Take a look around the North Country. Trees, except most conifers, are bare. There are few signs of life in the woods and fields. Temperatures and windchills are consistently well below zero℉. There are few, if any, signs that life will return over the next several months. But it will, as it has for thousands of years.
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| January, North Country
Photo by J. Harrington |
Now, take a look a Washington, D.C. and compare it today with one year ago. There are a few signs of intelligence in the House and Senate. Not enough to relax about our governance, not even enough to get excited about. And here we are in an election year in which the party that doesn’t hold the White House is usually expected to do better in an :”off year election.” (As if every election didn’t make it an off year.)
During the past several years we have seen ineptness and incompetence, approaching malfeasance, in response to the global COVID pandemic. The string of inadequate global responses to our climate breakdown by all levels of government extends back even further. It’s as if we only believe in “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” is a self-fulfilling prophecy about which we can do little. We dishonor our heritage by failing to act on the premise that we can do much to create the future in which we will live. Where was the effective outrage when the Supreme Court was stacked by Republican ideologues? Where is it today as they continue to perpetrate their big lie and their many lesser ones, aided and abetted by news media in the thrall of "both sides-ism.”
The Better Half has a phrase I’m finding myself increasingly forced to accept and follow. "Sometimes all we can do is choose the least worst alternative.” I hate that option but, given a two-party system comprised of Democrats and Republicans, that seems to be the option available to US, more’s the pity.
More and more pundits are coming forward with observations that our democracy is in serious trouble of various depths. So far, none of the ones I’ve read have offered much in the way of a recommended solution other than “watch out!” I’ll go out n a limb and offer this list as a way to get started:
- Vote all Blue in 2022
- Hold the bastards accountable
- Primary anyone you don’t feel represents your best you
- Never, ever, vote for a politician that relies on disinformation
- Hold the bastards accountable.
- Never support a DINO
- Put your time and money where your interests lie
Shared experience leading to shared prosperity and faith in your neighbor seemed to be the Iowa way. A shared predicate of informed self-governance was our foundation. That conclusion cleared up my nagging headache: We know how to do it, because we have. That has to be something more than an old man’s sentimentality; at least it serves as a comfort against the cold.
One other thing we should all think more about: are we trying to save a democracy or a corporatocracy? If the latter ("corporations are persons,” “money is speech”), perhaps we should let it die. Is that the real issue we’re facing?
Election Year
Richard Blanco - 1968-
The last ghostly patch of snow slips away—
with it—winter’s peaceful abandon melts
into a memory, and you remember the mire
of muck just outside your kitchen window
is the garden you’ve struggled and promised
to keep. Jeans dyed black by years of dirt,
you step into the ache of your boots again,
clear dead spoils, trowel the soil for new life.The sun shifts on the horizon, lights up
the dewed spider webs like chandeliers.
Clouds begin sailing in, cargoed with rain
loud enough to rouse the flowers into
a race for color: the rouged tulips clash
with the noble lilies flaunting their petals
at the brazen puffs of allium, the mauve
tongues of the iris gossip sweet-nothings
into the wind, trembling frail petunias.Mornings over coffee, news of the world,
you catch the magic act of hummingbirds—
appearing, disappearing—the eye tricked
into seeing how the garden flowers thrive
in shared soil, drink from the same rainfall,
governed by one sun, yet grow divided
in their beds where they’ve laid for years.
In the ruts between bands of color, ragweed
poke their dastard heads, dandelions cough
their poison seeds, and thistles like daggers
draw their spiny leaves and take hold.The garden loses ground, calls you to duty
again: with worn gloves molded by the toll
of your toil, and armed with sheers, you tear
into the weeds, snip head-bowed blooms,
prop their struggling stems. Butterfly wings
wink at you, hinting it’s all a ruse, as you rest
on your deck proud of your calloused palms
and pained knees, trusting all you’ve done
is true enough to keep the garden abloom.But overnight, a vine you’ve never battled
creeps out of the dark furrows, scales
the long necks of the sunflowers, chokes
every black-eyed Susan, and coils around
the peonies, beheading them all. You snap
apart its greedy tendrils, cast your hands
back into the dirt, pull at its ruthless roots.
Still, it returns with equal fury and claim:
the red poppies scream, the blue asters
gasp for air, strangled in its vile clasp
that lives by killing everything it touches.The sun’s eye closes behind mountains, but
you lose sleep tonight, uncertain if the garden
is meant to inevitably survive or die, or if
it matters—one way or the other—with or
without you. Maybe it’s not just the garden
you worry about, but something we call hope
pitted against despair, something we can only
speak of by speaking to ourselves about flowers,
weeds, and hummingbirds; spiders, vines, and
a garden tended under a constitution of stars
we must believe in, splayed across our sky.
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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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