So baseball season opened yesterday, that Great American Pasttime at so much risk of fading that the rules have changed to speed up the game and add more excitement. The actor currently playing the role of Hamilton on Broadway sang God Bless America at the Yankees’ first game. I am happy for folks who could enjoy that.

Meanwhile, hundreds of American citizens — fathers, mothers, children, the type of American family you may see at a baseball game — protested at the state capitol in Nashville, Tennessee, where the most recent school shooting happened earlier this week (the 130th of the year, and it’s still March — today is a National Walk Out in support of common-sense gun control).

People across generations changed the words slightly to a song I sang in church in the 1970s and used as one of my leitmotifs (with its regular words) while rollerskating these past two years.

The new version (when they weren’t singing All You Need Is Love or chanting) goes: Time for gun control. I’m gonna let it shine. Time for gun control. I’m gonna let it shine. Time for gun control. I’m gonna let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.”

Gen Z , teachers and parents are on fire on TikTok, before that gets silenced, with their soul-stirring accounts of how they feel right now.

So what does that have to do with me on 40 acres in rural North Carolina, planting blueberry bushes and gathering eggs? Nothing. Everything.

I am crossing America in search of hope and heroes. When the littlest girl here, not yet in school (although it’s Spring Break here this week anyway) noticed I was struggling while transporting buckets of soil from one spot to another, she sprinkled “magic water” on it that she had put in an old Christmas ornament (round like a baseball) to make it less heavy. That gave me hope. Maybe she was even my hero yesterday.

Because things feel too heavy.

And we need more magic water.