This past week I've found myself wondering if, allowing for almost 250 years difference, what we are experiencing is similar to the frictions between the Sons of Liberty and the British Loyalists. At the time of the American Revolution, the War of Independence, loyalists and separatists were very much intermixed in terms of overall geographic distribution, similar to Democrats and Republicans these days and, unlike the "War Between the States," it appears unlikely that we could end up with another North versus South. I doubt that "the coasts" would align against "flyover country," although that might be a possibility.
There's growing speculation about what happens when/if tRUMP loses and also about what happens between November 4 and January 21, 2021 when/if Biden-Harris win. This may be the most exciting, in all the wrong ways, holiday season of my long life. May we all survive it and come to our senses. I think it was one of the last good Republicans who noted "A house divided against itself, cannot stand."
If we don't start to act as if COVID-19, and climate breakdown, and failing food systems, and loss of biodiversity, and increasing extinctions are serious issues that require significant collective responses, we will have failed our ancestors and our dependents.
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| watersheds aren't our only divides
Photo by J. Harrington
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A specific example here in Minnesota can be captioned "The Boundary Waters Versus Copper Mining." We're looking at a situation in which two sides are becoming (have become?) hardened to the point that Democrat versus Republican is determining how some state senators vote across party lines. Battles are being fought as nauseam in the courts and disinformation and misinformation are being thrown around recklessly. Minnesota doesn't have the most rigorous mining standards, but pro-mining factions claim it does. We're short on recycling most metals as a way to minimize the need for more mining. Not enough is being done to create other than mining-based high-paying jobs in Northern Minnesota. Meanwhile, the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance and the iseal alliance are benchmarking world-class mining and sustainability standards. Is anyone in Minnesota tracking those efforts (current blogger excepted)? We can and must do better and relearn how to communicate with each other because of, not desire, our differences before the time comes that we wish we had. Perhaps we can begin by asking ourselves "who benefits when we spend much of our time in each others' faces and at each others' throats?"
Credo
Andrew Zawacki
You say wind is only wind & carries nothing nervous in its teeth. I do not believe it. I have seen leaves desist from moving although the branches move, & I believe a cyclone has secrets the weather is ignorant of. I believe in the violence of not knowing. I've seen a river lose its course & join itself again, watched it court a stream & coax the stream into its current, & I have seen rivers, not unlike you, that failed to find their way back. I believe the rapport between water & sand, the advent from mirror to face. I believe in rain to cover what mourns, in hail that revives & sleet that erodes, believe whatever falls is a figure of rain & now I believe in torrents that take everything down with them. The sky calls it quits, or so I believe, when air, or earth, or air has had enough. I believe in disquiet, the pressure it plies, believe a cloud to govern the limits of night. I say I, but little is left to say it, much less mean it-- & yet I do. Let there be no mistake: I do not believe things are reborn in fire. They're consumed by fire & the fire has a life of its own.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.
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