Endurance

NB: Each week I’m posting something from the archives of my more than 20 years of writing on the web. Sometimes it’s a social media post, sometimes a blog post, or (like today) it’s an excerpt from a newsletter issue originally published in October of 2025. Each entry gets updated with some modern context or point of view. – HH

A thing many people do not know about me is that I love Old Roses. Note the uppercase letters—I’m not talking about roses that are long in the tooth, but roses that have been in cultivation for a really long time—the term is usually applied to those roses introduced to the public before the introduction of Hybrid Tea roses in 1867. 

These roses are tough, are not grafted, and can withstand neglect. One garden writer calls them roses even dead people can grow, because in the US South, they are often found in old country graveyards, surviving on rainwater and little else. I have six rosebushes that are true Old Roses, and another six that were introduced later than 1867, but are still tough and hardy and grow on their own roots. Then there are some Knockouts I rescued on clearance in the big box garden center, but hell, I like them too. 

But my favorite rose is also the oldest in my collection—Old Blush. It’s the first Asian rose introduced to Europe, way back in 1752, nearly 30 years before the American Revolution. But in China, it had been cultivated for more than a thousand years at that point. 

But here is the thing you might not realize if plants are not a big thing in your life. Named varieties—like Old Blush—are prized for their attributes, such as the color of their flowers, the number of petals, or their size, for instance. But if you take seeds that develop from rose hips on an Old Blush bush, and plant them, you don’t get an Old Blush baby bush. You get a random bush that may or may not have the same attributes, just like how if you have red hair, your kid may, or may not, have red hair.  

The only way to get an Old Blush rose bush is to take a cutting from an existing Old Blush bush, and then root it, and then plant it. You are cloning the existing bush. It is 100% genetically identical to the “parent” bush. 

So, the Old Blush bush in my front yard, which blooms periodically throughout the year but reliably into late fall every year, is genetically the same bush that was being cultivated in China 1200 years ago. It began life as a cutting from a bush that was a cutting from a bush that was a cutting from a bush and so on, all the way back to 700 AD or so. 

Life is really chaotic right now. It feels like our nation is collapsing, and our way of life is ending, and for some of us, it’s really dangerous right now. At times like this, being the caretaker for a rose that is genetically 1300 years old, which has seen the collapse of empires and survived genocides and has outlived tyrants and stood watch over the graveyards of patriots seems really important right now, and gives me hope that we too, can not only endure, but be beautiful while we do it. 

UPDATE:
My nation is still clown pants, and October seems so quaint – before we invaded Venezuela, before we watched Renee Good get murdered on video, before we *checks notes* are threating to invade another NATO country.

But the thing Old Blush teaches me is still the same. There is always an empire. There are always tyrants. There is always someone who seeks to watch the world burn.

But there is also always someone fighting the empire. There is always a resistance movement. There is always someone with the water to pour on the flames.

Introducing: Canebrake Studio

It feels tone deaf to try to talk about anything on social media right now that isn’t the horrific situation in Minnesota. Or the Epstein files. Or Venezuela. Or. Or. Or.

I know many of us are collectively grieving while in shock and in fear. Meanwhile, we still have to pay the light bill. The mortgage is due. We’re still expected to show up for work. It’s a lot.

So it is with a bit of reticence that I tell you I have done what many of you have asked me to do, and I opened a store to sell the handcrafted items—spoons, cutting boards, crosses, etc. — I make. It’s also where you can buy a copy of my book, Food Is Love.

I started a company to hold the store and my writing and publishing work, and it’s called Canebrake Studio. I talk about the logic behind the name on the store’s about page.

Why not just start an Etsy shop?

Several reasons, including liking to be in control, owning my audience, and seller fees, but the biggest one is that I don’t just want a place to sell things, although I surely do hope you buy things I make. I also want a place to talk about things like being a leftist who is trying to build a business in keeping with my values, in public, from scratch.

This is going to be a business with a point of view.

Because the time and money to make this happen came about because of the members who support my work, members at every level get a 10% discount on everything in the shop. You can learn more about being a member on this page.

The inventory will be updated on Sunday evenings, usually by 9 PM Central Time, so please check back.

And it’s still under construction, but all the pieces are there. Pardon the dust as it continues to get tweaks and adjustments. Remember, I’m building this in public.

I’m really excited about this, and I hope you will check it out.

Food Is Love—The Book

In December of 2021, I wrote a blog post about biscuits. I had been on a long road trip, coming home from a friend’s memorial service, and I was all in my feelings. I stopped for a biscuit at a fast-food joint.

As I drove home, staring at the gray asphalt in front of me, I thought about how, in the midst of my deep sadness, I sought comfort not in a whiskey bottle, or illicit chemicals, or retail therapy, or any of the other ways our society connects with its feelings, but instead, I sought out a biscuit.

This led me to reflecting on all the ways food and memory and feeling are intertwined—how safe I felt at that potluck dinner in that church basement, how loved I was when mom made my favorite meal, the comfort at having the same three deserts at every family celebration.

It occurred to me that food is love, and that I have known this as long as I have known anything. The people who loved me in the rural hill country of Mississippi didn’t have many tools to show that love, but, by God, they could make sure I was fed food that nurtured my soul as well as my body. We might not have health insurance or name-brand clothes, but we could have cobblers and fudge pies and biscuits that flake like a pastry from Paris does.

After a long hard day at work, a pot of beans and ham and a slice of rustic cornbread give you strength to get up tomorrow, to take care of the people you love. And the health, energy, rejuvenation and even joy that comes from simple food, prepared well and with love and intention, can give downtrodden people enough margin in their lives to keep going and sometimes inch forward, even when everything around them seems to conspire against them. 

So, I wrote a book about that.

It’s 30 essays about food, love, and care. Interspersed, there are 25 recipes of foods that matter to me, and that have stories attached to them. Along the way, you will learn how to season a cast-iron skillet, the makings of a perfect barbecue bologna sandwich, and we will go hunting for muscadines in the thicket so we can make jelly.

But mostly, I hope this book will help you reflect on the foods that are tied to memories for you, and that take you back to the people you love, again and again.

You can buy a signed copy from me, or get an unsigned paperback of Food is Love at Bookshop.org, Amazon , on Kindle, or at Barnes & Noble. You should also be able to order directly from your local independent bookstore.

Goodbye, 2025

I hate the winter, but I love New Year’s Day. It’s a time when we at least consider what we can do differently in the future, while remembering the things we have done in the past. If you, like me, have the twin addictions of hope and nostalgia, it can be a wonderful time.

It can also be a time of depression and anxiety if you are not careful, especially if when you look back you see pain, and if you look forward, you see anxiety and scarcity.

Although I am addicted to hope and nostalgia, I live with anxiety and depression. And 2025 has been rough, y’all.

The back story:

In 2024, I was hired to build a nonprofit to connect living wage employers to formerly incarcerated folks. They had some funding commitments, and a general plan, so most of what I needed to do was to bring about implementation. In late fall of 24, those funding commitments disappeared, so we pivoted to getting federal money commitments to fund it. We reached terms in the first full week of 2025—the future looked amazing.

And then the inauguration happened. Federal money disappeared. People who had been eager to talk to me suddenly quit returning calls. Some of our best relationships lost their jobs. We came up with alternative plans to downscale, but couldn’t downscale enough, fast enough. By April, we didn’t have any money left to pay me. I lost my health insurance at the end of May.

I went into organizer mode and began having lots of one-on-one conversations with folks—here’s what I’ve been up to, here’s what I would like to do. Ideas coalesced, and people got excited, and some folks who were trying to reboot a failing nonprofit with an amazing legacy hired me to bring this vision to their org. They had some money, not much, but had funding commitments, and a rich legacy they were under-utilizing.

Friends, four months later the funding commitments fell through, and the philanthropic world had changed, and what would have been easy to fund in 2024 became a nightmare in 2025.

So, in early November, I found myself back to beating the streets. Right before the holidays is always a good time to look for your next career move (that was sarcasm). But more than that, I began to have some pretty severe doubts about the future, this country, and my role in it.

The navel gazing:

I have spent almost all the last 20 years doing “social justice work”, broadly defined. Most of my money has come from the nonprofit sector, but I don’t think of myself as a nonprofit professional. I just wanted to do good work, and that was the easiest, most legible way to get paid for it. And it has always been relatively easy to find work that needs doing, and that I am interested in doing, and that there were enough people willing to pay me to do it.

But the world has changed. I spent this whole damn year talking to philanthropy, and they are scared out of their gourds, y’all. It’s always hard to raise money for things in Mississippi—nationally, only 3% of philanthropic dollars come to the South. But the left-leaning folks who have always been eager to try new things are now holding onto every dollar, because the work they have funded until now is in danger. And they are scared of the IRS being weaponized against them for funding “woke” causes.

Individual philanthropists (read: rich folks of good will) are scared, too. Don’t attract too much attention, don’t take risks, don’t draw the ire of the administration.

As a straight white Christian male, I’ve never really been afraid of drawing attention—but that is when you can count on due process, and a stable federal government. But I am the sole income earner in our household. My spouse is disabled and dependent on insurance provided by the federal government to stay alive. Her meds alone would cost 36,000 out of pocket. My wife and five cats depend on my earning money to keep them all alive, and there is zero hyperbole in that sentence.

So, do I really want to invest in, and depend on, a future where I derive my income by being someone who gets paid to be a high-visibility, active combatant of the government?

It does not feel safe to do so. Or wise.

I dislike saying that. I dislike feeling afraid for my family and the people I love. And I dislike making money decisions based on fear.

So here we are at the end of this horrible year, and our country is in chaos, and our elected officials are untrustworthy, and I worked full time only eight of the last 12 months, and am really not sure I want to keep working in the nonprofit sector. And I’m 53, and God help my algorithm, which is filled with articles telling me how scary the job market is for folks over 50.

To be clear—I earn income from several places. I do some contract work for a local nonprofit—I earn about 20% of my annual income from there. I have a newsletter I publish, and other writing, and that is all supported by a team of patrons—that is another 25% or so. And I occasionally sell something I made, or a commission piece, and that is maybe 8-10%.

So, right now, bills are being paid, but losing half your income and all your health insurance leaves a mark. Emotionally, having started this year on a high note and leaving it in a severe deficit has messed with my head in all the ways you might expect it would for a 53-year-old male with depression and anxiety and ADHD.

Some conclusions:

In 2026, I will have to focus on making money. That is pretty much the filter for taking on new things next year: do they make money?

I’ve removed myself from some boards, and shucked myself from some other commitments. I’ve formed a new company to hold my creative work, and it will have a store where I sell the things I make and write (expect several big announcements on January 5th!).

Related to that, expect me to make and to write more things to sell. I’m working like a madman to revamp and improve my membership program, so it provides even more value to the members who support my work. (Expect an announcement on February 2nd.)

I’ll be writing more, and Facebook monetized me earlier this year, so I’ll have to figure out how to actually work that. God bless my heart and your feed.

 And yes, while I love the idea of making a living from just the things I make and the words I write, I know I will have to find at least a half-time job to fill in the edges. So, if you know of work you think I would be good at, please let me know.

Over 2025, I’ve felt at various times hopeful, fearful, optimistic, and betrayed. I’m tired and yet know the fight in front of us is long and hard.

One thing I love about social media is the opportunity to share in your joy, even when my supply of joy is in severe deficit. I love seeing your kids’ Halloween costumes, that perfect view from your window, the crumpled wrapping paper on Christmas morning, the excitement that is evident when you post the cover of the book you just finished.  

I see you, and am thankful for you. And thanks for sharing your joy.

Wishing you every good thing in the new year.

HH

PS: This is the sort of thing I used to write regularly, and which got me a reputation for being vulnerable. There are lots of people who are close to me who haven’t known about all the financial chaos of this year because I have been reluctant to write about it. I mean, “a straight white man is afraid—news at 11”.

And honestly, being vulnerable about your fears and doubts gets you clicks, but also takes a toll on your mental health.

But I still hold to the wise words of Mr. Rogers, who said that anything human is mentionable, and by talking about it, it becomes more manageable. Thanks for being the people to give me a place to talk about it.

Hugh's Blog

Hopeful in spite of the facts

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