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Dispatches

Some Things Stay Small

Trigger Warning

This piece includes themes of loss, grief, and hard mercy. Please proceed with care.

Lyrics

SOME THINGS STAY SMALL

I counted heads in the morning light
Steam rising thick in the January cold
The runt was pinned to the cedar slats
Too thin to stand, too weak to hold
Mama whispered, "Let him be"
But Daddy just stared at the ground
I learned right then, in the quiet air
A breaking heart doesn’t make a sound

     It don't pay to love what you can't save
     But you do it anyway
     You want to see 'em run the fields
     But the red clay wants 'em to stay
     And it’s a long, dark walk to the edge of the woods
     To give 'em the peace they crave
     Yeah, he wouldn't grow
     God, I know
     Some things stay small
     Then they go

Daddy weighed him with heavy eyes
Same way he’d done a hundred times
Said, "He ain’t gonna make the winter, son"
Like reading a sentence for a crime
The .22 rifle by the kitchen screen
Morning quiet, sharp and clean
There’s a kind of mercy that looks like a sin
When you’re the one standing in between

     Repeat Chorus

He was shivering where the others slept warm
Reaching for a teat in the middle of a storm
If mercy’s got a human face
It ain't in the prayer, it's in the hard embrace

I still see him when the night runs thin
When the radiator hums and the walls close in
I don’t dream of the blood or the broken things
Just a little life waiting on the peace it brings
I don’t curse my daddy’s hands
I don't hold a grudge for the debt he paid
It takes a whole lot of love to kill something
So it doesn't have to be afraid

It don't pay to love what you can't save
But you do it anyway
I still see him run the fields
In a dream from a different day
But he wouldn't grow
Now I know
Some things stay small
And that’s okay
Yeah, they go
Yeah, they go

Writer: J. Ryan Johnson (BMI)
Copyright: © 2026 J. Ryan Johnson. All rights reserved.
Phone: +1 (407) 902-5419
Email: hello [at] tenthirtyam [dot] org

Copyright

Lyrics: © 2025 J. Ryan Johnson. All rights reserved.

Audio Disclaimer

Lyrics: Original | Audio: AI-Generated

I am a songwriter and a musician, but I am not the voice meant to inhabit these verses.

I've used AI to bridge the gap for the concept demos, crafted to serve as blueprints that capture the genre, tone, and weary soul I hear for each song.

They exist as an invitation, offered in the hope that these lyrics will eventually reach the hands of an artist and storyteller who can bring them fully into the light.

Until then, they remain as they were born: quiet reflections on the grit and grace found just north of the county line.

Reflection

Published in tandem with What the Red Clay Keeps, which reflects on these tangled roots of affection and grief that defined my Southern experience.

What the Red Clay Keeps

Trigger Warning

This piece includes themes of loss, grief, and hard mercy. Please proceed with care.

There are places in the South where mercy rots before it ripens. You can feel it in the sag of a porch beam, in the black water holding still beneath the cypress knees, in the red clay that clings to a boot like a hand unwilling to let go. Even in winter the land keeps its fever. Spanish moss hangs from the trees like old church lace gone gray with grief. Cicadas are long dead by January, but their husks still cling to fence posts and bark, the empty shape of a thing that sang itself raw and left its shell behind.

This is the country of crumbling sheds and cedar slats silvered by weather, where small lives are counted at daybreak and losses are folded into chores before breakfast. The air smells of ping, wet straw, heat, stale prayer, and the sour sweetness of something too long confined. Somewhere a mother lowers her voice because the truth sounds uglier spoken aloud. Somewhere a father studies the ground as though judgment might be written in the red clay. Before anything happens, you already know everybody here has inherited something they did not choose and will not escape.

How to Write an Effective Security Policy for GitHub Repositories

A repository security policy is one of those documents that people often add because GitHub expects it, not because they have thought through what it needs to do. That is how you end up with policies that say little more than "email us if you find a problem" or, worse, tell researchers to open a public issue for a vulnerability report. An effective security policy is not a box-checking exercise. It is an operational document: it tells security researchers how to contact you safely, tells users which versions you still support, and tells everyone what kind of response process they can reasonably expect.

This post walks through how to write a security policy that is actually useful on GitHub: what sections it needs, how specific to be, which mistakes to avoid, and a practical SECURITY.md template you can adapt for your own repositories. The goal is not just to help you publish the file, but to help you publish one that will still read as clear, credible, and operational when someone actually needs it.

Useful beyond GitHub, too!

Although this post focuses on GitHub, most of the guidance applies equally well to GitLab and other source hosting platforms. The platform-specific details, such as where the policy is surfaced and how private vulnerability reporting works, may differ, but the core job of a security policy stays the same: define a private reporting path, set expectations, and make support boundaries clear.

How to Write an Effective Code of Conduct for GitHub Repositories

A GitHub repository does not become a healthy community just because the code is useful. The moment other people begin opening issues, commenting on pull requests, or submitting patches, you have a social space to maintain as well as a technical one. A code of conduct is the document that defines what kind of community you are trying to build, what behavior is expected, and what happens when those expectations are ignored.

The best code of conduct files are not there for optics. They are there to reduce ambiguity. They tell contributors what respectful participation looks like, give maintainers a clear basis for moderation, and provide a reporting path when something goes wrong. Done well, they make a project safer, more predictable, and easier to contribute to.

I'm Just a River

Trigger Warning

This piece includes themes of depression, hopelessness, and suicide. Please proceed with care.

In Loving Memory

Written to process the death of my nephew.
Rest in Peace, Phin.

Phineas Harvey Alexander Tillman
June 4, 2001–January 11, 2026

Lyrics

I'M JUST A RIVER

I’ve been carving through the valley
Long before they built this town
I’ve watched these waters rise
And families settle down
I’ve carried off the mountains
Every stone of joy and pain
I catch the ones who fall to me
And hold them year to year

The bridge has swallowed prayers
From quiet hums to raw-boned cries
I’ve seen the tired at midnight
Walking beneath a heavy sky
The moon hid behind the clouds
Too faint to see you leave
You fractured something in my depths
Searching only for relief

     I’m just a river, I don’t choose
     What the tired and hurting do
     But I’d trade every drop of me
     If love could’ve pulled you through
     The hard days spoke like the Gospel
     And you believed every word they said
     I’d have carried you a thousand miles
     But I couldn’t quiet your head

Now your name moves upstream
In your mother’s cry
In the silence your father swallows
When the house has lost its light
Your family passes by the rail
Holding breath inside their chests
Learning how to miss you
Without rehearsing how you left

     Repeat Chorus

Standing on the bridge
Believing rest is letting go
A current only moves one way
But a heart can still turn home

Writer: J. Ryan Johnson (BMI)
Copyright: © 2026 J. Ryan Johnson. All rights reserved.
Phone: +1 (407) 902-5419
Email: hello [at] tenthirtyam [dot] org

Copyright

Lyrics: © 2026 J. Ryan Johnson. All rights reserved.

Audio Disclaimer

Lyrics: Original | Audio: AI-Generated

I am a songwriter and a musician, but I am not the voice meant to inhabit these verses.

I've used AI to bridge the gap for the concept demos, crafted to serve as blueprints that capture the genre, tone, and weary soul I hear for each song.

They exist as an invitation, offered in the hope that these lyrics will eventually reach the hands of an artist and storyteller who can bring them fully into the light.

Until then, they remain as they were born: quiet reflections on the grit and grace found just north of the county line.