I remember reading, some years ago, about an old lady who claimed "I don't vote. It just encourages them.” While her attitude is certainly understandable, it isn’t productive. There are beneficial responses to the current conditions we face. Some of them can be found here:
- Institute for Local Self-Reliance [ILSR]
- The Bioneers
- Institute for Humane Education
- Indigenous Ecology Lab
- Citizen Connect
There are other organizations also focused on healing rather than hatred; collaboration instead of division; and creation rather than destruction. Follow one or all of the above links as you keep in mind that “more of the same never solved a problem” and that “insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.” Also, from my Boston boyhood: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
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| what may emerge from behind our clouds?
Photo by J. Harrington
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Just as nature abhors a monoculture, we have brought to a logical extreme two party democracy, oligarchical capitalistic monopoly and neoliberalism. I’m not sure whether to be encouraged that we are not alone in suffering outrageous stupidity and shortsightedness from our institutions and those who would lead US. Britain has gone through Brexit. France and others are seeing the rising of the Right. Contentiousness is growing. All that’s missing so far is the spaceship full of aliens, scheduled to arrive this Thursday.
There are no kings in America
we are not that kind of country.
We are sanctuary for the hungry,
the homeless, the huddled,
held together by an idea
our immigrant fathers believed in.
Rendered, it meant independence.
Pursued, it kindled war, ordinance,
a fighting chance. Forty thousand
musket balls, by themselves, did not
shape the boundaries on which we
map our days. To draw our borders,
we needed more than firecakes.
More than a pound of meat
with bone and gristle,
or salt fish and a gill of peas.
We needed the faith and grit of people
who were not yet Americans.
To be an American is to
recognize the sacrifice
of the widow and the orphan;
it is to understand the weft of tent
cities expecting caravans,
and the heft of a child in a camp
not meant for children, or sitting
before a judge awaiting judgement.
What do we say to the native
whose lands we now inhabit?
What do we say to our immigrant
fathers who held certain truths
to be self-evident?
Do we now still pledge to each
other our lives, our fortunes,
our sacred honor.
There are no kings in America.
Only gilded men we can topple
again and again.
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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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