Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
Frieze of Eight Women Gathering Apples
(1876)

This final week’s EndDays dispatches arrived from the road — from Condon, Oregon, where I was born on a kitchen table nearly seventy-five years ago, through a pioneer cemetery in Linn County where great-great-grandparents waited to be visited, and finally to the Oregon Coast, where The Muse and I drove to the edge of our experience and found the series’ so-called ending. The writing ranged from the weaponized justice of ImaginaryCivility to my Rimrock Country origins of Buttermilk, from the pioneer cemetery revelation of SumOfMyPast to the necessary pruning of Friendlies, from the historical perspective of Silliness to the final installment, LongTail, written at dawn on the Oregon Coast near the first day of summer. The EndDays series has concluded. The rumors of its demise were, as always, preliminary.

Thank you for following along!

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Weekly Writing Summary

ImaginaryCivility
“Dictators only ever come in hapless colors.”

This EndDays Story examines how the MAGA movement’s “unweaponization” effort amounted to pointing a large-caliber weapon at the heart of our sacred judicial system — the perfect embodiment of ImaginaryCivility.

In this EndDays Story, I traced how our incumbent remodeled our Justice Department first thing, replacing experienced prosecutors with lapdog equivalents who brought conviction without requisite legal education. What they touted as unweaponization amounted to ImaginaryCivility — certain people asserting rights nobody was ever guaranteed under anybody’s Constitution, while nurturing grudges whenever our actual legal system stood in their way. Judges rejected more Injustice Department arguments than at any prior time in history, often struggling to maintain straight faces while reviewing bush-league assertions. The Department sued a former FBI head for posting a photo of seashells on Instagram. They willfully deported inconvenient evidence. ImaginaryCivility ultimately becomes self-defeating, as any effort rooted in lies always inevitably undermines itself. His attempts to rebrand our government in his disgraced name seem the rough equivalent of renaming it something like: The Dollar Store Department of Justice. Dictators only ever come in hapless colors.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Briar Wood (1892)

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Buttermilk
“The rumors of EndDays might have been preliminary.”

This EndDays Story finds The Muse and me toodling back through Condon, Oregon, chasing ancestors along dusty county roads, and discovering that EndDays always preface what will never come to pass.

IIn this EndDays Story, The Muse and I escaped our hometown’s data center controversy and our mutual exhaustion by heading to the Oregon Coast for a Port Commissioner conference. We traveled through Condon, where I was born on a kitchen table almost seventy-five years ago, past wheatfields my forebears likely first leveled. I wanted to visit the story of my maternal great-grandparents, Clara and Nathaniel — Rimrock People, first-generation inhabitants of one of the harshest regions on this planet. It was Nate’s job to drive the family stock down the draw into Buttermilk Canyon, where Clara lived. Nate and Clara fell in love and became my grandfather’s parents. I’d recently met a sheriff’s deputy who turned out to be a distant cousin through Clara’s sister Roxy. EndDays preface what will never come to pass. Each ending was apparently only faking, because it sprouted some beginning which would later fake yet another ending into yet another beginning again. The rumors of EndDays might have been preliminary.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Garden Court (1892)

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SumOfMyPast
“I might even be the sum of all things, just like you.”

This EndDays Story finds The Muse and me visiting pioneer graves in Linn County, discovering that I am more than merely the SumOfMyPast — I am a continuance rather than a conclusion.

In this EndDays Story, The Muse and I toodled across Central Oregon chasing ancestors, sharing a catechism of names and birth orders, keeping each other honest. We found the pioneer cemetery in Linn County with only a little trouble and an accidental trespass, and there they stood — two pairs of great-great-grandparents, forever within a few yards of each other, with shreds of themselves making a long overdue pilgrimage to pay humble, respectful homage. These were the people who first traversed the Oregon Trail in the very early 1840s, when it was still a rumor. My father still reliably appears in my shaving mirror. I often ask him what he thinks he’s doing there. He never answers, for he’s beyond the point where he still responds to even the most heartfelt cross-examinations. I carry pieces of every one of my forebears within me. I’m one helluva stew. I might even be the sum of all things, just like you.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Morning of the Resurrection (1886)

——

Friendlies
“My relief far exceeds whatever guilt I feel.”

This EndDays Story finds me finally establishing limits I cannot tolerate, quietly removing those who crossed the line, and feeling immediately lighter for it.

In this EndDays Story, I examined my increasingly diminished tolerance for those in my community who have proven themselves something other than Friendlies. I’ve gratefully become less tolerant. Those who slandered The Muse — insisting she’d done what they should have known she could never do — crossed my line. They turned evil and stayed behind to gloat. My previous extension of the most generous possible interpretations couldn’t stand in the face of such deliberate insistence. I can accept good-faith difference but cannot tolerate bad-faith insistence. I simply go quietly into a hopefully brighter tomorrow without that poisonous presence any longer with us. This must be a sacred responsibility of any convener who aspires to be seen as at least half-decent. I feel immediately lighter, though, truth told, a little guilty after. My relief far exceeds whatever guilt I feel. You’re welcome.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Knight’s Farewell (1858)

——


Silliness
“…maybe we can’t help but become terminally distracted.”

This EndDays Story considers how what we experience as tragedy, our grandchildren will consider simple Silliness — and how the future steadfastly refuses to arrive until the witness is sufficiently distracted.

In this EndDays Story, written at the Oregon Coast, I considered how our current drama seems more like soap opera than history — the reporting appearing like poorly crafted fiction, the facts like so many hijacked excuses haphazardly applied. Any catastrophe of sufficient magnitude seems indistinguishable from a parody of tragedy. The opposition relies upon you to spread your attention across so many flashing lights that the semaphored message never fully registers. The future does not exist, and it rarely emerges when watched for. Like a pot that never boils, futures steadfastly refuse to arrive until the witness is sufficiently distracted, usually with some significant-seeming Silliness that came to naught, probably due to its ultimately obvious insignificance. Silliness will always be with us. Between the Silliness and underlying significance, maybe we can’t help but become terminally distracted.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Madness of Sir Tristram (1862)

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LongTail
“…I would have never bothered to create them in the first place.”

This EndDays Story is the final installment of the EndDays series, written at dawn on the Oregon Coast on the first day of summer, discovering that endings were always only beginnings in disguise.

In this EndDays Story, The Muse and I drove to the edge of our experience on the Oregon Coast, finding a town that no longer holds a single bookstore — just another hint that the world we’d known was quietly disappearing. The sun rose on that last morning, just as it always had. I faced a decision: pass right through the end of an eternity and simply continue seeking, or meekly accept that I once again spent this time pursuing phantoms. The incumbent was never anything more than the irrelevant distraction he had always been, influencing little more than the peace of mind I lent him every time. I propose a following series, as of yet unnamed, one that will not mention, even by odd extension, the incumbent everyone grew to despise. These stories steadfastly refuse to age. They begin, then forget they were supposed to eventually slip away. Had I intended them to go away, I would have never bothered to create them in the first place. The End.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Three Fates (1865)


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Absolute Idiots Produced For Us


Either America has fallen into a temporary recession, or it has already become a third-world nation. Anybody doubting these assertions just needs to attempt an old-fashioned summer vacation to gain absolute confirmation. I know, who even imagines taking vacations these days? Traveling has become absurdly expensive, even after gasoline fell a full dollar a gallon, twenty percent, on the latest rumor of impending peace in the Middle East. But even beyond that obvious expense, the infrastructure sucks. Improvements begun in earnest under Biden and Buttigieg were canceled in an odd act of retribution against progress immediately after our incumbent's inauguration. Small towns feature more empty storefronts than occupied ones. Large cities feature massive amounts of empty downtown office space. Bars and restaurants teeter on the obvious edge of going out of business. Even a modest supper for two will set you back at least a hundred bucks. Motels include flies for free if you can find any with rooms available that evening.

The land remains awe-inspiring, though access seems limited. Is it me, or does there seem to be more blackened roadsides from recent wildfires than we used to see? It took us half the afternoon to traverse Portland yesterday, with multiple road slowdowns and closures. We finally took to surface streets, weaving through a genuine maze of haphazard suburban subdevelopment across Eastern Multnomah County. Hardly America The Beautiful. More like America, The Pitiful. Twelve miles of twenty-mile-per-hour traffic between Multnomah Falls and Cascade Locks. What Google calculated as a six-hour drive back from the beach took over eight. We were able to stop for fresh cherries in Mosier, though. Five bucks per pound for fruit that sells for a quarter in the adjacent orchard. The Muse's colleague who owns a commercial cherry orchard has decided not to harvest this year. There's a severe shortage of pickers, and export markets are refusing to buy from us. He'll post something on Facebook Marketplace, offering U-Pick for fifty cents a pound with a twelve-pound minimum, and hope to come close enough to breaking even that he won't lose his dream before markets magically recover, if ever.

The dedication of the Obama Presidential Library in Chicago arrived just in time to remind us that decency remains alive and possible. The last year and a half have been at least trying, as we've witnessed the greatest collapse of civilization in our nation's history so far. It has been far too easy to fall prey to discouragement in this land that was founded as the home of the brave. These clowns that have conspired to steal from the poor to feed the rich and to elevate those only worthy of prison cells to positions of great authority will certainly have their days in court and, hopefully, prison. I'm all in for retribution. We need to learn this lesson above all others. Their time was waning the day they swore an allegiance they never once intended to deliver as expected. My America has been gravely wounded. There might be no better symbol of the new America, the Beautiful, than that algae-infested reflecting pool. The self-proclaimed expert on all things construction reliably produces only examples of wholesale destruction. His legacy will be ten thousand projects to undo the divots he and his gang of absolute idiots produced for us. Thanks, or something.

Thank you for following along!

You can order Cluelessness from Bookshop.org, Powell’s Books, or Amazon. It's now more widely available, just as the publisher predicted. I still haven't discovered the e-Book location for ordering the book, other than this Kindle link. (I didn't know that KIndle was still a thing, if it ever was.) I saw a .pdf link somewhere, but lost the location and couldn't find it again. My publisher is enamoured with their flashy portal that I keep getting lost in. See if you can do any better: Link To Publisher's Website Here

I employed Claude.ai, a commercial AI-powered text editor, using it to perform repetitive copy/pasting work and to create the above story summaries, prompting with: “Please briefly summarize this story in the first person while retaining the original voice.” I manually copy-edited each result.


©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz