Bound copies of my manuscript for Knight Without Ceremony arrived today. YAY! I had copies made so my wife could read the book (no, I don’t make her read drafts, that would be mean). But what did I see when I opened the box? ULINE packaging! BOO!

ULINE is a shipping supply company in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, owned by the Uihlein family. The Uihleins gave millions of dollars to the Tea Party Patriots, a group that participated in the January 6 insurrection against the United States. In other words, my book that was inspired in part by the attack on our country and intended to inform the next generation about the event to ensure it doesn’t happen again came in packaging made by the very people who funded the attack on our country. Oh, the irony!

Not one to sit pondering irony for long, I leaped into action! I have sent a note to DocuCopies, the company that prints my manuscripts, telling them that I cannot use their business if doing so supports insurrectionists, and providing them with a list of alternative packaging supply companies. Sure, my $200 biannual purchases won’t make much of a dent in their bottom line, but my note might get someone thinking.

The second thing I’m going to do is to send a note to the leadership of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where I work. The Laboratory is a big customer of ULINE, an even bigger irony because the mission of the Lab is to develop technologies that protect the United States of America. That’s right, a top secret lab working to keep America safe is funding the very people who tried to overthrow it. More to come on how that works out.