____________________ (BUTTON) What My Conservative Parents-in-Law Taught Me About Love in the Time of Trump By Yi Shun Lai Feb 15, 2017 My parents-in-law are the nicest people on the planet, and although they do live in the heartlands of Wisconsin, I don’t just mean they’re “Midwestern nice”: They came to my MFA graduation. Some friends and I -- our basic values are at odds. I know this because we don't have conversations about things like politics. Whenever something comes up, say, that time in the car when my father-in-law, listening to AM radio news, started shouting that President Obama was Muslim, it’s like a big fucking steel wall comes down over their opinions, and no gentle -- The conversation was fraught. Nothing got solved. But while I was talking to them, I remembered a day in July. I was between stops on my book tour, driving back to my parents-in-law, and the rental car I was started shifting funny. I glanced in the rearview mirror, making sure I didn’t have anyone behind me, before I executed a swerving two-lane -- I was in the middle of nowhere. And my first instinct was to call my parents-in-law. (You should know here that in high school, I was in a rear-ender. And -- deal.) I remembered, too, how often my parents-in-law celebrate us; how many birthdays had gone by with them jointly singing “Happy Birthday” to me on my voicemail line; how supportive they’ve been for every single -- I hang some fragile hopes on this memory: Every year when we visit my parents-in-law, we visit a local arts center. There, we take solace in visual arts and in the wonderful things this particular center does for its surrounding community. The day after the very bad thing, we did get on the bus and go to my parents’-in-laws’ house. They hugged me and said, “Glad you’re here,” and then my father-in-law went and got a newspaper clipping from the weekend. “I thought you’d want to see this,” he said. It was an article about the current exhibit at the arts center.