for this Lent, I’m giving up giving up

Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, for those who observe. I’m not a religious person although I was raised in a major faith. Making sacrifices during Lent was part of the tradition and rituals. In my younger days, I used to give up keeping my New Year’s resolutions during Lent until I got wise enough to make a New Year’s resolution to not make New Year’s resolutions. I’ve kept that one.

It has occurred to me that the radical right is trying to wear US down, just as Putin is trying to wear down Ukraine and their supporters. Add in the third year of a pandemic, continuing failures to properly respond to climate breakdown and loss of biodiversity, increasing concentration of power and wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer oligarchs, and a long and growing list of other systemic failures (toxic train derailments and ubiquitous forever chemicals included) and it’s not hard to see how lots of intelligent, rational moderate and liberal folks can lean toward depression. If we surrender, they win. We don’t want that.

AOC is on a congressional trip to Japan. A recent email notes:

Japan is a country that not only has universal health care, not only has a bullet train public infrastructure system that is robust, not only has child care, not only cares about the environment, not only cares about cultural preservation – but is also successful. It is the third largest economy in the world. 

It’s not to say that everything is perfect here. It’s not to say that it is without its challenges. It’s not even to say that the U.S. should be just like Japan. 

But it’s saying that all of these things that we’re constantly told are impossible, are possible. They’re possible. A better world is possible. 

President Biden, in Poland after a visit to Kyiv, is reported in the Guardian, to have "accused [Putin] of ‘playing to rifts in the United States’ by raising specter of nuclear war between Moscow and west” ....

A member of Congress is proposing a divorce between conservative red and liberal/moderate blue states. That seems inconsistent with her oath to defend the Constitution.

the charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable,
a perpetual series of occasions for hope

Photo by J. Harrington

Worn out yet? Don’t be. Reread AOC’s note. “A better world is possible.” If you’re looking for some examples of how, try

• Slow Food
• Slow Water
• From What Is to What If
• Trout Unlimited
• Aldo Leopold Foundation
• Letters from an American

There are other options. Look around. First of all though, take care of yourself. You’re all we’ve got.

For the Consideration of Poets

By Haki R. Madhubuti

where is the poetry of resistance,

                     the poetry of honorable defiance

unafraid of lies from career politicians and business men,

not respectful of journalist who write

official speak void of educated thought

without double search or sub surface questions

that war talk demands?

where is the poetry of doubt and suspicion

not in the service of the state, bishops and priests,

not in the service of beautiful people and late night promises,

not in the service of influence, incompetence and academic

         clown talk?

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