Holding the Rope

How One Storm—and One Ancestor—Shaped the Way I See America
Before we get into the meat of this blog—before the critiques, the praise, the uncomfortable truths, and the occasional moments of hope—I want to start with a story. A real one. A family one.

John Howland was a passenger and indentured servant on the Mayflower seeking a new life for himself and the battered group of English separatists and opportunists onboard with him. Midway across the Atlantic, in the middle of a brutal storm, John Howland stepped out onto the deck—maybe to get some air or smoke a doobie, maybe to help, or maybe just to feel like a man who still had control of his fate.

He didn’t.

A wave hit. He went overboard.

That should’ve been the end of him. Game over. Name lost to history. But by some miracle—or call it fate, or shit luck—a bolt of lightning struck at the exact moment a rope was tossed over the side. The flash lit the sky just long enough for Howland to see it. He grabbed hold. He lived.

But he didn’t just survive—he thrived. He went on to become a central figure and leader, establishing the colony of Plymouth and the first docs of American governance and patriotism, the Mayflower Pact. He married fellow Mayflower survivor Elizabeth Tilley, and together they raised ten friggin' children in a cabin they built from the earth and trees around them. Today, their descendants number in the millions. I’m one of them.

Howland's story has stuck with me—not just because it’s part of my bloodline, but because it explains something about how I see this country. America has always been a little like John Howland: forward looking, crafty, half-drowning, and somehow still grasping for the rope. And every once in a while, just when things seem lost, a flash of lightning shows us where to reach.

I’ve always loved thunderstorms. Something about the rawness, the clarity they bring. Maybe it’s genetic—maybe I inherited Howland’s sense that what looks like a storm might actually be a second chance.

That’s what The Boston American is about. It’s not a history blog, though we’ll talk about history. It’s not a political blog, though politics are unavoidable. It’s a reckoning—a place to pull apart the myths and look hard at what this country is, what it was supposed to be, where we've faltered, and where the rope might be hiding now.

Sometimes, we fall. Sometimes, we get lucky. And sometimes, we write our way toward the light.

So here’s to thunder.
Here’s to the rope.
Here’s to not letting go.