Are politics anthesis to community?

Today is the day that electors of the electoral college are scheduled to vote for the next president of the United States, unless some damn fool starts World War Three by assassinating a Russian Ambassador in Turkey. I don't think I'm grasping at straws when I wonder if one positive outcome of a Trump administration might be that Americans learn to value what we have had. Once again I'll turn to Joni Mitchell's lyrics from Big Yellow Taxi to observe that

"Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got til its gone"

Might one appropriate response to the upcoming four years (Dear God, please let it be only four years, at most) be to spend an unconscionable amount of time reading (and rereading) Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing In America and kind of declare myself a noncombatant, maybe serve as an ambulance driver ferrying the wounded off the battlefields of our political and cultural wars.

Taylor's Falls Christmas lighting parade, a community event

Photo by J. Harrington

In addition to changing the climate so that we now have subjected ourselves to more, and more intense, natural disasters, we Americans have compounded that with a man-made disaster in the making. Although, since climate change is largely due to human generated green-house gases, climate change could be considered a man-made disaster also. It certainly can't be labeled an "Act of God" by any sane person.

That brings me to mentioning some of the sanest persons I know of: Native Americans, particularly those who were and are encamped at Standing Rock. Native Americans provide a long-standing example of resistance to a capitalist, globalist, inward-focused government. If we are wise, we will learn from and follow their example. Here's yet another place to start on that theme: Nibi (Water) Walks.

Kettle River, a Nibi Walk river, at Banning State Park

Photo by J. Harrington

Since many of us humans have a fascination with train wrecks, the next few years are likely to prove intriguing, if morbidly so. I note all this gloom and doom at Christmas time in order to urge us all to enjoy a Merry Christmas! this year. It may be our best(?) one for a number of years. But, closing, for today, on a brighter note, the upside to the disasters I anticipate will pass for government in the US can be found in at least two of Rebecca Solnit's books:

A Paradise Built in Hell : The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster;

 and

Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

We often surprise ourselves by rising above our baser nature. Scrooge did. May our president-elect be visited by whatever number of Christmas ghosts it takes to soften his heart to the Tiny Tims of the world, and the rest of us to. Until that happens, feel free to RESIST!

A Little Shiver

By Barton Sutter

After the news, the forecaster crowed

With excitement about his bad tidings:

Eighteen inches of snow! Take cover!

A little shiver ran through the community.

Children abandoned their homework.

Who cared about the hypotenuse now?

The snowplow driver laid out his long johns.

The old couple, who’d barked at each other

At supper, smiled shyly, turned off the TV,

And climbed the stairs to their queen-size bed

Heaped high with blankets and quilts.

And the aging husky they failed to hear

Scratch the back door, turned around twice

In the yard, settled herself in the snow,

And covered her nose with her tail.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

My Christmas Wish for 2016

Christmas is a week from today. It's supposed to be a time of peace on earth, good will toward all. This year seems in many ways more like poor old Ebenezer before he met the ghosts. "Are there no prisons?...And the union workhouses - are they still in operation?"

I wish I could remember which of my long ago college courses raised the issue of trust. It did so in a way that has stayed with me over many years. Each time we enter a high-rise building and enter an elevator, we place astounding amounts of trust in the skill and education and training and knowledge and capability of those who designed and constructed the building and the elevator shafts; and in those who built and installed the elevators; and in the inspectors who checked the original building's designs met code and the construction met the design blue prints. If we didn't trust all those people, why would we ever trust our lives to going up 10 or 20 or 30 or more stories in a conveyance? Apparently, this year, we've decided politics, diplomacy, the economy, our children, are less important than our buildings. We have now "trusted" them to those with little or no training and experience in the governance of a democracy.

not all Christmas wishes fit under the tree

Photo by J. Harrington

I once worked for a government organization that, for a time, had a developer as its chairperson. That developer had a personality much like the one I see exhibited by the president-elect. If yelling didn't accomplish what he wanted, his solution was to yell louder at more people. One of his basic problems was that he didn't know what he wanted, only what he didn't want. That meant he kept changing his mind, his course, his priorities and his expressed wishes. Those who worked for him started to spend more time and effort documenting communications than executing them. This became a bit of a death spiral. It doesn't require a lot of imagination to foresee a similar pattern emerging in Washington, D.C. in the very near future. As a Christmas present, I'd like to see some national organizations, that we think we can trust (that currently leaves out all political parties) form a coalition or an umbrella organization that, in addition to functioning as "loyal opposition," will also be ready to pick up the pieces and restore functionality to governance at least at the federal level.

The water debacle in Flint, Michigan represents a failure at all levels of government, federal, state and local. The Dakota Access Pile Line, from what I've read, failed responsible, trustworthy environmental review processes in several major ways. Volkswagen (and others?) lied to governments and consumers about their diesel engine performances. I could put together a list of both government and corporate failures to be trustworthy that would be dismayingly long, including growing levels of gridlock for purely political reasons.

sometimes we must depend on the better angels of our nature

Photo by J. Harrington

Fortunately, and unsurprisingly, an example of the kind of effort I believe we need is emerging from none other than poetry organizations across the US. Respect for words will be essential for our future. There is no "post-truth" society worth a damn. The Poetry Coalition members "believe that poetry has a positive role to play in our country. It is through reading, writing, and discussing poems that we learn about one another on our most human level, inspiring empathy, compassion, and greater understanding of one another." We could also a similar effort from folks like the NRDC, EDF, Sierra Club, and other environmental and sustainable development organizations, who believe that environmental protection and sustainable development create jobs more than cost them. We seem to have again come to a time, similar to that at the founding of this country, when Ben Franklin noted "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." If we who believe in science, truth and justice do learn to hang together, there may be peace on earth to those of good will this Christmas. That's my Christmas wish for this year. After all, we are the ones we have been waiting for.

Trust

By Thomas R. Smith

It’s like so many other things in life   

to which you must say no or yes.                                    

So you take your car to the new mechanic.   

Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.   

The package left with the disreputable-looking   

clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,   

the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—   

all show up at their intended destinations.   

The theft that could have happened doesn’t.   

Wind finally gets where it was going   

through the snowy trees, and the river, even               

when frozen, arrives at the right place.                        

And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life   

is delivered, even though you can’t read the address.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.