The perfect little post-War family. All gone now. All with days in May that bring the memories. Some sad, some wistful, some bright...
This will be my first motherless Mother's Day. As well, Mom and Dad's anniversary is (was?) May 12. This year would have been their 63rd.
Our gift to them this year will be their headstone...
I was digging through old entries in my other journals trying to find the one I thought I wrote about public/private space. I didn’t find that one. It may be a figment of my imagination. One I tried to write and couldn’t get to work. I did find this; and this is the last (hopefully) I’ll have to say about our abysmally dysfunctional election process. A least for now. :-)
The Current Occupant of the White House (I refuse to call this man president) and his advisors continue to claim that we live in the freest country on the planet. Is that true? And what would our ancestors think of the freedom we do have?
We do accept certain limitations on our actions. Most of us obey the speed limit (most of the time), keep most of our clothes on (most of the time and this time of year it’s a necessity) keep certain “recreational activities” indoors where they won’t upset the neighbors and scare the livestock and most of us accept that walking down the middle of a busy freeway at high noon in our birthday suits is probably Not A Good Idea.
But, what of the freedoms that we do seem to have?
The freedom to watch the current administration attempt to politicize justice in this country. Claims of voter fraud seem to translate as try to make sure the other party doesn’t win. Competent US attorneys are forced out and replaced with yes men and party hacks.
Voter lists in key states have been purged of minority voters under the guise of making sure that voters with felony records can’t cast a vote.
Precincts in at least one key state, Iowa, had more voting machines in suburban precincts than they needed and not enough in inner city precincts that were expected to vote Democratic. And enough of the machines didn’t work that potential voters stood in line for hours only to be told to “go home, we’re closing the polls.”
The freedom to be a minority voter in rural Texas and find a sheriffs’ cruiser parked near the polls on election day. That little tit bit was in one of Molly Ivins last columns. A hundred and forty years since the end of the Civil War and more than a generation since civil rights and voting rights bills were passed by Congress and signed by earlier presidents and there are still parts of the country where it isn’t safe for minority voters to exercise the most basic right of citizenship. Oregon’s vote by mail looks better all the time. And I just had a really nasty thought. There’s been talk of privatizing mail delivery. You can’t tell the race of a voter from the envelope the mail in ballot is in, but there are parts of the country where you can infer it from the mailing address. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
The freedom to watch contamination spread from the meat supply to farm produce. Those of us who have switched to a largely vegetable diet to avoid contaminated meat and fish get caught in a double bind. Just treat everything as if you’re in a third world country and either cook it or wash it very well. But what happens when one of our freedoms comes to include paying increasingly high prices for clean water?
Update: If the water is available at any price. There is huge new development going up in Arizona or New Mexico. The city it’s attached to is trying to buy water rights out of state. So far no go.
The freedom to pay low prices for products so poorly made you have to replace them twice as often.
The freedom to watch the contractors that produce these shoddy products move from country to country in search of increasingly cheaper workers while American workers who produced products you’d be proud to own lose their jobs.
The freedom to discover that certain corporations deliberately steer their low paid help to emergency rooms and Medicaid for their care while either offering no insurance or pricing it so high that their employees can’t afford it. In other words, we’re subsidizing part of their labor costs with our taxes and insurance premiums while they reap the profit.
The freedom to be herded into “free speech” zones in the name of security whenever our elected hired help comes to town. Is it just a coincidence that these zones are as far away from the media set up as possible?
The freedom to vote for whichever candidate the moneychangers figure they can get the best deal from.
The freedom to attend the church of your choice but discover that only certain groups appear to have a pipeline to the elected hired help.
The freedom to watch the religious right tail wag the political dog.
The freedom to vote for the Democrat or Republican of your choice. There wasn’t much the 2005 session of Oregon legislature could agree on, but they did agree on this, by the time they were done is was much harder for a third party or independent candidate to get on the ballot.
I guess I could go on until I ran out of room but I think I’ve drawn a pretty clear picture. I’m not feeling very free right now, is anyone else?
I wrote that a year ago. Since then, the war drags on, it’s just as hard for John or Joan Q Public to get a hearing from the elected hired help, prices are skyrocketing, and there is a special frosting for the cake. According to Dick Cheney, the only say we get is casting a ballot (see above). It gives the winner a “mandate” and if it turns out we don’t agree or change our minds: tough cookies. They don’t have to listen. I think most of us had already figured that out. It was a real surprise to hear him actually admit it. And the response? The silence was deafening.
And it may be why I'd rather talk about my herb garden these days. At least something is going right outside my door.
Several months ago while I was eagerly devouring Mary Renaults’ series of novels set in ancient Greece; I posted an entry in one of my other journals about Greek cities and my opinion that our Greek and Roman ancestors would look at many of our so called cities, scratch their heads and go “?” followed by “I don’t know what this is but it’s not what I’d call a city.” Their cities were built around public market places where citizens could gather. Basically , the market place doubled as a political theater. And there was just as much political chicanery two thousand years ago is there is now. That hasn’t changed. It was just harder to hide.
There’s little left of the public market place left, it’s been strip malled to death. And the first time one of us agreed that we needed a permit to speak in what was left of public space; well that put the rest of the nails in the coffin
Which brings me to high fuel prices and more than fifty years of “do it your way.” It isn’t just a matter of big rigs with terrible mileage ratings. It’s decades of live here, work there, and shop in four other places. Decades of land use decisions that encouraged sprawl, starved mass transit, trucked in food from across the country and allowed our rail lines to decay.
It's one thing to buy another vehicle with better mileage. It's a little harder to sell your house or find another job closer to home. Even if you manage to do that, you still have to drive half way across town to buy groceries, clothing or yard supplies. And just try getting a weeks worth of groceries home on the bus. Our so called cities simply aren't set up to serve a society without wheels.
I haven’t done any real research, but I suspect that many of the so called strip cities in the south west don’t have any kind of mass transit capability at all. Too few of us asked the right questions when decisions were made thirty or forty years ago. Too few of us realized that the business and civic leaders praising a certain type of development may have had vested interests in their success.
Too many of us didn’t ask questions when we were told we could live anywhere we wanted to if we could afford it. You want a beautiful green lawn in the middle of a desert? It’s yours. You want fresh oranges or grapes in December? Hey, it’s summer in Australia or Chili. Go ahead have thirteen or fourteen kids if you want. It’s ok as long as you have the money. But, God help somebody with two or three who loses their job, has no insurance and needs a hand up. Then it’s “you shouldn’t have had a family if you couldn’t afford it” It’s not like the kids can be returned to WalMart for a refund.
The mantra has been you can have anything you want and any attempt to question those wants is an infringement on your “personal liberties.” Too many of us didn’t seem to notice that the ones telling us about our trampled rights were the ones with their hands in our pockets and that the pea was never under the cup to start with.
There was an “oh shit” moment on The Weather Channel’s Forecast Earth a few weeks ago. Part of a segment focused on huge development being built in Arizona or New Mexico; more than five thousand homes. In an area that’s near desert to start with and has been in moderate to severe drought for nearly ten years. Trouble is, we don’t have records that go back all that far, and what we’re calling normal may have been unusually wet. What we’re seeing now may actually be normal.
Anyway, one of the prospective buyers, an older man, was asked if he was worried about water being available. His reply made me mad enough to spit. “There’s no water shortage as long as you can afford it.” His companion, presumably his wife, had the grace to look a little embarrassed but her comment was almost as bad. It was basically “well, they wouldn’t build it if everything wasn’t ok, would they?”
Honey, yes they would if they figured they could get away with it. The builder will have the money and be looking for more sheep to shear. As for you folks, you’ll be left with dust coming out of the faucet.
I spent a half-hour trying to come up with some clever sexual metaphor for my political disenchantment. Apparently my brain is just too fried to come up with anything cute or original tonight. Sigh! But I still want to talk about my lack of zeal about Election 2008.
At the time of our last general election, I was basking in glorious semi-retirement (translation: I was bored out of my skull and needed something to obsess about…) And I was fed up to my eyeballs with the antics of the Bush Administration. I had nothing better to do with my time, so I held my nose, closed my eyes, and jumped head-first into the political pool. What was I hoping to accomplish? Did I think my one weak little voice would change anyone’s mind? Did I harbor a secret hope that there were legions of closet liberals out there who needed but a word from me to march forward and carry the day? Or perhaps the thought of another four years of Bush and Company just scared the living daylights out of me?
So I fumed, and I wrote, and I worried, and I voted…for all the good it did. The Bush Cartel—by appealing to the basest instincts of the masses, tweaking a few voting machines here and there, and calling in every favor it was ever owed by its rich, powerful (and invisible) backers—managed to mandate itself into another four years of power. The Democrats didn’t help matters any. They proved they had yet to find their backbones (or their asses with both hands…) by reasoning: "Well, if the public likes Bush so much, let’s give them….a slightly left-of-center Bush-like monstrosity clone thing." John Kerry. Oy!
And now, here we are, four years later. My life has changed drastically. I no longer have hours and hours to sit in front of the keyboard and tap out political prophecy. I’m busy, and I’m distracted. But I’m also disheartened and, unfortunately, wiser than I was four years ago. There are things I know now that I didn’t know then. Things that make it that much harder to get myself up for the process this time around.
First of all, I know that my vote really doesn’t count.
I live in Oregon. A beautiful state; a lovely state. Not all that small, area-wise. But—here’s the rub—not all that big, population-wise. And we are ‘way our here on the left coast. When it comes to general elections, we have traditionally been three hours late and a few hundred million (people) short. Recently, we’ve contrived to beat the "late" bit by being the first state with 100% vote by mail; so if I’m lucky, when I cast my vote, the election results might not already be a fait accompli, as they have been in elections past. Still, my precious vote gets thrown into a pool that will generate seven electoral votes.
Seven.
A measly single-digit number about which no candidate gives a rodent’s derriere.
Could there be a more frustrating place for a person with outspoken national political opinions to live?
Secondly, I know now that it’s all…well, bullshit. It’s politics. It’s meaningless. It’s "Say anything you need to say to get the dumbest boob who can pull a lever or scribble an ‘x’ to think you’re the answer to all his problems."
Tell him you’re going to put him on Easy Street. He’s gonna get his share—you’ll make sure he does. You’re going to lower his rent, lower his taxes. Your government will hand him everything he needs, but won’t poke its nose into his business. Let him know you can be counted on to influence the Almighty in his favor.
But first and foremost—scare the hell out of him. Make him suspicious of everything, even the guy who has lived next door for twenty years; and then make him believe you’re going to save him.
It’s crap. It’s lies. It’s about getting people all tangled up in emotions that do nothing but mask the real issues. With the help of our illustrious American media…
So maybe it’s not the candidates that aren’t doing it for me this election. Maybe it’s the process. The futility. The media circus. The fabrications preached as gospel.
And the knowledge that if there were a candidate who would take a stand against all of that…
(S)he wouldn’t stand a chance.
I wasn't sure if we were supposed to write our own little blurbs in entries or just comment. I just decided to do it this way.
:)
We probably all have our own reasons why we can't get excited about the choices. It would be very easy for me to throw my hands in the air and walk away from this election. But of course, that's not the responsible thing to do.
I can only share the source of my electile dysfunction. The country is a mess. It's such a mess that I don't have confidence ANYONE can turn it around. So when I hear speeches full of promises of "change", I sarcastically think "yeah....right!"
Politics is all about spin. Everything that comes out of the mouths of a politician has been crafted to sound REAL pretty. It doesn't matter what they say. If the president can't unify congress behind his ideas NOTHING will change. I don't have faith in any of them.
The broad based promise of "change" is laughable. That's not a commitment to anything. The candidates need to address the major issues with DETAILS. That gives the people something to consider when going to vote. We have grim issues facing us this election season....the war, the deficit, gas prices, a recession, global warming. We need someone with concrete ideas on how these issues should be addressed. A nice smile and a promise for "change" is not enough to get excited about when the issues are as serious as these. "Change"....it's a joke.
Personally....I wouldn't even consider a Republican this election. I just can't vote for anyone from the same party as W. I can't see that that is in any way a vote for "change". So I'm left to try and get excited about one of the Democrats. I'm in New York, so obviously...I have voted for my choice. Perhaps a discussion of who and why will come up as another topic.
I'll add that I think it's a good thing that Hillary won't throwin the towel. Everyone who wants to be counted in the primaries should have the chance. I really don't understand why we don't have a national primary day. Maybe that's why we feel so disinterested. The process goes on....and on....and on..................
Lots of choices out there these days... Topics? Presidents? How about we combine the two...
I saw this in Kathy's journal and I thought it was hilarious. And right on target.
Ya think the drug companies will come up with a miracle cure for this one?
So, why are we not excited, my friends? I will be back after my upcoming l-o-n-g day to give you my thoughts...
I didn't realize you had started. It's been a busy couple of weeks and I'm out of the loop.
Hi....I'm Kat! I'm fifty one, married 25 years and the mother of three. My oldest daughter is 20 and is living with us as she's taking a semester off from the University of Pittsburgh. I also have a daughter who is 17 who has one more year of high school ahead, and a son who is 13 preparing to become a bar mitzvah. I also have two golden retrievers who are my constant companions.
My husband is an executive in a publicly traded company...I'm a stay at home mom.
Somehow, I don't think this is what I was really meant to be. One day....I'll figure it out.
I've been journaling on AOL for 4 years now. That surprises me. I never thought it would stick. But it has and I'm happy about that. I know I've seen all your screen names before....I know some of you better than others but I look forward to getting to know you all well. My journal Walk With Me... is private, but if you wish I will add you as a reader. I also keep a photoblog, In My Dreams I Can Fly...
I am a person of roots. I lived the first half of my life in Indiana, where my family resided for over a century. The second half, I lived in eastern PA....which I came to love as MY home. In the last year, I have relocated to Long Island, NY. It's a lovely place, but I am having a difficult time getting "settled". I never could have imagined how difficult a move like this could be. I feel very much adrift.
I'm a dabbler. I yearn for artistic outlets and try my hand at many. I've also got a bit too much perfectionist in me to really let my creativity out. I have a screaming inner critic. However, I love photography and textile art. I find photography to be something that really lets me escape from the pressures and demands of everyday life. I love how it engages me in the minute details of things around me.
I am an environmentalist. My degree is in environmental science. I worry about what is happening in the world and environmental short sightedness. I love all things outdoors...hiking, camping, birds and wildlife, and of course photography. I love to travel and have deep seated wanderlust.
I live a very comfortable life, wanting for little that is material But if I had it all to do over again, I can't help but wonder if I wouldn't do it differently. I love my children with all my heart and wouldn't give them up for anything. However, I feel like there is so much more that I have missed. And this move has put me in a place where I feel like I'm living someone else's life. It's inauthentic for me. So my task at hand it to get my bearings and set a course that makes sense for the second half of my life. At the risk of sounding selfish...I'm ready to make it more about ME now.
We made it (most of us, anyway…)! I have an email out to Kat, so I hope she will be here shortly. And now, here are a few things we need feedback on:
Let’s get some of these little details out of the way so we can start the wheels turning in a forward direction.
It's late afternoon and I am sitting at a small table in a small quadrangle, surrounded by brick Georgian buildings and dogwood trees in bloom. I am reading and highlighting a commentary about John 21:1-14, the passage on which I am working for my trimester project in Greek. At one point I look up,at the library right in front of me and the chapel to my left, and think: this is unbelieveable. I am in seminary. I am studying for the ministry. This is what I am doing with my "one wild and precious life." (Hat tip to Mary Oliver.)
Within an hour, four other people show up to sit with me. A young man the age of my twin sons, talking about what it's like to move directly from college to seminary. Do Not Pass Go, do not collect $200, do not experience the world of work or home ownership or whatever. He feels a little green and a little at sea; I respond with talk about how the young people have encouraged me to question some of my most precious assumptions and predilections. A young man in his late 20s, talking about the paper we've all just written on the Trinity. None of us are too happy with what we've produced. A young woman, off to tweak the same paper before she turns it in. The wife of the second young man, very pregnant and very exhausted. We are all of us not a little surprised to be nearly finished with our first year, and delighted by the friendships we've formed. The first young man offers me what feels like a major compliment: he hopes we are in the same section next year of the course in which we will be reflecting upon our field experiences in various churches.
So, yeah, here I am. Fifty-four years old, married for nearly thirty-four of those years. Three children: the boys are twenty-three and newly graduated and employed in their college cities: Chicago and Columbus; the girl is twenty and finishing her junior year in Prague before returning to college in Oregon. I attend a Presbyterian seminary full-time, living in a dorm during the week with people mostly in their twenties. I'm also in a certification program for spiritual direction at a Catholic university in my home city, a couple of hours away. I've been a lawyer and a teacher and now I am settled on the second half of my life. (I plan to meet my grandmother's 100-year challenge.)
I've moved way out of my comfort zone this year, and it's been a spectacular experience.
And if you're wondering: Progressive theology, liberal politics, traditional worship. Probably as ecumenical as they come. Birds, photography, nature, walking, canoeing, hiking, travel.
It's nice to be here!
So I'm beginning. I share digs with one mom, one slightly used (and increasingly exasperating
IMac) and two cats. Inside there are enough books to stock a small library. Outside there is
lavender, black-eyed susans, blueberries, assorted shrubs and no grass. (more on how that
decision was made later.)
The rest of the immediate family includes two sisters, two wonderful brothers by marriage and
five nephews. One family lives in Portland, the others in the Umatilla area. Gee, one sister lives near a dormant volcano and the other lives in the Devil’s half acre; north of the Umatilla Arms depot and south of the Hanford Reach. The dormant volcano is Mt. Hood. But, now that I think about it the old SimCity 2000 game included a scenario that gave you the opportunity to rebuild Portland after Mt. Tabor threw a temper tantrum
That is a slightly revised version of the first entry in my original journal Pixels...... A few things have changed since July of 2004. Anonther journal was added and I found myself moving away from the politics. The passion didn't leave, it just moved closer to home.
Mom is a little older, a little grayer, and would still rather work in the garden than be anywhere else. The Imac still sits on the desk, between it and the PC laptop I have one good computer. One of these days I’ll upgrade the mac. One of these days. There are three cats now and more books. There’s a little bit of everything, but mostly history. Goddess I do love Alibris.
The yard evolves year by yearand mom has an apprentice; me. There’s a peculiar satisfaction in watching it change and grow. I’m beginning to believe that anyone who wants to go into politics should have to spend a few years working in the dirt. Maybe they’d be less eager to destroy when they know how hard it is to nurture and protect what’s growing.
Along the way I learned that knitting, baking, buying local produce and ripping out the grass coul be considered radical if not revolutionary actions. I wonder what would happen if we bombed them with loaves of bread instead of explosives? So I'm a dreamer, sue me. Although, I've pinched a few artisan loaves that would be almost as lethal as dynamite if they were dropped with enough altitude. :-)
I’ve learned a lot about myself since I made that first journal entry. I’ve come to realize how much of my identity is tied to the land. Not the place on the map that carries the label “Oregon.” It wouldn’t matter what it was called. I wish I could post the pictures that are in my mind right now. But, I did try to put it into words.
This is my take on living in a part of the world caught between the hammer of Oregon’s volcanic heritage and the anvil of that great western ocean. That wonderful, wild not so Pacific Ocean.
I am fire from the heart of the earth;
I am the sun, caught in flowing stone;
I am a pillar of steam, born when glowing stone met foaming breakers;
I am a cloud, gray white and heavy with rain;
I am a drop of rain, fresh water become salt;
I am a wave breaking on wind whipped cliffs;
I am a grain of sand caught in the ebb and flow of the tides:
I am the wind;
I am the land;
I am the sea;
Here I am home.
It’s not so easy to get down on paper, is it…this "who am I?" stuff. I am, or have been, so many things in five decades (plus a couple years…) Most recently, I’ve become the thing I dreamed of for almost half of those fifty-two years—an entrepreneur. A business owner. A restaurant owner, to be precise. More than any other thing I’ve undertaken in my life, this has beaten, molded, tested and refined me…and to a certain extent, distilled me to my essence.
Now, I only have the time and the energy to devote to things I really love. The things that I will steal time away from that great energy-sucking black hole of "living the dream" to do. My true passions demand all the attention I can afford…and even what I can not afford. And my passions define me.
So, since it's not likely you'll want to read fourteen thousand words...
Oh. And music.
And, oh yes...the words. The words that whirl around in my head, tap insistently upon my fingers, and must be written. Somehow. Somewhere.
How about...here?
Lisa :-]
