterpress art back in December with this poem. The piece hangs on my studio wall now. I read it often. I invite you to do the same.

Bees
by Alden Solovy

The bees
Do not stop
Collecting pollen
When humans
Murder each other
With guns.
The bees think:
How strange,
How low on the evolutionary scale
Must those humans be,
That they haven’t yet
Figured out
How to make honey
Or peace