An interrupted blog

Superman became a senior in high school today..

This is the blog I was writing last night when news about the Georgia indictments broke, and of course then I was glued to the TV. The blog isn’t anything that meaningful—it won’t make you day or improve your life. Mostly, it’s just a chance for me to show off how adorable my grandson was at three and whine about my awful computer problem yesterday morning, with a grateful nod to my son, Colin for this patience with me. But what happened in Georgia may change all our lives. It may, probably will lead to difficult days, perhaps even the oft-threatened violence, but I am convinced we will come out better on the other side, and that the tensions and divisions that have beleaguered our nation since 2016 will begin to heal. I think as a country, a democracy, we had no choice but to prosecute our former president and his colleagues to the full extent of the law. And as Fani Willis emphasized, they are presumed innocent by the courts, something that they would deny others. Today is a day to be proud of America.

Hard for me to believe that the kid who ran around my kitchen in a Superman cape is now a senior in high school, but he is, all concerned with which class he should drop and which class he should sign up for. Wish I understood the process—if he didn’t want the class and didn’t need it for credits, how did he get signed up in the first place? He regaled us at supper with tales of the first day, and it sounded as expected—pretty much chaos.

Jacob headed out.

I put out a call on our neighborhood email list for back-to-school pictures of neighborhood children for the next issue of the newsletter, which as you may know I edit. I have been inundated with pictures—which is a good thing. Mostly I get pictures of elementary school children, but I have a few middle and high school. I know, however, there are a lot more high school students in our neighborhood. Perhaps, like Jacob, they don’t want their pictures published. Jacob will be chagrined to be the oldest one in the next newsletter—shh! Don’t tell him. I never intended to tell him about the Superman picture, but his mom couldn’t resist.

I was the one who needed to go back to school today. I had just barely begun work at my computer, when the cursor froze—and then disappeared. Totally. Gone. In a panic, I called my Colin. He spent an hour and a half on the phone with me, saying scroll here with the number key, hit this key, tab there. Do you have any idea how hard it is to naviage a computer without a cursor. Poor Colin was supposed to be preparing for two business phone calls this afternoon and instead he was helping his idiot mother. There would be gaps in our conversation, silences so long that I sometimes asked if he was still there. Other times I could hear the clack of his keyboard as he searched for a solution, I presume. I finally suggested we give it up, he prepare for and take his afternoon phone calls, and we’d reconnect in the evening.

He agreed but emailed a few minutes later with one more instruction. I tried it and eureka! The cursor reappeared. I cannot tell you how devastated I was at the prospect of a day without a computer. Call it an unhealthy addiction if you will, but I had no idea what I’d do all day—even the book I am reading is on my computer. By the by, airplane mode was the culprit and turning it off for half an hour or more part of the solution. Just turning it off and on again apparently doesn’t work. I have always said computers, like people, need time to collect themselves after a crisis.

North Texas is basking in a cool front. Tonight at ten o’clock, when it has been in the upper nineties most evenings, it is eighty-five—and a low of the mid-seventies is predicted. It’s not supposed to last long—a couple of days—and it apparently brings none of the rain we so badly need. But this brief cool front, like the indictments, is so welcome.

Have a great day everyone. Be proud that we live in America.

The patriotism dilemma

 

Yesterday, President Biden presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor our country bestows, to seventeen people, people he said “demonstrate the power of possibilities and embody the soul of the nation—hard work, perseverance, and faith. They have overcome significant obstacles to achieve impressive accomplishments in the arts and sciences, dedicated their lives to advocating for the most vulnerable among us, and acted with bravery to drive change in their communities—and across the world—while blazing trails for generations to come.”

There were names I did not recognize but many I did—Gabby Giffords, the representative from Arizona who, a gun violence survivor, crusades for gun control; gymnast Simone Biles; creative genius Steve Jobs (posthumous); Khizr Khan, the Gold Star father who advocates for religious freedom; gymnast Megan Rapinoe, an advocate of equal pay, racial justice, and LBGTQ rights; the late Senator John McCain; actor Denzel Washington. You may recognize more than I did, but my first thought on reading the list was how proud it makes me to be an American, to be represented by these people who have accomplished so much not just for themselves but for our country and out people. It made me feel patriotic.

But there’s the rub. I don’t feel patriotic much these days, and the uncertainty is a feeling I remember from the days of George W. Bush’s presidency. I am not always proud of my country. Don’t get me wrong: I love the United States. Despite my jokes about Canada and Scotland, there’s no place else I’d rather live. Shoot! I don’t even want to move from Texas, and it takes a mighty effort to be a proud Texan these days with our out-of-control extremist governor and high-ranking officials. But I am not at all of the “America, love it or leave it” mentality. I think that’s a cop-out.

In an online group I belong to a few days ago, I saw a blog about the dilemma of patriotism (I can’t quite remember the exact title). At first, I thought, “Aha! Someone shares my dilemma, and I read it eagerly. The writer is a psychologist and tackled the subject by addressing groups and their importance. Being patriotic, she wrote, gives us a sense of belonging to a group. It makes us feel safe and valued. But the trouble with groups is their tendency to ostracize those who are “different” in some ways. And there, she came close to the reason I cannot feel a hundred percent patriotic.

I cannot be proud of a country that openly and covertly practices racism, isolates LGBTQ citizens, discriminates against women, devalues the elderly, and has the highest rate of deaths by gunfire of any civilized nation, topped only by Brazil. I cannot be proud of a country where an extreme religion is gaining more and more control over our lives. I cannot be proud of a country where much of the population remains blind to the threats of climate change and the desperate need to save our environment for the sake of the entire world. I cannot be proud of a country where recently at least a third of the population swore fealty to a con man, a demagogue known to be a liar, cheat, sexual predator, politically ignorant, blustery—you come up with the rest of the adjectives.

What am I proud of? A country with a history, sometimes glorious, sometimes despicable but a country that until recent times tried to be honest about its past, tried to learn and grow. A country that values the individual, values truth, does not hide from its glaring mistakes but tackles them, a country of kindness and caring people. I want the day back where teachers could teach what they as educated experts deemed important and not what bullying parents want; I want the day back when women’s medical care was a private thing between her and her doctor; I want the day back when librarians, using their education, could shelves books they thought important without government interference; I want the day back of social networks and government services that provided for the least among us.

Right now I’m doing some research into the 1950s, mostly culinary. It was the decade that saw the introduction of preserved and convenience foods, of weird foods such as all those gelatin salads, a time when women may have worked outside the home, but they were primarily housewives. That decade in many ways teaches us to be grateful for all the progress we enjoy today. But in 1950 we had just won a huge war, the men were home (most of them), our international reputation was high, our economy booming (where do you think the term Boomers came from?), and our country optimistic. Nobody quibbled, as they did this year, over whether or not to fly a flag on the Fourth of July. We were all Americans, and we were all patriotic. (No I’m not blind to the Korean War, McCarthyism, the nuclear threat which was then new—but I’m talking in generalities).

Someone posted the other day that in these trouble times we must all love each other, to which I retorted that was great but would do little to tame a rogue Supreme Court which is rapidly destroying democracy. But maybe I was hasty—maybe that’s where change begins. But time’s a-wasting, and we better hurry. The future looms, and I’m not always sure I can be optimistic—or patriotic.

 

 

 

America at its best

America knows how to do occasions of state. Watching the ceremony form the Capital Rotunda today, I was filled with a sense of patriotic pride, something that it is often hard for me to feel these days. Soldiers marched in lockstep, people were quiet, orderly, respectful, music was glorious and moving. In this day of such partisan separation, Republican and Democrat came together to honor a man of greatness, of great courage, and a tireless belief that American could change and grow better..

It shouldn’t be lost on any of us that Congressman John Lewis is the second black person whose body lies in state in the hallowed rotunda (fittingly, Elijah Cummings was first). That in itself is a great step forward for this nation, where people are protesting in the streets because black lives do matter and are being met with force. Some in our nation still speak out against racial equality, against taking another look at our national history. It is an embarrassment to most of us.

When we take that second look, we see that from the Founding Fathers to the present, our history shows a continuous record of racial prejudice. We are today making great strides in overcoming that, overcoming violence against minorities, inequality in opportunities. But there is still a long road ahead of us, and, as we are unfortunately seeing, change does not come easily. It too often brings anger and hostility, division and violence. But this is one of those times when the words of Martin Luther King Jr. ring out: “We shall overcome.”

I can’t speak for John Lewis, but I wonder how he felt about destroying Confederate statues. It seems to me that those statues are nothing more than symbols of a history we’re trying to put behind us. They are static, inactive. Men like Congressman Lewis fought not against statues but for real rights, prime among them the right to live in safety. The Black Lives Matter movement seeks real, tangible change for citizens of color; the destruction of statues is, by contrast, symbolic and does nothing to preserve life, liberty, and equality for those who are still oppressed. Black Lives Matter is what John Lewis called “good trouble.”

I am so in awe of the moms and pops and veterans who have come out to speak for freedom in Portland, to stand against the bullying and brutal tactics of imported goons. John Lewis, at peace at last, would weep for Portland. Some reassurance: I read today that the United Nations has condemned trump’s tactics.

It was hard, watching the pomp and circumstance of this ceremony, to equate it with the protests and riots tearing our country apart. We must reconcile the two Americas—the patriotic and the divided, destructive—if we are to rise again greatness.

Rest in glory, John Lewis. And thank you.