Once I thought about it and talked with Maria around 4 a.m., and then read my e-mail and the scores of messages on my Facebook Page this morning, I felt a renewed sense of purpose and usefulness.

I am not here to preach or to argue or anger people or fuel the rage that passes for dialogue in our country now. If we stop fighting and letting cable news channels and websites tell us what to think, we will starve it to death, take its fuel away.

I am here to put out the good stuff, and I took Red out into the pasture and took a photo of him as soon as it was light enough. He is part of the good stuff, he can be the poster boy for my Good Stuff campaign. Red does not argue his beliefs either.

I was especially touched this morning by the very thoughtful and interesting messages I received from the frightened and broken-hearted supporters of Hillary Clinton, but also the supporters of Donald Trump. He has ridden a tsunami ride through the heart of our civic and media and political systems.

Like him or not, and so far I have not liked him much, he has stripped the system bare of much of its pretense – that it cares about ordinary people, that it works, and that it will deliver on its promises.

I hope his heart is bigger than his mouth, or he will soon become what he has railed about for more than a year – the next enemy of the people. It is difficult for me to be open to a man who argued for years that our President was not an American. They say governing changes people, I hope so.

I cannot see into the future any more clearly than I saw the past coming, the only comfort I can offer to the frightened is dignity and perspective. We are not made of crystal. We will not break. This is a listening time, not a time for argument or panic.  Mr. Trump was listening. I was not.

I live in rural America, and I know it is wrong to dismiss the people who supported Donald Trump as hateful and ignorant racists and bigots. We have plenty of those, for sure, all over the country,  but that, I think,  is far too simple and arrogant a way to see the election. We celebrate many powerful values here – family, community, hard work, responsibility. I meet very few bigoted dopes. The people in rural areas like mine has suffered for years, and it does seem as if no one cared.

For me, the issue is that we have stopped talking to one another and stopped listening to one another. Many millions of people listened to Mr. Trump and felt, at long last, that they were being heard and that someone was speaking to them. Sadly, their message was  tarnished by all the tantrums and potty-talk.  Mr. Trump’s campaign reminded me of a rogue teenager flaming his way across social media, saying whatever dirty and nasty thoughts that came into his head in the hopes of provoking a fight. I am told he is better than that, I hope so.

Now, a different challenge for the president-elect. If he can rise above his own campaign, that will be something good to see.

Anne, who voted for Donald Trump, sent me a long and especially thoughtful message this morning detailing why she somewhat reluctantly voted for him. She knows I was not a supporter of Mr. Trump, and did not vote for  him. “I just wanted to commend you on your beautifully slated comments this morning. You have shown me, and taught me, in your discourse about this year’s election – lessons I am not likely to forget in forthcoming elections/debates…and disagreements of any kind.”

Bless you Anne, people who wish to be tolerant can start by not hating people who disagree with them and calling them awful names.

That was a very nice message to get, and I got a score more like it from readers of my blog who made a different choice than I did, but who hung in there even though we disagreed. Only one person bailed out of my blog, canceling their $3 a month voluntary payment and wishing me cancer.

“I don’t share your politics,” Susan wrote me from Michigan last Monday, “but I love your writing and your struggle to figure out life. You are a good writer, and we don’t have to agree. I wouldn’t dream of giving you up, besides I would miss Red and Fate!” (I do know who the real stars are around here.)

I am proud of those letters.

I am  in my own the post-argument era. I have no interest in re-arguing the campaign or the merits of the candidates, for me, it is time to talk, listen, look forward. I can’t know what Mr. Trump will or won’t do, I hope he does good. I will be happy to see that, if it occurs. I refuse to demonize the people I disagree with, I can no longer bear the back and forth blah-blah that passes for discussion: how Hillary Clinton is a murderous and thieving monster, how Donald Trump is a bigot and racist throwing red meat to Nazi’s and thugs.

Time to move on. We all need for him to evolve and succeed in a positive way.

Anne’s thoughts about President-elect Trump were far from bigoted or hateful and they were helpful to me in seeing a different point of view.

“But most of all,” she wrote, “I want to thank you for helping me see the importance of civil discourse and understanding all sides of the process. With your blog, you did something I’d completely lost trust in the media to do – helped me to understand differing viewpoints.”

That is what I want to do, I told Maria this morning. I want to put the good stuff out there. My life, my photos, the blog, the farm, the dogs, donkeys, pony, Maria, the wondrous community all around me, most of whom, I imagined, voted differently than I did. They can handle it, so can I.

Terri wrote to “thank you for your writing and thoughts on the election. I too had hoped to wake to news of our first woman president. Life will go on and I will continue my pursuit of compassion and kindness in my community as you and Maria do in yours.”

Jeanine write from California to say she is no bigot or racists, she has two degrees from UC Berkeley, and hid her feelings about the election from her colleagues for more than a year. She suppressed her  excitement at the election results, she feared she would be run off the campus.

She feels our political system is broken, she felt Hillary Clinton was far too much of an insider to change that.

“Nobody wants to be branded a fool or a bigot,” she wrote, “that just reinforces the idea that there is an elite and an ignorant mob, and you have to be one or the other. On your blog, I appreciate your writing honestly and your refusal to make your beliefs into an argument for others to seal and exploit. I wish I were that strong, but I am learning from you that it can be done…One day.”

Good messages, if we can do it here, they can do it out there.

Writing here alone in my study, I never really know if the point of what I am trying to do is clear. It is sometimes wonderful to be reminded that it is. My life is not an argument here, neither is your vote. The mission is to be honest about what we feel and to keep on talking and listening. I learned much from these letters today, and every day, and I thank you. It is always a mistake to stereotype people, especially for standing true to their values.

I live in rural America, so I have a leg up on many other people trying to understand what happened. I know all sorts of good and tolerant and fair-minded people who voted for Donald Trump, including many women. Rural life has been ravaged for decades by political and economic cliques and ideologies who have embraced programs and agreements and policies that have raped the heartland and left its people without work, community institutions, family farms,  or prospects for the future.

Perhaps I live too close to it to have seen it coming, but in a sense it was inevitable. Our leaders and journalists were too busy arguing on cable news and taking each other out to lunch in Washington and New York to get out into the world and see it.

I am grateful for people who can come onto my blog and disagree and stay with me, I can’t say how much that means to me. My life is not an argument, and we have turned thinking into poisonous conflict. I will never succumb to that. As we see again and again, Presidents are held dearly accountable for what they do. I am staying in the now.

I thought last week that with the election, I would stop writing about politics again. But the response make me think I will share my own journey into the new reality once in a while – it is not the focus of my work here. The Good Stuff Campaign. I am learning things all the time, I imagine I am about to go on a pretty wild ride with all of you. I’m ready. I am not made of crystal. I will not break.

That is the point of the enterprise. Maria and I got up this morning and took a short walk and told one another we better get to work, time to get busy, time to get the good stuff out there where it can do some good.