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Your piece resonates deeply with me, particularly in how you've woven the primal draw of a hearth into a meditation on our current moment. Like you, I find myself transfixed by flames - even digital ones on my screen, complete with their synthetic crackle (a confession that might amuse a true "wood bore"). But it's your observation about our collective "inadequate experience" that truly struck me. Just as we've lost touch with fire's fundamentals, perhaps we've also drifted from understanding the basic mechanisms that keep democracy's flame alive.

Your message about rebuilding community around the blaze feels especially vital. In these fractured times, I've found that pausing - whether before a real fire or even its digital echo - creates space for the kind of reflection you describe. It's in these moments of transfixation that we can let the day's tensions unspool and consider, as you have, how to harness destructive forces into something warming and unifying instead.

Thank you for reminding us that while we may not all need to be wood bores, we do need those who understand how to tend the fires that keep our democratic home warm and welcoming.

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