Is anyone else following Hunter Biden these days? He's been clean and sober for years now, and his redemption arc is truly beautiful to see. He's found his voice and has been sitting down for real and honest conversations with a wide array of far-right figures. He's willing to talk to anyone, even people who have spread vile lies and hate about his family, and he's willing to have hard but honest conversations. I have immense respect for him, and his voice is going to matter in the months and years to come.

He also writes regularly on Substack and I'm a free subscriber. This morning his essay on forgiveness and accountability landed in my email inbox, and it really touched me. I found it incredibly insightful. I wanted to share it here, in its entirety, because I think a lot of you will appreciate it. People like Hunter give me hope for America's future. If his words speak to you, you can also subscribe for free at https://substack.com/@hunterbiden. Along with Heather Cox Richardson's excellent Letters From an American these make essential daily reading for me. 

So, without further ado, here's the essay I wanted to share with you. Please tell me what you think.

What Forgiveness Is Not Forgiveness is not forgetting, nor is it letting anyone off the hook. Hunter Biden Aug 18   READ IN APP   In Limpopo province, where South Africa loosens into Botswana, the bush thins and the sky opens and the animals move through the landscape with the unhurried authority of creatures that have not yet learned to associate the sound of an engine with death. Two young men arrived there dressed for the occasion. Their gear had been purchased on Madison Avenue. The rifles were custom. The boots were new. They had flown a long way to stand in this particular stretch of earth and kill something beautiful. They found a leopard. The animal had lived its entire life inside a set of instincts refined over millennia. It could cross open ground without being seen. It could wait in a tree for hours without shifting its weight. It possessed a kind of physical intelligence so precise that the word intelligence barely contains it. They shot it. There is a photograph. You may have seen it. Two young men holding the body between them. Both smiling. The animal hanging limp, its weight distributed between their arms, its beauty converted into evidence. The photograph was taken to commemorate the achievement. It circulated widely. What the photograph communicates, to anyone willing to look at it without the filter of politics or celebrity, is something simple. Two people who had the power to kill something they could not equal, and who mistook the killing for accomplishment. Orwell wrote about this. Not about leopards. About an elephant, in colonial Burma, and about the officer who shot it. But the officer in Orwell’s essay understood something the two men in the photograph do not appear to understand. He knew, even as he raised the rifle, that the act was wrong. He knew he was performing for a crowd. He knew the power he held was not his own but borrowed from a system that required the performance to continue. He pulled the trigger and he felt the full weight of what the trigger meant. The men in the photograph are smiling. That is the difference between a person who has done something wrong and knows it and a person who has done something wrong and believes it was their right. The first can be reached. The second requires something other than forgiveness. I know what it is to be the person who needs forgiving. I have sat across from people I damaged and said the words and meant them and discovered that meaning them was not enough, that the words were only the beginning of a process that required everything I had and produced no guarantee. I know the specific humiliation of that position. The way it strips every defense. The way it requires you to stay present inside the exposure without reaching for something to cover yourself. I also know what it is to wait for someone to say the words and have them not come. To understand, from both sides of the table, that forgiveness is not a sentiment. It is a structure. And when the structure is skipped, when the naming is avoided and the behavior continues and the language of healing is deployed to prevent the accounting rather than complete it, something does not heal. It waits. There is a morning coming that I can already see. It has not arrived yet. But the speeches are being drafted. The op-eds are being outlined. The language is already assembled, waiting in the same drawer where it has waited after every American crisis that ended without a reckoning. It is time to come together. We must look forward, not backward. For the sake of the country. The words will sound reasonable when they arrive. They will be spoken by people who mean them. They will carry the weight of genuine exhaustion, because the country will be exhausted, and exhaustion makes the promise of moving on feel like wisdom. It is not wisdom. It is the same mistake dressed in the same language it has worn every time. After the Civil War, the country chose unity over reckoning. Lincoln was dead within weeks of Appomattox. The man who replaced him dismantled Reconstruction with the quiet efficiency of someone who understood that cruelty did not need to be loud. It needed only to be structural. The freed population, four million people promised citizenship and protection, was left exposed to a system designed to restore the old order under different names. Black Codes. Convict leasing. Sharecropping. Jim Crow. Lincoln died in 1865. The Civil Rights Act did not arrive until 1964. In the space between those two dates the country congratulated itself for having reconciled. After Watergate the country chose healing over prosecution. The pardon was presented as mercy. What followed was a lesson absorbed quietly by every administration that came after: power does not produce consequences. Each time America chose moving on over naming, the thing it moved on from returned under a different name. The wound closed over the infection. The surface looked clean. Underneath, the cause remained alive, patient and learning. Like the hunters congratulating themselves over the photograph long after the animal has stopped moving. In recovery you learn that amends have a structure. You cannot skip from harm to wholeness. There is a step between them that cannot be bypassed, and the step is not apology. Apology is words. The step is amends. Amends requires three things in sequence. You name what you did. Specifically. To the person you did it to. In language that does not soften the naming. You change the behavior that caused the harm. Not the language around the behavior. The behavior itself. You accept that the person you harmed is under no obligation to forgive you. The amend is not a transaction. It is performed because the amend is the work. The other person’s response is not yours to determine. I have made amends. I know what it costs. I know the specific terror of sitting across from someone you have damaged and saying the true thing without knowing whether the truth will be enough. A country that skips this step has not healed. It has agreed to stop talking about the wound. And that agreement becomes the permission structure for the next one. I sat across a table from a man who had spent a year trying to destroy my family. His name is Lev Parnas. He had been sent to find evidence of corruption. He traveled to Ukraine, to Vienna, to London. He spoke with oligarchs and fixers. He found nothing, because there was nothing to find. When the investigation produced no evidence, the operation turned to fabrication. Information from Russian agents. Manufactured documents. A disinformation campaign built knowingly on lies. Lev participated. Then the people who sent him abandoned him. He went to prison. And somewhere inside that experience he began to tell the truth. Not partially. Completely. Under oath. Before Congress. At enormous personal cost. Then he asked to see me. He sat down across the table and he wept. He named what he had done. He did not soften it. He did not explain it away. He said he had looked at me as a mark, a target, an abstraction. He said he was ashamed. I forgave him. Not because what he did was small. Because the structure had been honored. He named the harm. He changed the behavior. He accepted the cost. He made the amend. The people who sent him have done none of these things. The operation he described under oath continues. The lies he named are still in circulation. The architects of the campaign have not named what they built, have not changed what they are doing, have not acknowledged that the thing they constructed was built on fabrications they knew to be fabrications. I forgave the man who pulled the trigger. I do not forgive the people who handed him the gun and told him where to aim. You can forgive your uncle. The one who was consumed by something larger than himself. Who sat at the Thanksgiving table repeating things he heard on television with the certainty of a person who has been acted upon so thoroughly that the acting feels like thinking. Who forwarded the emails and shared the posts and absorbed the rage without understanding that the rage had been manufactured, tested, refined, and delivered to him by people who understood exactly what they were building and built it anyway. Your uncle was raw material. He can be reached. He can be talked to. He can, over time, come to see that the story he was given was not the story that was happening. The uncle is forgivable. Not because what he supported was acceptable, but because he was deceived. The people who deceived him are different. The architects. The strategists. The media executives. The elected officials who knew the narrative was false and amplified it anyway. They were not deceived. They chose. And forgiveness applied to a choice that has not been renounced, that has not been named, that continues to produce the harm it was designed to produce, is not grace. It is fuel. The morning is coming. All eras end. And when this one does the pressure to move on will be enormous. It will come from people we respect. It will sound like maturity. It will borrow the language of healing and national interest and the common good. And it will be, if we accept it without the reckoning that must come first, the same mistake America has made after every crisis it survived without confronting. The reckoning is not revenge. Revenge is the mirror image of false forgiveness. The reckoning is something else. It is the insistence that before the country moves forward, the country names what happened. Specifically. In language that does not soften the naming. It is the demand that the behavior changes. Not the rhetoric. The behavior. The machinery that produced the harm must be dismantled with the same deliberateness with which it was built. Without that, the moving forward is cosmetic. The surface heals. The infection remains. And in ten years, or twenty, or fifty, the same sentence will return. Let us move on. The men in Limpopo are still smiling in that photograph. The leopard is still dead between their arms. The image circulates still, a trophy of something they believed they had the right to destroy. The leopard cannot ask for a reckoning. We can. And the day we are asked to forgive the people who held the rifle and chose to fire, without first requiring them to name what they killed and why, is the day we become complicit in the next photograph. Not forgiveness. Reckoning. And only then the possibility of a future that is not built on the same lie. Under the Blossoming Trees Most of this is free, the essays and the Notes, every week. But if you want it in your inbox instead of leaving it to the algorithm, the button is right here. It costs nothing. Upgrade to paid Most of Where’s Hunter? is free. This one is for subscribers. If you want the whole of it, the fuller story and everything in the archive, come further in and keep this work unsponsored. Upgrade anytime. Upgrade to paid   Like Comment Restack   © 2026 Hunter Biden 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe

Bound to happen

Well, I've come down with my annual back-to-school sickness, a bad cold that's left me feeling like a wrung-out dishrag. A cold in this heat is just the worst! I stayed home yesterday on what turned out to be another sweltering hot day. Heat indexes were up around 112 degrees again. I've never been so sick of summer as I am this year. We always think of colds and flu as being a fall/winter thing, but when 700 students come back all at once, the time of year doesn't matter; illness will spread.

It could be worse. Last week one child after another showed up in the office to see the nurse throwing up and with diarrhea. Several of the younger ones (kindergarten especially) soiled their clothes. They couldn't pay me enough to be a school nurse! Or any kind of nurse, really. 

I'm feeling a bit better this morning so back to work I go. 

A big fish story

We had a very brief visit with my sister-in-law, Karen, and niece, Melissa, yesterday. It was wonderful to see them, especially Melissa. She lives and works on Whidbey Island in Washington state, so we don't see her nearly as much as we'd like. Yesterday was her last day in Raleigh, and although we stressed to her that she shouldn't feel any obligation to try to see us this time, she (and her mom) insisted. They ended up driving almost six hours total (round trip) to spend only three hours at our house! Melissa's flight home was at 6am this morning so they couldn't stay any longer than that. Gregg and I were both touched that she made such an effort for us. 

George and Poppy adore Melissa

Melissa works as an environmental legal expert for Whidbey Camano Land Trust, which is kind of her dream job. She stays in a beautiful little cabin on the island that looks like something from a fairy tale, and spends most of her free time outdoors, hiking and swimming and backpacking and having adventures. Karen made her tell us a story about an experience she had earlier this year that I wanted to share here.

So, one day back in the spring Melissa was out paddle boarding in the ocean with a friend. They were about 30 or 40 yards offshore, not very far, but the tide was high. A bunch of seals were swimming around them, which she said was cool because they're friendly and harmless. But then, all of a sudden, the seals disappeared and everything got really still. It seemed strange. 

Just when she was starting to wonder why things felt so strange and why the seals disappeared......an orca whale swam up beside her! It was up at the surface, not breaching but with its uppermost parts sticking out of the water, and it was less than 10 feet from her! Can you imagine?

Of course, being Melissa, she said she stayed calm and watched it until it disappeared beneath the waves. She said she didn't really feel nervous (until after it was over) and just watched in awe as the giant swam beside her. Then, just as quickly as it had arrived, it was gone. 

This will be a cherished memory for her for the rest of her life. As for me, I think I'd have had a heart attack on the spot! 

Sixteen!

 

Way back on August 9th, 2010, I wrote my very first ever blog post, so that means today is Sparrow Tree Journal's 16th birthday! 

I can hardly believe it. When I started I had no clue that I'd still be posting here all these years later. I also didn't know how important the friends I'd make along the way would become to me. You all add color and richness to my life, and for that I'm truly grateful. Thank you for being here!

xx

Jennifer

This will be my 1,649 published post. 

A change in the air

It's subtle, for the most part. A shift in the angle of light in the afternoons, slightly later sunrises. The green of the vegetation outside my window looks older, tired. Several days of lower humidity even though it's still hot. Summer won't last forever.

Some signs are NOT subtle. I took these pictures at Walgreen's and Sam's this weekend:

As much as I look forward to autumn, in my opinion it's way too early to be thinking about Halloween. But that's retailers for you. Always on to the next opportunity to sell us something. 

A very grand birthday

There's a big family event coming up next week up in Raleigh, NC. My late mother-in-law's husband, Lou, is turning 90 years old! His son and daughter have planned a large party to celebrate and of course we were invited. You'd never guess he's ninety years old. While naturally he's slowing down some, he still functions like a healthy seventy-something. Drives, plays golf, lives alone with minimal help, and is still pretty mentally sharp. He never seems to change much as the years keep rolling by. If only we could all be so lucky, huh?

Gregg's brother and sister-in-law will be driving up from Jacksonville (Florida) for the party, and his niece Melissa is flying in from Washington state. His sister Karen and her son and his family live in Raleigh, so of course they'll be there already. Coincidently, Karen shares a birthday with Lou, which is part of the reason her daughter and brother are traveling so far to be there. Lou has his own big family from his first marriage (he was a widower in his 60s when he married my mother-in-law): grown children and grandchildren and in-laws and old family friends.  

Unfortunately, Gregg and I decided to send our regrets and not go. The biggest reason is that Gregg will be starting some major dental work a few days prior to the party, and he's likely not going to feel up to it. It's a three-hour drive away, no fun even without a sore mouth, and large social gatherings really aren't his favorite thing to begin with. He's also going to be somewhat self-conscious about his smile until the dental work is complete. I'm sure Lou will understand.

We will get to see Karen and Melissa, though! When Melissa heard that her favorite uncle wasn't going to make it up to Raleigh, she made a plan with her mom to drive down to see us for a few hours the day before she flies home. I can tell Gregg's really pleased about it. And there's a pretty good chance that at some point next weekend his brother Gary will stop by on his way up or down I-95 (Florence sits right alongside I-95 and there are two exits within a mile or so of our house). It will be good to see any or all of them!

This morning I mailed birthday cards to Lou and Karen, since they share the same day: August 4th. I hope they make it in time. 

July is winding down

I'll be so glad when this summer is over. It's been dreadfully hot, even by South Carolina standards. I seem to get less and less tolerant of the heat the older I get, and I just can't seem to enjoy anything this time of year. Even my friend's pool offers no relief; the water is as warm as a sauna. Forget doing much of anything outside, with heat values over 100 degrees day after day. I realized today that one of the reasons I don't mind working all summer is that I'd just be sitting inside my house hiding out in the a/c. I might as well be at work in the a/c earning money. I get paid for 30 more days of work each year than the teachers do, and I wouldn't be going on vacation during that time anyway. 

I've had a little bit of fun this summer, though. I've read two books recently: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (for my book club) and then the new book by Daniel Mason, Country People. The Midnight Library was a quick read and mildly entertaining, although nothing really special. It did lead to some interesting conversation at book club, though. Country People is wonderful. Daniel Mason wrote one of my all-time favorite novels, North Woods, so I ordered a copy as soon as it was released. I really enjoyed it. Reading is great fun when you're stuck in the house!

Then Marla came over last Saturday afternoon and spent several hours with me. I made strawberry daiquiris from some of the fresh local strawberries I'd put in the freezer back in April, along with some snacks: a hot Rotel dip in the crockpot, cold sour cream/ranch dip, potato and tortilla chips for dipping, King's Hawaiian Ham and Swiss sliders, and caramel turtle brownies. I also made a pitcher of iced tea for when the daiquiris got cloying (which never happened, haha). 

The dogs were absolutely thrilled to see her, as usual. She was actually with me the day I first met George at the Darlington County Humane Society back in 2013. She loves both the dogs like she loves her own pets, and they know it. As soon as I saw her car pull into the driveway I announced, "MARLA IS HERE!" and Poppy and George nearly tripped over themselves running for the door to greet her. 

Speaking of the dogs, we used to sometimes call Ginger "Gingerbread". This afternoon, Marco called Poppy "Gingerbread" and when I said, "That's not Gingerbread, silly. That's Poppy." he sat there for a second and then called her "Baby Bread" instead! How stinkin' cute is that? It makes me so happy that he hasn't forgotten Ginger even though she's been gone almost 6 years now. We still miss her so much.

Today was the first day back at work for the teachers and most of the staff. It was so good to see everyone again and to meet the new teachers coming on board! We started the day with a catered breakfast and some time to catch up, which was nice. After that my office was a popular place, because as the bookkeeper I had the teachers' supply checks to give out! (Every teacher gets a $400 check at the beginning of the year to spend on whatever they want for their classrooms.) 

Tomorrow most of the staff will be at professional development, including me. I'll be up at one of the administrative buildings all day for the annual bookkeepers' meeting/training. It was great the first year or two when I was still a newbie, but these days it's just a lot of the same old, same old and boring PowerPoint presentations. It will be good to see the other district bookkeepers and the accountants, but other than that I wish I didn't have to go. Still, I marvel every day at how lucky I am to have a job I love. I got my updated salary letter the other day and this year I have an annual increase of 8%...a really solid, nice raise! So I won't complain about boring meetings and training sessions. 

The students will return next Wednesday, so summer break is winding down for them, too. 

Strays

So, we're still feeding the feral mama cat and two of her original four kittens that I wrote about previously. 

The two little tabbies disappeared a while back, but the others are still around and growing up fast. I know we shouldn't encourage feral strays that we can't afford to keep, but we can't stand to think of them going hungry or not having fresh clean water to drink. 

I mean, just look at this cute little cat family:

The kittens show up twice a day, usually accompanied by their mama, and wait by the fence for us to bring out some Meow Mix. The youngsters back away while we put the food out, but they're getting bolder by the day. Mom, on the other hand, never runs and prefers to stand her ground when we approach. She usually growls or hisses a little at us, too. (Some gratitude! Ha!) 

Here she is on her favorite place to hang out, a tiny concrete bench over on my neighbor's side. When I took this photo she was opening her mouth to hiss at me....

...but the hiss quickly became a yawn instead. :)