To chill or not too chill?

 We have once again discovered a personal failing in our efforts to become a naturalist. Much of this week we've been posting about overnight and morning fog and a landscape covered with hoar frost. It turns out that what we've been thinking is hoar frost might actually be rime ice. There's a difference, we read. Somehow, we can't get excited enough to figure out which we've been looking at or if, perchance, it may be some of each, depending on which morning we're talking about.

hoar frost or rime ice?

Photo by J. Harrington

The next several days, weeks and months may well turn out to be more interesting than most of us would wish, or they may offer little more than continuing anxiety. I wonder if we have become such a diverse country, in terms of beliefs and values, that we may be unable to return from our current level of dysfunction. We've seen no evidence of actual voter fraud, as opposed to fraudulent claims, just as we saw no evidence to support the "Pizzagate" conspiracy. Why, we ask ourselves, would we want to heal divisions with those who are so unhinged that they believe such nonsense. Then we ask ourself how we are to function as a country and a collection of communities if we remain so divided. We confess to not having much of a clue, but believe it must involve reconciliation, honesty, transparency, integrity and, perhaps most of all, the desire to at least tolerate each other.

Pogo was more correct than he may have realized when he noted "We have met the enemy and he is US." Have we become so committed to individual success that community success is to be foregone? Do we fail to realize that no one can be successful alone? We seem to have dropped the subject of civics from our grade and high school curriculum. Critical thinking skills are even less embedded in what our students are usually taught. These, and related, problems undermine our ability to govern our air, water and land commons as well as our ability to govern our country and ourselves.

Part of our problem may well be derived from marketing's focus on creating chronic dissatisfaction that we're told can be fixed if only we make enough money to buy the latest whatever they're selling. As Ed Abbey has written in Desert Solitaire:

“They cannot see that growth for the sake of growth is a cancerous madness, that Phoenix and Albuquerque will not be better cities to live in when their populations are doubled again and again. They would never understand that an economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.” 

The point we're sneaking up on here is that the problems we're facing are not only political, they're as existential as the need to effectively respond to climate weirding, the sixth extinction, COVID-19 and whatever comes after it, and learning to live together on a planet with limited resources that are inequitably distributed. We've been ignoring too many fundamental issues for too long. It's past time to mend our ways. Now, doesn't that just frost your ass? Think about whether you want your family to live in tRUMP Country or Mondale Country before you answer. We've been working at these questions for a long time. We need better answers.

Let America Be America Again

By Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

 

(America never was America to me.)

 

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

 

(It never was America to me.)

 

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

 

(There's never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

 

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

 

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

 

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one's own greed!

 

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

 

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become.

O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,

And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa's strand I came

To build a "homeland of the free."

 

The free?

 

Who said the free?  Not me?

Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we've dreamed

And all the songs we've sung

And all the hopes we've held

And all the flags we've hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that's almost dead today.

 

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

 

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

 

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

 

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

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