Time for Democrats to play hardball with DINOs!

If you’re familiar with Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and you should be, you may think I’ve lost track of the seasons, since we haven’t yet reached Samhain / Halloween. The reality is that both have spirits as leading characters. Now, picture either Joe Manchin or Krysten Sinema, or both, as Scrooge. I have little faith that either of their hearts could be softened by Tiny Tim’s fate. Much closer to their hearts would be the assets they’re accumulating. SO, the question becomes, what might make them fear for the future of those assets?

spirits of yesterday, today, tomorrow?

Photo by J. Harrington

Has anyone figured out that a hard transition away from fossil fuels, especially coal, would leave many miners in a deep hole if alternative jobs and training aren’t available, because a certain senator from West Virginia overplayed his hand? And wouldn’t that increase the amount of fossil fuel stranded assets? (And, by the way, wouldn’t a hard transition also hurt many of Mitch McConnell’s miners?)

Arizona’s economy includes a major nonprofit sector that gets a lot of earned income from the government sector. It might be a shame if some large federal government funded contracts became cancellable or if a significant effort were launched to make much of the pharmaceutical sector nationalized.

There is no question that  climate change needs to be addressed in a big way by US. There is also little question that collaborating with the enemy has been an unproductive strategy thus far. Both Arizona and West Virginia need to be vigorously reminded of President Kennedy’s profound advice from his inaugural address: "ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”

One Day

Joseph Millar

Everything shimmers
with the sound of the train
rattling over the bridge
especially the ears and nostrils and teeth
of the horse riding out
to the pasture of death
where the long train runs
on diesel fuel
that used to run on coal.
I keep listening
for the crickets and birds
and my words fall down below.

I mistook the train for a thunder storm,
I mistook the willow tree
for a home, it's nothing to brag about
when you think of it
spending this time all alone.
I wandered into the hay field
and two ticks jumped in my hair
they dug in my scalp
and drank up my blood
like the sweet wine of Virginia,
then left me under the Druid moon
down here on earth in the kingdom.

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

For your weekend enjoyment

Many years ago, the Better Half discovered, I believe on a public broadcasting radio station, a singer-songwriter named Carrie Newcomer. This was, as I remember, back in the days when the Daughter Person was attending college, which gave the Better Half and I an opportunity to enjoy Ms. Newcomer in performance at a near campus coffee house in St. Paul. She was a delight. We have remained fans over the years and have watched her talents find additional outlets, such as several volumes of poetry which accompany her three most recent albums.

Today’s posting is going on about Carrie Newcomer because her writing offers a down-to-earth sanity  that is sadly lacking in too many other parts of contemporary life. Just the other day I bought her most recent CD and book of poems, entitled Until Now (↑). There’s a release tour that follows the album and book, with a Minneapolis date in a few weeks:

Nov 7 Sun 

Cedar Cultural Center @ 7:30pm 

Minneapolis, MN, United States

If you’re brave enough to attend live performances these days, you should definitely consider getting tickets. As noted on the web page for Until Now, 

“We have all lived through a time of great unraveling,” Newcomer says. “Yet, with great disruption comes a possibility for change. We can’t just be healed; we must be transformed.” In her songs and poems, Newcomer tells the universal human story of loss, resiliency, spiritual connection, and hope with the grace, compassion, and humor that characterizes her work....

If you, as a number of us have, are searching for an optimistic response and ways to adjust or adapt to  these trying times in which we live, consider becoming familiar with the perspectives offered by Newcomer, and her friend and mentor, Parker J. Palmer, as an antidote to the pervasive gloom, doom and madness instilled by the multitude of crises we face.

Making Sense

Finding what makes sense 

In senseless times 

Takes grounding

Sometimes quite literally 

In the two inches of humus 

Faithful recreating itself

Every hundred years.

It takes steadying oneself 

Upon shale and clay and solid rock

Swearing allegiance to an ageless aquifer 

Betting on all the still hidden springs. 

You can believe in a tree, 

With its broad-leafed perspective, 

Dedicated to breathing in, and then out, 

Reaching down, and then up,  

Drinking in a goodness above and below 

It’s splayed and mossy feet. 

You can trust a tree’s careful 

and drawn out way of speaking. 

One thoughtful sentence, covering the span of many seasons.  

A tree doesn’t hurry, it doesn’t lie,

 It knows how to stand true to itself 

Unselfconscious of its beauty and scars,

 And all the physical signs of where 

and when It needed to bend,

Rather than break.

A tree stands solitary and yet in deepest communion,

For in the gathering of the many, 

There is comfort and courage, 

Perseverance and protection, 

From the storms that howl down from predictable

 Or unexplainable directions.    

In a senseless time 

Hold close to what never stopped 

Making sense.

Like love

Like trees

Like how a seed becomes a branch

And compost becomes seedlings again.

Like the scent at the very top of an infant’s head

Because there is nothing more right than that. Nothing. 

It is all still happening 

Even now.

Even now.

By Carrie Newcomer 2020

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