1. My mother, tired on a cold and rainy Sunday night, explaining why she and my father, not particularly social, though not anti-social, beings, were going out to a gathering they were dreading:

Me: “Don’t go.”

Mom: “If we didn’t, what would happen to the social fabric?”

2. Say something about decline of civility. Not much-discussed polarization, partisanship, etc., but, rather, certain less exposed toxins, particularly stealthy threats because buried in a cloak of prevailing fashion. I’m talking about humble bragging, the privileging of one’s (i.e. mine or yours, depending on whether you are you or me) feelings over those of others, the stating of irrelevant truths as rhetorical distraction from relevant ones.

3. How to resolve, whether related to family dynamics, individual behaviors, or societal issues, claim of it is what it is when you believe that it is not A. a priori or B. acceptable, desirable, etc. What to do, how to respond, when something is presented as absolute truth but isn’t? (See also: Skeptic family Christmas, but not only that.)

4. SchoolLess: “I am not a people person.” Questions: to what extent true and, then, how to build a life around and/or revise such self-knowledge and/or how to explore possibility of change? I, too, sometimes want to disappear and never be found.