It's Trick or Treat time

 It's the week of Halloween / Samhain. Dead, dark oak leaves are dropping from the trees and flying through the air as we might picture the souls of the damned descending to Hell. A week from now we'll begin to learn in which of Dante's nine circles we landed for the next several years. By my reckoning, we've spent the past four years in the seventh (Violence), eighth (Fraud), and ninth (Treachery) circles. With luck and a blue tsunami, we'll learn we ended up in the first circle (Limbo) by Thanksgiving.

'tis the time to beware strange spirits

Photo by J. Harrington

This morning we skimmed through a couple of articles in The Nation. They're related but we can't figure out how, taking both into account, we can undo the Gordian knot we've tied ourselves into (with some help from international oligarchs and other nefarious figures).

Want to Win Rural Voters? Fight Big Ag. Too many Democrats are missing on an issue fundamental to farmers: the consolidation of the agriculture sector.

Rural America Doesn’t Have to Starve to Death A predatory and extractive financial sector has hollowed out communities across the US.

The question that continues to cross our mind: "How much worse do things have to get before we learn to focus on our biggest common problems and not on our least differences?" The current issue of Yankee magazine has two pieces, one a photojournalism, the other an essay, that, I believe, offer some insight to how we might better approach some issues and differences we may have with our neighbors, near and far. In Invisible No More, Maine photographer Séan Alonzo Harris brings often-overlooked members of our communities into focus. Justin Shatwell raises, and answers, his question Do the Pilgrims Still Matter?, in this the 400th anniversary of their landing.

None of the articles linked in this posting describes a clear path forward for US. Taken together, they should help us to realize that too many of us, for far too long, have been free riders in our democracy. We have taken it for granted and thus far have only come close to losing it. Whatever happens next Tuesday and thereafter, we all will have a lot of long, hard work to do if we want to continue to live in a democracy instead of an oligarchy or kleptocracy. Perhaps the first, and most difficult, challenge will be to avoid, or at least minimize, reengaging in Salem witch trials as we agree on how we're going to severely limit neoliberal, global, capitalism. [See the graph is "Rural America."]

[UPDATE: What do we mean avoiding witch trials? As my favorite politician these days put it recently "AOC on Biden's mixed messages about a fracking ban: "It does not bother me ... I have a very strong position on fracking ... however, that is my view ... It will be a privilege to lobby him should we win the White House, but we need to focus on winning the White House first." https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1320361742334152706?s=20]

Hallowe'en

Joel Benton

Pixie, kobold, elf, and sprite

All are on their rounds to-night,—

   In the wan moon’s silver ray

   Thrives their helter-skelter play.

 

Fond of cellar, barn, or stack

True unto the almanac,

   They present to credulous eyes

   Strange hobgoblin mysteries.

 

Cabbage-stumps—straws wet with dew—

Apple-skins, and chestnuts too,

   And a mirror for some lass

   Show what wonders come to pass.

 

Doors they move, and gates they hide

Mischiefs that on moonbeams ride

   Are their deeds,—and, by their spells,

   Love records its oracles.

 

Don’t we all, of long ago

By the ruddy fireplace glow,

   In the kitchen and the hall,

   Those queer, coof-like pranks recall?

 

Every shadows were they then—

But to-night they come again;

   Were we once more but sixteen

   Precious would be Hallowe’en.

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