Dear Friends,

After accomplishing a hefty load of footsteps in hot weather, I inevitably crave a tall infusion of electrolytes. Arriving in Creston, I pop into a convenience store, buy orange juice and a piece of sugary junk food, and amble outside in search of a seat in the shade.

There’s one table, and there’s already a woman in her thirties sitting at it. I ask if I can join her. She says sure. I plop down as gracefully as one who’s just walked thirteen dusty miles can plop, and notice a pile of blocks in front of her.

“What’s that?,” I ask.

“It’s a game of Jenga that some kids left behind,” she says as she carefully stacks the blocks, three across, until there’s an 18-row tower in front of her.

She carefully removes one block and says, “Your turn.”

“Well, that’s a nonchalant way to invite me to play, and I accept,” I say. “I don’t think I’ve ever played this game before.”

“I’ve got three kids at home, and we play it a lot,” she tells me.

We go back and forth until there’s hardly a row with more than one block remaining. Remarkably, I execute a challenging removal. She’s in a bind. Sure enough, on her next attempt, the tower collapses.

The game of Jenga – and my stunning triumph – provide an opening to more serious conversation. I explain why I’m walking. Like nearly everyone I meet, she agrees that our democracy is in trouble. I ask if there are any particular issues that concern her.

“Racism,” she says. “My family is mixed race, and we’ve had some disturbing incidents here in Creston.”

She tells me about an occurrence that made national news in the summer of 2017, when five Creston high school students shared a photo of themselves wearing KKK hoods while burning a cross and holding a Confederate flag.

The students were football players. They were immediately removed from the team.

Jeff Bevins, the school’s athletic director, said, “This picture does not represent the beliefs of our school system, our parents, or our community.”

The parents of one of the students submitted a statement to the local newspaper apologizing for their son’s actions and said they supported the school’s disciplinary decisions.

Good community response. But my Jenga partner tells me that, sometime afterwards, other Creston residents who weren’t happy with the school’s action printed t-shirts supporting the students’ “freedom of speech.”

Even though that incident happened eight years ago, and even though those involved were disciplined, scars still remain.

The woman tells me that with President Trump turning up his hurtful, hateful rhetoric, some Creston residents feel empowered to express their own racist comments and to take actions that, years earlier, would have been condemned.

I thank the woman for visiting, thank her for allowing me to win my first game of Jenga, and invite her to keep in touch. For sure, there’s no doubt that when you have a president who models behavior that society formerly considered unacceptable, some people will, inevitably, feel they have greater liberty to engage in the same kind of behavior.

After all, how many times have we heard someone claim that a child misbehaves because he or she saw bad behavior modeled at home? If a parent can be a bad role model, even a racist one, then how much truer is that for the leader of a country?

Thanks for reading, listening, and taking action.

— Ed Fallon