A Tale of Two Illinois Towns and Two July 4 Parades

They were 30 miles apart but the lack of gun safety laws means everything is in our own backyard

In 1976, novelist, memoirist and essayist Joan Didion wrestled to the ground what compelled her to write in a piece called “Why I Write,” which was excerpted from a collection of hers and published in the New York Times. It’s a great essay. You can find it online. I’m just mentioning it because to me, in classic self-effacing form, Didion described what compels me, and I am sure many others, to write.

It’s not necessarily self-expression, though that is a great benefit. It’s not because we think we have such important, worthy thoughts the world would be missing out on if we didn’t commit them to paper. It’s to connect with our own thoughts, to understand them and ourselves better in the process. She wrote: “Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” I would expand this to include figuring out what I am feeling because that is a very important piece of my motivation but otherwise, yes, spot on. Thank you, Ms. Didion.