Libby's Blog

Dear Friends: "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything" is apparently a military aphorism most notably quoted by Dwight D Eisenhower. It's a good one. I learned this lesson most clearly from 9/11. A little over 21 months earlier County leadership and first responders who had trained for years for “Y2K” were at the Emergency Operations Center on New Year’s Eve 1999. All were on high alert. Chaos had been predicted as computers worldwide would be unable to change the d

Dear Friends: Every 9/11 I hope I will hear several things about the meaning of that day, but I do not. The first is how suddenly America experienced what many places in the world experience, often because of the US: war and the fear of someone dropping a bomb on your home, the grief of losing loved ones in a foreign attack that felt totally undeserved. For those weeks right after that horrific day in 2001, I kept thinking how shocking it felt to be afraid all the time (and

Dear Friends: For my readers in Arlington, ICE terrorism is here in force. Recently there have been numerous ICE agents snatching people especially along Columbia Pike from grocery stores (MegaMart), bus stops, and parks. Buchanan Gardens apartments were occupied by ICE troops all day on Monday, the 17th causing people to leave in the wee hours of the morning so they could get to work without interacting with ICE. Those who stayed locked themselves in their apartments. As the

Dear Friends: No, I haven’t seen the “Odyssey” movie yet. But I think I’ve read more about it than any movie ever and the reviews and opinions keep coming. Mostly they are rave reviews, with the notable exception of Emily Wilson (whom I admire as a classics scholar, from what I’ve read about her work over the years) and, of course, Elon Musk and his ilk (whom, needless to say, I don’t admire). The movie seems to be a bit of a Rorschach test…like Homer’s Odysseus has been thro

Dear Friends: I wanted to let my readers know about a project I have been involved with over the past six months: The Abundance Elected Network. The Network is a national community of local elected officials who are committed to results driven governance and work to remove unnecessary barriers to getting things done. Often those barriers came about for a good reason long ago, but while they no longer make sense, they are difficult to remove or even see sometimes. And, they c

Dear Friends: Likely all of us have been starting to take steps to try to protect our on-line privacy. As more and more comes out about how tech companies are aiding and abetting the Regime, this is a good time to think even more about internet security and privacy. I am no expert at all, but more and more regular people who never thought they’d have to fear government surveillance are realizing nothing is safe. I’ve been doing what reading I can and talked to a number of peo