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  "description": "Here's what I published from Sunday, June 28, 2026 to Saturday, July 4, 2026:\n\n\nTips on Asking for Help\n\nVery good advice all around, and it almost all applies to people you know and people you don’t.\n\nMy last heuristic is stranger: make it easy to say no. You might think that the worst outcome is a no, but the worst outcome is a pressured, begrudging yes. Your coercion will have poisoned your relationship with this person while you feel the false glow of a hard-won victory. A person who helps y",
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  "publishedAt": "2026-07-05T11:00:03.000Z",
  "site": "https://www.aaronmiller.info",
  "tags": [
    "Tips on Asking for Help",
    "How to Ask for Help from People Who Don’t Know You | Pradyup Prasad",
    "💬 Comment on this post",
    "Birthright",
    "1891 ban on Mormons",
    "preserved",
    "here"
  ],
  "textContent": "Here's what I published from Sunday, June 28, 2026 to Saturday, July 4, 2026:\n\n* * *\n\n## Tips on Asking for Help\n\nVery good advice all around, and it almost all applies to people you know and people you don’t.\n\n> My last heuristic is stranger: make it easy to say no. You might think that the worst outcome is a no, but the worst outcome is a pressured, begrudging yes. Your coercion will have poisoned your relationship with this person while you feel the false glow of a hard-won victory. A person who helps you with gritted teeth is one who will never help you again. And even then, the help will be a half-hearted effort to get rid of the obligation you manufactured. By contrast, help freely given is effortless, the way you’d hold the door open for someone. Help willingly given keeps your conscience clear, free from the burden of having pressured someone. And help, when given from the heart, is the foundation of a relationship where both of you contribute to what you’re building.\n\nHow to Ask for Help from People Who Don’t Know You | Pradyup Prasad\n\n💬 Comment on this post\n\n* * *\n\n## Birthright\n\nThere’s a fascinating detail in my family history in how its lines crossed once, then not again until a hundred years later.\n\nMy great-great-grandfathers of the Miller line (Allen Jr., on my dad’s side) and the Todd line (Thomas Sr., my mom’s side) both emigrated to Utah in 1854 after their families in native Scotland joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They didn’t live far from each other over there, but there’s no evidence that the Millers knew the Todds around the time they joined the Church.\n\nThey almost certainly met, though, on a ship called the John M. Wood, which carried both families that year from Liverpool to New Orleans. Allen was just six and Thomas was twenty-three. I wish I could go back and see it. I like to imagine young Allen running around on the deck of the ship while Thomas played with his two young sons. Allen sadly lost his baby sister during that voyage, and she was buried at sea.\n\nBoth families travelled north to Kansas City to join the Garns wagon train headed for Utah. While in the camp, Allen’s father died of cholera. The “Widow Miller” (as she was called) with her three sons crossed the plains anyway, receiving support from others in the camp throughout the journey. Perhaps Thomas and his wife Margaret were among the fellow travelers who helped them. Even though he was just six, Allen took turns with his brother walking and then riding in the wagon. More than 1,000 miles lie between Kansas City and Salt Lake City.\n\nUpon arriving in Utah, the Millers immediately went hundreds of miles south to help settle the (still) tiny town of Parowan and the Todds found home in less-distant Springville, the families never to cross paths again. But a century later two of their descendants, my dad and my mom, met as teenagers at the Peach City diner in Brigham City where they fell in love and eventually married. So here I am.\n\n## Becoming American\n\nAllen’s life inspires me. Before he turned twelve and in the same year, he lost his mom and older brother. Allen and Ninian, the last of the immigrant Millers, were orphaned. A kind foster family took in the boys to their little dugout home until they were old enough to strike out on their own. Despite his desperate beginnings, Allen went on to become a successful merchant, cattle rancher, and mill owner in nearby Panguitch, and he and his wife ended up with eleven (!) children. A detail I love from their life history is that the Miller home is where the teenagers in town came to hang out.\n\nAllen Miller, Jr. (If only I'd inherited his full head of hair!)\n\nThe second-youngest of those eleven children was my great-grandfather Joseph, “Grandpa Joe.” I never knew him because he passed away shortly before I was born. I’ve heard he was a pretty gruff guy. My mom remembers him punching a horse because it bit him.\n\nWhen Joseph was born in 1892, he was born an American, despite his father being Scottish. The 14th Amendment had been ratified 24 years earlier, Constitutionally guaranteeing Joe’s citizenship. That in turn gave citizenship to my grandpa, which meant my father was also a US citizen. I consider myself greatly blessed to be American as well.\n\nWhen Allen came to the US, he was a reviled Mormon. But his immigration wasn’t against the law, even if he and his family only had refuge in territorial Utah. By the 1870s, though, anti-immigration efforts against foreign-born Latter-day Saints ramped up, culminating in an 1891 ban on Mormons. Otherwise contrary to First Amendment religious protections, it was justified by their practice of polygamy, even if that had been officially discontinued by the Church the year before. The ban’s enforcement carried on into the 20th century.\n\n## Being American\n\nI’m not the only American with a family story like mine. Indeed virtually all Americans, except the Native ones, have a story like mine. American ancestors were hated for being Irish or Italian or German or Russian. American ancestors also of course came into the US as slaves, the national sin for which the 14th Amendment became partial atonement.\n\nWhat should “birthright” mean? Outside of US politics, the word invokes _lineage_ , rights and privileges endowed by the spinning of a roulette wheel. You had no say about your parents, or theirs. To me there’s something powerful in the way the United States—a country formed to eschew centuries of peerage—redefines birthright by granting its precious gift of citizenship to any and all born here, not just to the ones whose parents were already the lucky winners.\n\nI hear the people making arguments against birthright citizenship that this time is different, that granting citizenship for a birth on US soil is a reckless mistake. But has there ever been an argument against the Constitution that _didn’t_ claim that this time is different? I wonder if “this time is different” would persuade them to reinterpret the Second Amendment, or the Fourth, or the First…\n\nAll of this is to say that I’m grateful to be a citizen of the United States. I’m grateful for my inspiring ancestors. But I’m especially grateful this week for our shared, national heritage, descended from a world-changing document and its principles, not from any one ancestry. I’m grateful that our country justly preserved the best meaning ever conceived for the word birthright.\n\n💬 Comment on this post\n\n* * *\n\n**If someone forwarded you this email, you can subscribe** here",
  "title": "Weekly Digest - Jun 28-Jul 4, 2026",
  "updatedAt": "2026-07-05T13:00:03.640Z"
}