How's It Going?

Not sure if this is an editor's note or an editor's ransom note, albeit a self-penned one demanding some kind of consideration paid or demanded for the release of me, you, all of us, from our collective kidnapping. Please read and share and urgently celebrate this issue, and then hit the nifty orange "Donate" button to help Citric Acid and all of us, each other, to find courage, liberate, and self-deport to a real democracy,  This modest journal is a non-profit project but we work hard and pay our writers! 

Meanwhile, perversity, absurdity, irony, and genuine threat seem to be how the reactionary regime attempts to capture attention, distract, and intimidate but, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, We have nothing to fear but ourselves. And immigrants. And our queer children. And higher education, and unions, and art. Or something totally unlike that. 

People sure say and report and repeat some funny things, misquote presidents, hang Nazi banners or fly a dumb flag. They post all kinds of wild nonsense and wait to see who salutes. This issue of Orange County's unlikeliest online literary arts and culture journal offers sincere and thoughtful news from our region, creative resistance, sincere memorializing, poetry, reflection, provocation, and, satisfyingly, reflections on Citric Acid's own recent contributions and community. Gratitude to all the artists and writers featured but special thanks indeed to two new contributors who responded creatively to the subject of our last issue (and so many issues), the artist, writer, teacher and OC activist Peter Carr (1925-1981), whose busy ghost haunts me and this journal. They made their own art after seeing the show of his work at Cerritos College last fall --- paintings and books produced forty years ago! ---  a gesture of vital solidarity and ekphrastic creativity.  

Plenty of Citric Acid readers and friends have joined recent street corner rallies, picketed at the offices of local elected officials, written letters, made phone calls, and even marched. A lot of people ask, and we hope you will find answers to our issue's big question. And perhaps you too will ask all around, loudly, unshyly:  "How's it going?"  

Lots of gray-hairs out on the streets lately. Like me. We admire one protester's sign quoting Dylan Thomas, and thus offering a courageous and encouraging reply. Old age should burn and rave, indeed.  Young folks, too. Everybody. Together, we will decide how it's going. So get going!