When the Grey Hair is Dead

Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. I’m not going to sugarcoat it: November has been a rough one to keep up with, as reflected by my absence in this space. The second-to-the-last week of the month served as culmination1 to an abundance of time spent on the road for about as long as I can remember, concluding with eleven speaking engagements spread over four days, with multi-hour drives separating most of them. It was a lot! And now, with that behind me, I’m slowly returning to myself (and catching up on correspondence)2 and, having nothing beyond a couple zoom events scheduled for December (see below, in fact!), you can expect to hear more from me these remaining weeks of 2025. In just a day or two will be the monthly sentences and shortly after that another post I’ve been making notes toward for a couple weeks now.

This post serves mostly – via convenient bullet points, a format I rarely employ – to share a couple things I think you might be interested in, a couple events you might want to participate in and, finally, a few things I think are important that might interest you in this holiday season. I hope you think they are too. As I mentioned, a proper essay will follow next week.

I’m grateful you are here. There’s been a lot of stressful tumult in the newsletter sphere these last few weeks that has been distracting and made me question to point of doing it at all3. The constant and what makes it work for me has been the ongoing support of all of you. Whether you pay for your subscription or not, I’m happy to have you. Paid ones help, and I appreciate them more than you might realize, but they will never be required to be part of what’s going on here and there will never be stuff you have to pay to see. As Sarah says, “I would never paywall in times of peril.” I agree. I also subscribe to the idea that people know what they can afford and what is valuable to them, and that – the ability to pay – shouldn’t give more opportunity for stuff like this than it does for those who can’t. Things are tight and ...