Happy Bookday! Gifts Are on the Way!
Happy Bookday! Gifts Are on the Way!
— My Book Is FREE on Kindle; — I’m Starting a Substack Podcast; — Is What I Do Here 'Teaching'?
In the wee hours of Oct. 14-15 last year, Amazon approved Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen for sale.
On Oct. 15, someone bought a paperback version of my book. The next day — exactly one year prior to this article — the first Kindle copy flew off the electronic shelf.
I feel like celebrating! I’ve made the Kindle version FREE on Amazon through Saturday, Oct. 19 (and if you’d like to help more people find the book while browsing Amazon, consider leaving a review, especially if you’re logged in to your Amazon account and your review gets the “Verified purchase” tag).
Of course, you can still order paperbacks at Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, and at Lulu.
But before I get to more about the book, I have plenty of Substack updates to share:
I’m planning a weekly podcast to debut this Sunday, Oct. 20. It will feature mini reviews of some content I’ve read/watched/heard recently; a Bible lesson from an Early Church, anarchist/voluntarist perspective; and probably some sort of “mailbag” feature where I can talk about some things readers have asked me about.
I redid the tabs on the Substack; It’s down to Home, Chat, Archive, About. The links to the foundational articles and the list of podcast appearances is now part of the streamlined About page. Part of trimming down to these three tabs is that I anticipate creating some custom tabs as my content expands.
Speaking of the Chat tab, I’ll be posting weekly Subscriber Chats, so those of you who log in to Substack will be able to join in the fun of this feature. Here’s the first one; don’t be shy :-)
I launched Paid Subscriptions in response to some people asking about this option. Currently, all of my Substack content is free to the public. If I decide to make “premium” content for paid subscribers, it won’t be until I’m sure the quality of the extra content lives up to the “premium” description. But you can still donate now, even while all content is public. Thanks for your kind support!
Look for these new features, and my gratitude to everyone who subscribes, shares links of my posts, and engages with my writing via Likes and Comments. Your kind actions help others find “Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen.”
A teachable moment
Back to the book … it’s been quite a year!
I’ve learned plenty, and not merely about digital, on-demand book publishing. One aspect that’s been fascinating is how people view me, in light of my weekly writing here and the occasional radio/podcast interviews I do when some very kind folks invite me on to their shows.
A week ago, I was invited to my first livestream interview, on “The Monica Perez Show” (livestream archived at YouTube and Twitter/X). Monica is a former investment banker who pivoted to talk radio in Atlanta, Ga., for nearly a decade, and now produces and contributes to a portfolio of online programs, including her self-titled flagship.
She introduced me to her audience as an author and “a teacher.”
It struck me, right then and there on the livestream, that what I do with “Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen” in all its forms is, essentially, educational.
In hindsight, this was probably inevitable, since the title of my book and blog emerged spontaneously from teaching a class for college-aged adults who were interested in learning more about the Catholic Church. As I recounted to Monica and her audience:
At some point, you always get to the chapter on citizenship and dealing with the civil world, and one of the students asked, so we have to be good citizens, right? And I said, well, be careful about that.
Jesus wants us to be good neighbors, but was Jesus a good citizen? How about the apostles? Look at what happened to them. Look at, really, what happened to the Early Church.
And so that was really the first time I had crystallized the phrase, “Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen.”
I had spoken before about the origin story, most notably to Brian Wilson on the June 13, 2024, episode of his show, “Now For Something Completely Different” (listen at Spotify, or right here on Substack). Brian was especially intrigued by the “Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen” phrasing. As I said then:
And I reminded [the students], Jesus is a good neighbor, but he’s not really a good citizen. Read those Gospels carefully! He’s actually quite a bad citizen, if you think about it.
In my writing and interviews, I do encourage people to learn and grow and develop, and I try to provide some examples to guide readers and listeners along that lifelong process.
But there was something jarring — in a good way — about Monica calling me “a teacher” in the context of my published work.
See, I hated school, and I always associated teaching with school.
As I’ve learned in my anarchism journey, however: Similarly to how you can recognize leadership without admiring government officialdom, you can acknowledge the importance of teaching without framing it as a function of government-education models.
And so, I humbly accept Monica’s very kind description of me. Yes, I am a teacher, and “Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen” has been and continues to be a wonderful part of this calling.
Let’s have a party … in the Comments!
If you’ve read my book, what part stuck with you the most (for better or worse)?
If you haven’t read my book, but are reading this Substack before midnight on Oct. 19, go get the FREE Kindle version! Then, come back and give me your answer to the previous question 😅
Got any good birthday stories to share?
Hate school? Why, or why not?
Anything else pique your interest about this article?
Celebrate by leaving a Comment below …
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Find me on X: https://x.com/GoodNeighBadCit
Congratulations, Dom. Looking forward to your podcasts. I've listened to all the ones you've done as a visitor on other podcasts, and with a few exceptions, I've been frustrated by some of the hosts, but always impressed with your contribution.
While I was reading your post this week, I had a thought which I hope you pursue. I don't think Jesus intentionally set himself to be a bad citizen. It was secondary to the real revolutionary aspect of his life. Rather, I think he was a good neighbor, but a bad 'Jew'. A good neighbor, but a bad member of the synagogue. A good neighbor but a lousy Pharisee. A lousy Sadducee. A lousy member of the priestly hierarchy. Obviously, he was the ultimate high priest, the ultimate example of how to worship God in spirit and in truth.
While I like the anarchist bent of your content and I think we need to reconsider the myth of how a Christian relates to dealing with the government, I've come to the conclusion that given the total failure of the false churches today to stand up to the government, we need to have the conversation as well about how Jesus demonstrated with his life that we need to challenge the 'official' but illegitimate church, just as much we do the illegitimate government, and perhaps more so. If we don't get it right at the church level, we won't get far moving from that to challenging the government.