Livin' way out in the sticks has its downsides...our internet's been almost nonexistent for the last couple of months. I could barely get a page to open until yesterday despite weeks of complaining to the provider. I've been catchin' up on all your recent posts and Sam definitely sounds like a keeper. Don't suppose he has any male siblings who'd like a wee holiday in Ireland. 🙃

Surrounded by them. Me too.
They "know" so much more than those who listen to multiple news sources.
So many:
Who wants to live in a panopticon
where all you can see is what you have been told to see?

I'm haunted by "no maypoles" - it leaps out at me, in part because my Holy Day of Obligation is Maifest (May Day, weaving ribbons around the poles as the women yodel in their Dirndls and floral wreaths), and it brings tears to my eyes every year, every time, that I revisit this Germanic tradition in a town near me. 
I suppose the Midwest farm folk, like the Amish and Mennonites, shut out the darkness and despair of the larger world, the ghettoes, the families in tin huts in Mexico, the sex-trafficked children, and they rejoice and praise God for their simple life on the farm (which makes me think of the William Carlos Williams poem, so much depends on the red wheelbarrow glazed with rainwater beside the white chickens) - 
How small our world can be, if we live in that panopticon, seeing only what we want to see, and yanking the shades down over the view outside our window. Poverty. Injustice. War.
*God be praised, WE are blessed~*

I feel lucky and my wish for you is you achieve that too!
Have conversations with those who try to be open minded and are interested in different versions of the stories. 

💕🍀