I never considered what I would do in the event of a reprise, because I never considered that such a terrible thing could happen again.

I’m really naive sometimes.

Clearly, though I’ve indulged it rather copiously for the past couple of days, hair-trigger rage is not a viable long-term approach. It’s not good for me. More importantly, it doesn’t accomplish anything productive. However, not paying attention to any news and opinion for any length of time isn’t workable this time either.

(On day one, our esteemed president declared by executive order that my daughter doesn’t exist.)

My research has begun in earnest. We must do everything we can to counter the second Trump presidency effectively.

The first stop this year was Fort Myers, where I visited my Bob Jones classmate DeAnna. I hadn’t seen DeAnna since 1998, and it was so good to catch up with her in person!

Now this was 790 miles one way, which was too much for a single leg. I’m sure I’ll get that far away from home again on a future trip, but I won’t do it again without an intermediate stop. Lesson learned.

Next up was Margaret, at Jekyll Island. Margaret used to be in Newnan, Georgia, which was much easier. Since she moved herself to the Georgia coast, she’s been tough to hit–until I found myself driving north out of the Florida peninsula the morning of day two! Margaret is one of my oldest friends. We were Episcopal Day School pupils together. And her brother David was visiting from southern California, so I got to see him too! Had to be 1980 or 1981 the last time I saw David.

Driftwood Beach at Jekyll Island is one of the only places I’ve ever visited that looks plausibly extraterrestrial. Wow, what a strange and beautiful place.

Back to Newnan on day three to see my Oxford classmate Karin! We enjoyed some marvelous burgers and a lot of laughs. I love falling back in with Karin because hers is genuinely one of those friendships for which no time ever elapses. You just pick up where you left off.

For lunch on day four, I caught back up with Mr. and Mrs. Thagard in Oxford, who both taught at The Donoho School in Anniston. I had Mrs. Thagard for English in the fourth grade at the Donoho-associated Episcopal Day School, before it moved from Grace Episcopal Church to the old Anniston Academy campus off Henry Rd. She was the first person to actively stoke a love of language in me, so she had a lot to do with the person I became. I left Donoho before getting to have Mr. Thagard for history, but I certainly have enjoyed building an adult friendship with him.

I tried to put a Birmingham leg together for the evening, but I couldn’t make it work. So I headed home from Oxford. All told, I turned the odometer on my very well-liked zillion-mile (really 194K) Accord, the old Melaniemobile, for 1,745 miles.

I love these trips. There is nothing so soul-warming and restorative for a friendship as close, in-person time, and we (the collective we) are not making enough time for that anymore. It’s also a good amount of time for Lea and I to do our own things, and be missing each other by the time it’s done.

The trip’s good. Coming home is good, too.

I wish you the best in your endeavors, in 2025 and always. I’ll be back with more actual content the week of January 6. God be with you.

Because restaurants close, owners change, and so forth, I could continue doing hot wings reviews indefinitely, but I think I’m going to switch gears. I’m thinking about a couple of different food items around which to build a new review series. Watch for it beginning next month.

The most consecutive Iron Bowls won is 9, which Alabama accomplished from 1973 to 1981. (This is the run during which I became genuinely aware of Alabama football, and which fed my young impression that Alabama never lost.)

Alabama’s regular season is over at 9-3. As I type it’s likely Alabama will miss the playoff and go to a bowl game, with the potential for 10-3 for the 2024 season.

I am more pleased than not with Alabama head coach Kalen DeBoer’s first year. There is little question that NIL and the transfer portal have transformed the game, and I believe Coach DeBoer has the ability and the willingness to roll with these wildcards as well as anyone can. (And there’s no doubt he’s at an institution that will support him financially in his efforts.) I believe he is a serious man, though perhaps a bit more player-accessible than Coach Saban was, which may be a necessary dovetail with these changes in the coach-player relationship.

Coach DeBoer certainly must have experienced a significant degree of culture shock. The SEC is crazy, and Alabama is particularly maniacal in many ways, and you can’t just tell someone that and expect them to get it. He seems to be fine, though if he’s not he’s too smart to say anything about it. I think we’ll get a more solid read on it as winter and spring (read:  practice and recruiting) progress.

Alabama has played erratically this year. At times, the Tide has seemed invincible. But they turned a rout of Georgia into a momentary fourth-quarter nail-biter, and also displayed an apparent complete inability to adjust at halftime, particularly on defense, in embarrassing losses to Vanderbilt and Oklahoma. Excessive penalties were epidemic, particularly early in the year, with a frustrating lack of discipline seeming to be a primary cause. Ball security has seemed all-or-nothing.

(Nitpick:  An empty backfield on third-and-short really annoys me. Mike Price did this a lot at Washington State, and I was braced for him to bring that to us before he, uh, left. Now we have it with KDB. Must be a PAC-12 thing.)

Some improvements are necessary. But I believe we have the guy to make them. Following the GOAT and debuting with a 10-3 season, which seems likely, is a good showing. I’m sure Coach DeBoer has taken notes this season. Let’s stand back and let him work.

As I’ve said many times, Alabama never has strung a lot of undefeated seasons together, and that is not a criterion for the Alabama standard. Alabama is “back” when it is legitimately in the national title conversation year in and year out.

And mission accomplished, even in 2024.

Roll Tide!

But I’ve been struggling with how to react productively, and I know many of you have too. I thought I’d need the rest of the week after the election to marinate in my rage and misery, and then I’d be ready to march again. Well, turns out I took most of last week too. Sorry about that.

Never forget that at IThinkThatWasBo.com, if you are ever dissatisfied, you are entitled to a full refund of your purchase price.

Here are three things I’m doing now that I wasn’t doing two weeks ago:

Establish a relationship with the American Civil Liberties Union. That means send them some money. I’ve opted to donate a little monthly and I suggest you do too. The ACLU isn’t perfect, but they’re tailor-made to fight the human rights abuses that are all but certain to emerge from a second Trump administration. Let’s help equip them.

Get Heather Cox Richardson in your life. She is a history professor at Boston College and a prolific author, having published seven books so far. The very best thing she does, in the context of this post, is write daily and meaningfully about current events. That’s pretty much all Trump right now and is sure to remain such as long as he’s trying to run roughshod over the Constitution and basic decency. You can get a lot of her stuff for free, but I’d suggest going ahead and sliding her the L-note she’s asking for a year of complete access to her Substack page Letters from an American. Has it ever been more critical to actively encourage the erudite?

Do something new and meaningful. This should be something you enjoy, but that pays societal dividends too. I am picking up two new research/learning threads in my ongoing anti-human trafficking activism, and I’m excited about them. I’ve been actively engaged in this war since 2017, and there is a lot of potential growth in these two things for me. I’m excited to start talking about them publicly but want to be a bit further along first. I promise I’ll keep you updated!

Next week, I will begin marching again.

The last time Trump was elected, I didn’t follow the news for six months. This was excellent for my mental health and day-to-day mood. Alas, it definitely feels like a luxury I can’t afford this time around.

Onward.

On Monday.

The first thing to know about this soup is that it is not chicken noodle soup. It’s never suggested that it is in the commercial or on the label, but that’s the expectation I brought, so I didn’t notice until I opened the can. I’d call it a sort of chicken chowder. Ingredients as follows:

Chicken Stock, Potatoes, White Chicken Meat, Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), Red Peppers, Onions, Vegetable Oil, Modified Cornstarch, Contains Less Than 2% Of: Water, Cayenne Pepper Sauce (Cayenne Peppers, Vinegar, Salt, Garlic), Butter (Cream, Salt), Wheat Flour, Salt, Chicken Fat, Yeast Extract, Soy Protein Concentrate, Paprika For Color, Brown Sugar (Sugar, Invert Sugar, Molasses), Flavoring, Dried Garlic, Dried Onions, Spices, Red Pepper, Sodium Phosphate, Vegetable Broth, Cooked Chicken Skins, Dillweed, Beta Carotene For Color, Disodium Inosinate, Disodium Guanylate, Natural Smoke Flavoring, Dried Chicken, Chicken Broth, Egg Yolks. Contains: Egg, Wheat, Milk, Soy

Canned soup isn’t health food, of course, but as modern processed food labels go, this is pretty tame. You get a decent taste expectation, and it looks like most of the heat here comes from (surprise!) a cayenne pepper sauce that may be sold over the counter and red pepper.

The soup is palatable, if unremarkable. It is a pale orange with chicken and potato chunks. Spices are present in the liquid, which is not quite as thick as I expected based on appearances.

Nashville hot chicken is fried chicken, and I wondered how that would play, and the answer is that it doesn’t. The chicken is present as several cubes that almost certainly come from the same receptacle that feeds the regular Chunky chicken noodle soup production line. The dominant flavors are tomato and onion, with a wisp of garlic to finish. Predictably, it is also salty.

There is a fair bit of heat here for a mass-market product. Chileheads won’t need a beverage, but I’d call this half again as hot as regular Tabasco sauce. You know your tolerance. If that sounds too hot for you, it probably is.

Campbell’s Chunky Spicy Nashville-Style Hot Chicken Soup is a product of reasonable quality, but I did not find it memorable enough to make it a recurring purchase.

• Despite my periodic jokes about it, I don’t really have an out-of-control ego. Demonstrably, however, I remain thoroughly capable of overestimating my ability to influence a narrative.
• If I communicate incorrectly enough, then the conversation is quickly about my error, not my topic.

Thank you for your grace when I need it, my friends. Onward.