BURNING EMBERS

I'm a logger's daughter and I grew up in an Oregon logging town. There is one way into Oakridge and there is one way out. State Highway 58. Once you get out of town heading northwest to Eugene the first few miles are either water and trees on one side and hill and trees on the other with only a narrow shoulder between the road and the trees. Other end of the road is hills, or moutain on one side or a fall off on the other. trees on both sides. Not a good place to be during a forest fire.

The president's mouth piece has described the surge in virus cases as "embers". She's thinking fireplace I'm thinking the Eagle Creek Fire  and the back in 2017. A teenager who was about as bright as the students holding virus parties threw a lighted fire work down the hill into some trees during a burn ban. The fire burned over 50,000 acres and took three months to finally control. And like the virus the fire didn't burn the whole 50,000 acres. It hop, skipped, and jumped as the wind carried burning debris and "embers."

The Columbia Gorge is also known as the Great Northwest Wind Tunnel. When that wind starts really blowing it carries everything ahead of it from surfers at Hood River on the east end to burning branches on the west end at Troutdale. In sixteen hours the first day those "embers" had jumped thirteen miles. Granted the whole thirteen miles was not burning. But smoke, debris, and rocks closed I 84. That and the need to get the civiliams out of the way so the fire crews could get where they needed to go. Towns like Cascade Locks were under off and on mandatation evacuation warnings. The fish hatchery was forced to release young salmon six months early. 

The wind carried "embers" across the Columbia and caused spot fired on the Washington side of the river. Actually when you are in the narrowest part of the Gorge Washington isn't that far away. The river itself was closed to traffic for twenty miles. No barge traffic. At height of the fires at least an inch of ash fell in the Portland area. With not only Eagle Creek but other fires throughout Northern California. Oregon, and Washington the Willamette Valley filled with smoke. I was in rehab in Springfield at the time. The smoke was so bad you couldn't see across the parking lot. We had smoke hugging the ceiling. 

Even after the freeway was opened the old Columbia Gorge Highway was closed for weeks as damaged trees were felled, moved out, and rock debris removed. The fires were officially out in three months but smoldering areas were found at the end of the winter. Perhaps this virus is like a smoldering forest fire. Pops up where "embers" drop. Citizens who equate wearing a mask with a loss of thier so called liberty. Teens and young adults who hold virus parties. More like spoiled brats in my own opinion. 

ALL YOU NEEDED TO KNOW

Blast from the past while I'm trying too figuare out what to do with the Quakers. Seems like I only did half a job last time.

Comment on the thread started by another Face Booker recommending flying the flag at half staff on inauguration day. Well, one commenter was correct usually we fly the flag for death. For distress you fly the flag upside down. But hey, I wasn't going to argue with her.

Anyway this particular commenter who shall remain nameless and genderless was quite free with his/hers opinions. Didn't much want to hear ours and was totally puzzled when I commented that I had visited their FB page trying to get a feel of where they were coming from. 

"Why did she/I visit my page? I don't know her/you!" Well you apparently believe that YOU can go on the site of a someone I assume is a total stranger to you and offer your unsolicited opinion. Unless you've taken your page private that's a risk you take while apparently not realizing how clueless that comment sounds. Specks in eyes vs two by fours and all that. 

In what I assume was a blast intended to silence the rest of us the following statement was posted. "I'm a Christian conservative and that's all you need to know." 

Too dense to realize that the statement tells us everything and nothing. Christianity is a hodge podge of often conflicting beliefs ranging from the Amish to the Unitarian Universalists with Lutherans, Presbyterians, several flavors of Methodists, Quakers and seemingly endless tribes of Baptists in between. As for the conservative claim. That's almost meaningless too.  Conservatives have a spectrum ranging from  old style Eisenhower Republicans (almost extinct) to the followers of Ayn Rand. 

That you voted for Trump and want to America Great Again without explaining what isn't great now and what you support to make us "great" again tells me more than you probably want me to know.

And I almost forgot the little statement that you had put everything in the hands of a higher power and Trump won, So it must be God's will. Ran across the same claims about Bush II. Which leaves us with President Obama. Either it was God's will that HE also be elected president or you are full of it.

God or Goddess must get awfully tired being left holding the bag all the time.

THE LIBERTY TO ORDER OTHERS-COLONIAL VIRGINIA

This is an updated version of an earlier post. Most of this material comes from David Fischer’s Albion’s Seed. And a faily long entry, for me, got longer. And I do not pretend that this is all inclusive.

Well, I’m beginning to understand why a lot history got left out when I took US history. Twice. High school and university. :-P. Albion's Seed is a brick of a book that covers four main British migrations from the counties they came from to the houses they built, the food they ate, to how most of the emigrants defined liberty for themselves and others.

To be honest I believe that US history should be a two year course. Probably going back to the Norman Conquest. Then we just might realize that our American Revolution was one of a long line of British revolutions going back to the 13th century. Usually with  a similar cause. Who decides who gets taxed. Who decides who gets taxed. And who decides how the tax money gets spent. At least a week could be spent on Charles I twelve year attempt to rule without Parliament by cobbling togethr forced loans, collecting excise taxes without parliamentary consent, and extending a tax originally laid on counties with coast lines with the money supposedly targeted to support the navy. What there was of it.

“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?” Dr. Samuel Johnson. Died 1784.

“I am an aristocrat, I love liberty; I hate equality.” John Randolph of Roanoke Virginia

These quotes help to capture the paradox of the love of liberty expressed by the gentry of Virginia. The gentry, who controlled up to seventy five percent of the land and other productive assets including a growing population of African American slaves, had an exceptionally strong sense of their English liberties. While many Englishman from different parts of Britain turned out reams of prose and poetry celebrating their heritage of English liberty going back to Magna Charta those visions often contradicted each other. New England’s ordered liberty that emphasized a liberty that often subordinated individual liberty to the community and the church was much different from the hierarchical vision of liberty that grew up in colonial Virginia and the broad lands of the Chesapeake.

Hegemony and hierarchy, the uprights that held the rungs of Virginia’s social ladder. Hegemony was a condition of dominion over others and a dominion over themselves. When a traveler named Andrew Barnaby spoke of the colonial Virginian’s he observed “the public and political character of the Virginians corresponds with their private one: they are haughty and jealous of their liberties, impatient of restraint, and scarcely bear the thought of being controlled by any superior power.”

In Fischer’s opinion that was the key of Virginia colony’s definition of liberty; the power to rule. To rule over others, not to be ruled by them. The opposite of the power to rule was slavery. You didn’t have to actually be a slave, just have lost your power to rule over others.

When Britain first, at Heaven’s command,
Arose from out of the Azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And guardian angels sang this strain:
Rule, Britannia, rule the waves;
Britons never will be slaves. James Thomson

There’s almost innocent arrogance in this verse. Britain, protected by its namesake stormy Channel, has the right to rule; Heaven has spoken. Simply by being the sons of southern England’s landed gentry, Virginia’s gentry assumed the right to rule over others.

In Virginia’s hierarchical paradise, your status was determined by the liberties you possessed. The big land owners on the top rung of the ladder had the most liberty. They controlled most of the land and had enough power to negotiate favorable tax rates and limitations on the power of the colonial government from sympathetic governors. Granted the colonial government, at least in the first generations, didn’t have a lot of responsibilities. The patriarchal head of the new world manor regarded his dependents, those with less liberty as his responsibility. This protection could extend to immediate family, wards, house servants, visitors,indentured servants, farm workers, and slaves.

Next came the thirty percent or so of the population that were small farmers and tradesmen. They were expected to bend the knee to the gentry and the established church, but they could give orders to the indentured servants, landless laborers they employed. The small farmers may have been able to afford a few slaves or depended on indentured servants or employees. In theory indentured servants were drawn from the landless unemployed mainly from English cities.

In theory. They basically contracted to work for a set time in return for passage to the New World. Ususally seven years. In return they were promised a few acres of land, perhaps some starter livestock. Basically these individuals were auctioned off when they got colonies. Usually, but not always, in Virginia, Delaware, and Maryland.

The laborers seem to have had at least one liberty. They could quit and look for a job somewhere else. But in a colony with large separated land holdings and few towns that may not have counted for a lot.

At the bottom of the ladder were the slaves. They had no liberties that the law was obliged to recognize. Anything they were granted was dependent on their masters. The masters had the liberty. They had none. Fischer uses a term, laisser asservir. It literally means the “right to enslave.” He doesn’t explore where the basis of the belief of the planters that they had the right to enslave others. It may go back to the whole concept of “Britannia Rules the Waves.” We have the right to do this simply because we’re British and it’s mandated by Heaven. I feel another headache coming on.

And while the Spanish and Portuguese were the first to enslave Africans and sell them in their colonies in the west it didn't take long for the English and French to join the trade. Turns out that some of those brave captains of the ships that fought off the Spanish Armada were slavers. At least part of the time. Hawkins and Drake included.

The ideal of hegemony was not only public, but personal. The ideal colonial member of Virginia’s elite was a master not only of others but of himself. To be truly free, you must rule your thoughts and actions; not be ruled by them. And while they believed in minimal intervention by the colonial government they also believed that part of their personal liberty was the duty to fulfill the duties and responsibilities of their station. Well, that’s one saving grace I suppose.

I’d love to go back to the 1780’s and invite the likes of Jefferson, Adams, William Penn, and Washington to a little get together.

NEW ENGLAND LIBERTY

As a nation the individuals living within our borders have been trying to define liberty since the first settlers put their feet on dry ground in Jamestown and Plymouth. This is a general overview of one group. Dissent began almost immediately that resulted in the colonies of Connecticutt and Rhode Island. Later New Hampshire, Vermont, and finally Maine.

The four major Britsh migrations to what became this country brought more than thier religious beliefs and folkways. Each group; Puritans and dissenters, exiled Cavaliers,Quakers and Pietists, the English and Scots from the border counties, and Irish economic refugees brought their own conception of liberty.

While the colonists of New Englanders were Puritans and dissenters by majority there were settlers that lived in the Massachusetts colony but were not necessarily members of the church. However most had to live under the theocracy of the ruling church.The Puritans came to build a righteous community. Their version and they had some conceptions of liberty that were unique to their settlements. David Fischer argues in Albion’s Seed that the word liberty was used in four different ways that would probably strike modern Americans as unusual.

the first definition of liberty described liberty or liberties that belonged to the community or communities rather than the individual. Writers, from the founding of the colony for the next two centuries spoke of the liberty of New England, the liberty of Boston, or the liberty of the town. There is evidence that Sam Adams wrote more often about the ”liberty of America” than the liberty of individual Americans.

This concept of collective liberty was consistent, to New Englanders at least, with restrictions on individual liberty that modern Americans would find very restrictive to say the least. In early years of the Massachusetts colony, potential colonists couldn’t settle there without permission from the general court. Persons who were judged to have dangerous opinions, in the eyes of the authorities, could be and occasionally were shipped back to England. Sometimes in irons. The concept was that public order was more important and of a potential settler was judged to potentially be a threat to public order then settlement was forbidden. Puritan minister John Norton argued that that it was better "an innocent and good man should suffer than order, for that preserves the whole."

The right to vote Plymoth and Masssachusetts Bay colonieswas restricted to "freemen" and members of the church. Note. Beomings a member of the church could take several years and qualifications were restrictive. One of the first schisms occurred over the religious restrictions. Clergyman Thomas Hooker led an exodus to small colonies that eventually became Connecticutt.

Threats to public order included attempts by Baptists and Quakers to preach publically. The colonial government retaliated first with banishment. Repeat attempts brought floggings, often brutal; being whipped through the streets, even from town to town then banished. Further repeated attempts resulted in death. Although the worst of the religious persecutions were over by the mid 1670's.

Those colonial New Englanders accepted restraints, but did insist that the restrictions be consistent with the written laws of the Commonwealth. And they insisted that they had the right to order their communities in their own way. Not the way it was done in Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or in some cases even England.

Liberty or liberties had a second meaning in New England. One that had roots in the counties of East Anglia where many of colonists and most of their pastors emigrated from. Individuals could be granted the liberty to do something that they normally couldn’t do. For example, certain individuals could be granted the liberty to fish or hunt in certain areas while that liberty was denied to others. In some cases the liberty granted depended on someone’s social rank. For example a gentleman could not be punished with a whipping unless the crime was extremely serious and “his course of life was vicious and profligate.” (the author didn’t provide any examples) Those of lesser rank, had a lesser liberty: they were limited to forty stripes or less if they were sentenced to a flogging.

And codified in the fundamental liberties of the colony was the right of any man, inhabitant or foreigner to come before the courts or town meetings and have his voice heard. And if he couldn’t plead his own cause he had the right to ask someone else to speak for him.

And there was a third kind of liberty in New England. It was referred to as Soul Liberty, Christian Liberty or Freedom of Conscience. This did not mean freedom of conscience in the way we understand it. This was freedom to practice the true faith as defined by the fundamental law of the colony. This liberty did not apply to Quakers, Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, or even Presbyterians who did not agree to a very restrictive definition of reformed theology. And the definitions could, and often did, depend on the whim of the local minister. Basically, it meant they were free to persecute everyone else in their own way. I know, I’m getting a headache just trying to wrap my brain around the idea that the freedom to serve God in your own way in your own community could be defined as the right to hang Quakers for preaching in the town.

And, at times, liberty was used in a fourth way. It described an obligation of the “body politicke” to protect individual members from what the author calls the “tyranny of circumstance.” The Massachusetts poor laws may have been limited but the General Court recognized a right for individuals to be free from want in a basic sense. It wasn’t a question of collective welfare or even social equality.

In Fischer’s opinion these four ways of looking at liberty; collective liberty, individual liberties, soul freedom and freedom from tyranny of circumstance were all part of what the New Englanders sometimes called ordered liberty. The New Englanders had their ways of defining liberty; other colonies and their settlers didn’t always agree.

WHERE I'M FROM

I did this a few years ago. Picked up the idea from a journal hosted by a guy named Russ. It's a sort of stream of consciousness excercise and I did end up where I did not expects. Some notes. The Cascades, Blues, Siskiyous and Wallowas are Oregon mountain ranges. Chokers are the cable rigs used to bring logs from where they're cut down to the landing to be loaded.The rigger ran the whole thing and it was run off a donkey engine. Wood or diesel powered. And yes, once upon a time it took several trucks to take out one log.  

Just for fun follow the link to the wringer washer. For us it involved a concrete laundry sink with a BUILT IN WASH BOARD. And you made very sure to fold the buttons to the inside. Which is why we always tried to beat Grandma to the wash when she was visiting. And she washed everything in hot water. Whether it needed it or not. Dad used to claim she could shrink a house if she put her mind to it. And like I said at the end. Russ was right. Sometimes that old stream of consciousness takes you down a road I didn't expect.

I am from Douglas fir, hemlock, spruce and cedar.

I am from the Cascades, the Blues, the Siskiyous, and the Wallowas.

 I am from clear cuts, choker cables, riggers and log trucks with one log loads.

I am from sandy beaches, basalt cliffs and mudflats.

I am from wild geese calling at sunrise, wrens in the thickets, and great blue herons on the other side of the river.

I am from the little creeks, the mighty Columbia and the Pacific breakers.

I am from tricycles, tetherballs, little sisters with skinned knees and a love for bugs.

I am from the ivy by the patio, the hydrangeas with dinner plate size clumps of blossoms and the garden in the back yard.

I am from a wringer washer, a concrete laundry sink and clothes full of the smell of sunshine.

I am from missionaries, Methodist hymnals, Quaker silence, and fairy rings.

I am from winter gales, spring showers, sunny summer days and autumn fogs and frosts.

I am from lavender, dogwood, daffodils, daylilies, ivy and blueberries.

I am from rivers with concrete barriers, hydroelectric turbines, and a creek that’s lost its namesake salmon run.

I am from Hanford Reach, the Umatilla Arms depot, and the Columbia Gorge where condors may soar again.

I am from logging towns with no mills, harbors with no fish, and farms being swallowed by urban sprawl.

I am from books, and a flute and feeling out of step on the march to wherever.

I am from feeling like I’m on the outside looking in. I am from seeing what no one else seems to see.  I am from hearing what no one else seems to hear. 

And Russ, you’re right. I think I’m gonna stop here myself.

TO KINDLE A FLAME

I wrote this several years ago. Edited and it seems like a good time to repost. 

We Kindle This Flame

We kindle this flame in honor of the Creator of Creation. We are grateful for the plenty that blesses us. In a world where many walk hand in hand with hunger we have abundance. In a world where too many walk in fear we can speak as our hearts lead us and show our faith freely. In a world where too many are alone, even in a crowd, we are rich in family and friends.

We kindle this flame in honor of the earth and the star that warms it. With gratitude for the changing seasons, for the coolness of rain, for the shifting mists and warmth of sun. We ask for healing for our battered world. May we learn to use only what we need and to respect what we use. We have to remember to have gratitude for the plants, animals, air and waters that sustain us. Their infinite variety is wondrous.

We kindle this flame in honor of all who share this little world with us. To show gratitude for our fellow travelers,  for birdsong, the glory of infinite colors of flowers and trees, for the seas, the rivers, the rolling hills and the soaring peaks.

We kindle this flame to honor the infinite variety of our brothers and sisters. We ask for healing for those who lash out in fear. We ask for healing for those who lash out in anger. We ask for healing for those who lash out in ignorance. We ask for healing for those who are ill in body or spirit. We ask for healing for their caregivers, family and friends. Help us to remember and honor the many streams that enter the river of faith that sustains us. Help us to remember that this river has many wells to refresh our thirsty spirits.

We kindle this flame in honor of our family and friends. In gratitude for their love and support and we ask for healing for any sickness or injury.  May they find the love and support to live their lives as they were meant to.  May we find the faith to return the love and support that has been so freely given to us.

TAP DANCING ON THE ABYSS

This repost has been simmering on the back burner for over a week. It doesn't need much amending. And some of our business leaders and certain politicians have proven that their version of the American Way of Life comes with a toe tag. States that opened too soon are spiking possible virus infections. 

The EU is contemplating banning incoming travelers from this country. Three states back east are looking real hard at quaranting anyone from the eight states that are showing spikes. They took Washington off the list but I'm afraid Oregon may take its place. Part of our spike comes from a Pentacostal church in Eastern Oregon that insisted on keeping the doors open. I had hoped that some of us might use this enforced time to rethink how we do things in this country. Maybe some of us have. But at lot of folks have spent there time trying to figure out how to get back to THE WAY THINGS USED TO BE and bitching and moaning that wearing a mask outside is the highway to the total overtrning of their sacred way of life. 

This from Lisa started this off  back in 2015. And because I am congenitally unable to LEAVE IT
ALONE I’m off again in search of the puzzle pieces of possible realities. I don’t know, maybe it’s why I’ve never been able to just sit back and watch reality TV or read the latest mindless “best seller” being touted on Amazon.  Maybe it’s those named and nameless Puritan and Quaker ancestors. God/dess knows THEY weren’t able to leave anything alone. And what they’d make of their hybrid grand daughter as she tap dances back and forth across the line.

So, here we go. This is an expansion of the comment I left on her Face Book entry.

And then you get an asshat who demands that you prove your dead child ever existed. The college he works for finally fired him. Frankly I'd take the sorry waste of skin out behind the barn and beat the ever loving shit out of him. Too bad we gave up the pillory. And oh, Lisa where that comment went after it took the bit in its teeth and headed for the edge of the cliff.

Ah, but Americans aren't supposed to contemplate passing through the veil between this world and whatever comes after. Where’s the profit in that? That won’t keep the cash registers chinging, unless you’re loading up in the New Age/self help guru aisle in search of the NEXT BIG THING. That glimmer around the corner that you think is your soul but is really just a mirage.

We're supposed to keep working and spending and doing whatever it takes to "keep it up." Remember when Viagra first came out? Bob Dole was the spokesman. Now the faces in the ads are younger and the latest isn’t even somebody who would be taking the drug. It’s a sexy young thing with flowing hair and a come hither air. Is that really all there is? Sex and shopping and Twitter and running faster and faster like the White Rabbit? I’m late! I’m late! But, what am I late for?

Because to be honest, it we ever stopped the treadmill, too many of us would be looking into the abyss wondering 'what the hell was it all for?" How many state of the art entertainment centers, cars with all the bells and whistles, cosmetics, bowl games, Cialis prescriptions, mountain top removal coal mines, Alberta tar sands pit mines, fracked gas mines, herbicides. pesticides and Big Gulps does it take to keep the howling wolf at bay. The wolf we’ve got by the ears. The wolf with the dripping fangs who lives where our souls ought to be.

Look into the eyes of Mitt Romney. Look into the eyes of the Bush Brothers. Look in the eyes of the likes of Dick Cheney. If you dare. Because if you do you’ll find the wolf or the abyss staring right back at you.

And that was where I bailed. I don’t know about other folks but I’m not going to bare my soul on Face Book. That’s what this blog is for. Up to a point. Anyway, at that point I found myself standing at the edge of my own abyss. There’s hope, but damn, my fingers are getting tired on hanging onto the edges of it.

HOW DO WE SEE HIM

It's definitely getting weird out in protest land. Activist Shaun King has a checkered career including questions of where donations to multiple causes has gone. And if you want to get into some of the details follow the link. But he really delivered a bomb shell this week when he called for all statues of the so called "white" Jesus be pulled down. He also included stained glass windows and murals in the call for destruction. The white Jesus is a symbol of white supremacy. Very long sigh here. This could just be the equivalent of jumping up and down and yelling I'm over here.

This is an Greek Orthodox icon represntation of Jesus. The Greek church was centered in Constantinople and I'm assuming that the city played host to people from all over what was left of the Roman Empire. Greeks, Romans, Syrians, Persians, the ancestors of the modern Turks, Palestinians, Egyptians. Did a quick look online at current Palestinians and complectians range from say dark beige to very fair. All pretty much brunettes.

And I have seen very few blond portraits of Jesus. Most of them tend to a very light brunette. However the image below is from the Book of Kells.

Product of the monks on the island of Lindesfarne. This one is blond but I hardly believe it was meant to be a portrait. The images for the apostles include an eagel and a lion. Actually my problem with most of images in contemporary Bibles and literature run the the ethereal, doesn't like he ever did a days work in his life or hiked alll over the country Jesus.

He was a carpenter they say. Worked with his hands. And if you've caught any of the programs that use traditional tools you wor with your whole body. People walked every where. I've always pictured a wiry man. Calluses on his hands. Maybe some wood shavings in his hair. One reconstruction has him looking something like this. Some authors in the early 1800's theorized Jesus might have resembled Indo Europeans. Say the inhabitants of Northern India. The higher caste ones. 

Some of the current Palestinians are about that shade, some are fairer. Doesn't really matter to me. However I have run across some claims that the folks in the Middle East and Egypt resembled Ethiopians. Overlooking the fact that Egyptian murals, which I assume are fairly accurate as to skin tone so not look like Ethopeans. King even made the remark that when the family fled they went to
Egypt, not Denmark. Mr. King Denmark might as well have been on the moon. Egypt was next door. Denmark was not.

Now down to the nitty gritty. How is this demand to be carried out. I suspect there are very few statues of Jesus on public, tax supported property. Most of that artwork you are attacking is in churches, chapels, universities or hospitals run by various churches and religious orders. In other words off limits. These aren't the years the Reformation when mobs smashed windows, pulled down various images, whitewashed alter screens, walls etc.

Perhaps we should follow the children. Lyrics by A Burt and E Hutson

Some Children See Him"

Some children see Him lily white,
The baby Jesus born this night.
Some children see Him lily white,
With tresses soft and fair.
Some children see Him bronzed and brown,
The Lord of heav'n to earth come down.
Some children see Him bronzed and brown,
With dark and heavy hair.

Some children see Him almond-eyed,
This Savior whom we kneel beside.
Some children see Him almond-eyed,
With skin of yellow hue.
Some children see Him dark as they,
Sweet Mary's Son to whom we pray.
Some children see him dark as they,
And, ah! they love Him, too!

The children in each different place
Will see the baby Jesus' face
Like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace,
And filled with holy light.
O lay aside each earthly thing
And with thy heart as offering,
Come worship now the infant King.
'Tis love that's born tonight!

And in the novel I Heard the Owl Call My Name. The art work in a church serving a First Nations tribe in British Columbia looked just like the congregation.

GOOD HARVESTS

A favorite author is Mary Renault and her series of novels tracing the stories from Theseus to Alexander the Great. The world of Gods and Goddesses. Festivals and ceremonies and to be honest sacrifices to honor the Gods and Goddesses for good harvests, for the safety of the cities for the safety of the people. Berry was writing from a Christian perspectives. It could just as easily be thanking Athena for the olive, Dionysus for the grapes, Demeter for the barley and wheat.

Whatever is foreseen in joy must be lived out from day to day. Vision held open in the dark by our ten thousand days of work. Harvest will fill the barn , for that the hand must ace\he, the face must sweat.

And yet no leaf or grain is filled by work of ours; This field is tilled and left to grace, that we may reap great work is done while we sleep.When we work well a Sabbath mood rests on our day and finds it good. 

Wendell Berry 1973 in This Day

I don't know if this picture fits the story. It's an image titled Spiral Sun by Alice Mason. It does give the feeling of earth to plants to sun and back again. And I really wish that Blogger's formatting would work at least twice in a row.

BEWARE TRUE BELIEVERS

For the Bernie Bots, folks who are looking at third party candidates, and those who don't understand still why there's a generation that knows damn well there's no perfect political candidate. Maybe because we had that nonsense kicked out of us back when we were still almost true believers.

November 1963. Snapshot of the vice principal holding a piece of paper for the home room teacher to read, That's how we learned about Dallas. Snapshot. A woman in black holding the hands of her children as they said goodbye to a husband and father who just happened to be the president. Snapshot. That same figure leading the mourners through the streets to the cathedral. Snapshot. A new president who basically told the secret service that if he was afraid to march where the people could see him he didn't deserve to be president. Snapshot, The horse with no rider, boots reversed in the stirrups. Sounds. Those damn drums I'll hear into eternity.

Snapshot. The faces of three missing civil rights workers. They found their bodies in an earthen dam in Mississippi. Snapshot. A woman named Viola Liuzzo gunned down in a drive by on the lonely highway at night. Sanpshots from different times. Police dogs set on school children. Fire hoses blasting non violent civil rights protesters, Four girls killed when a coward bombed their church one Sunday morning.

It went on year after year. A little girl, naked and screaming, running from her village that had just been napalmed. A Vietnamese officer caught on film as he shot a prisoner in the head. Napalm, B52's, we had to destroy the village to save it, Agent Orange,

A southern governor standing on a college campus promising segregation forever. That same governor gunned down in an assassination attempt. A man of peace gunned down in front of a motel in Memphis. A presidential candidate gunned down in a hotel kitchen minutes after winning the California primary in 1968.

The totally out of control Democratic convention in 1968. AKA as the Chicago police riots. And it went on.

What did all this have in common? Individuals or groups of people who were so damn sure they were right they were willing to kill for it. Burn down the neighborhood for it. Blow up a church for it. A few, a very few, were willing to die for it.

I guess I could go on. But I suppose this is my answer to the "true believers." Most of us learned to temper our idealism. "Hey, what he or she is saying sounds good. What are their chances of actually accomplishing this."

Well, we have a nightmare on our hands. And a reminder. Every vote you don't  cast because the candidate doesn't suit youjust still might be a vote for a candidate that we know is a damn sight worse.

WE ARE STAR STUFF

This idea simply will not leave me alone. It insisted, I mean it really insisted. So here we go.

If spce means little or nothing to our souls the same may be true of time. Perhaps past, present and future are all but meaningless. If that is true then; do you remember?

There was nothing and then there was…everything. A universe was born in an instant. The first blast of light faded and elemental particles came together. Hydrogen, gravity and time. The hydrogen atoms pooled together in great clouds; danced and danced again. The clouds, whirled and swirled almost invisible in the endless dark. Clouds combined, condensed under gravity’s power and grew again. The final threshold was passed; hydrogen atoms fused, became helium and light returned to the universe. Pinpoints became glowing beacons in the endless night.

You danced in the starlight. Blue white giants were born, filled the universe with light for a few million years and died in a blaze that dwarfed thousands of their smaller sisters. You rode the bow waves of gas streams carrying iron, carbon oxygen and all the other elements; starseeds for an endless garden.

New generations of stars were born. Smaller, slower burning, almost boring after the blue white giants. But their light was reflected by growing worlds. Some formed too far from the parent star, destined to follow an almost endless path through cold, lonely darkness. Others formed too close to their sun. They also faced a lonely future. Bare and blasted, baked on one side, frozen on the other. Some had no place to stand, their stony cores buried under thousands of miles of swirling gas.

You danced again on the solar winds and began to hear new voices above whispers of the hydrogen clouds between the stars. You followed the voices to a glowing spiral arm of a slowly spinning galaxy. And on a small spinning planet you found something different. It was white and blue and green and alive with voices to banish the loneliness.

(I know what I was trying to do, I'm not sure I accomplished what I visualized)

SHOW US YOUR PAPERS

Another post that seems more relevant than when I wrote it the first time.

For probably ninety nine percent of the time humans have been humans we’re lived on farms, small villages, or cities that had at most a few thousand people, Even if the farmers lived in town they went out every day to work their fields.

Even trades like spinning and weaving were done at home with a middle man picking up the finished product. Then we invented the internal combustion engine. (I’m simplifying I know) and you could put a factory anywhere. Concentration of machinery led to concentration of your workforce. Concentration of the workforce led to housing conditions in some city that you wouldn’t force on a dog, but they were “OK” for people.

After WWII there was a convergence of events that led to a significant depopulation of rural America. The interstate highway system bypassed the small towns. It is so weird to drive up I5 and know that state Highway 99 is only about a mile or so away in some sections going in the same direction. The push to treat farms like factories. “Get big or get out.” Somewhere along the line the mantra became “it’s inefficient to raise your own food, or have it raised close to where you live. Get a job and pay for what you used to be able to do for yourself.”

In the eighties Wendell Berry wrote an essay titled “What are People For?” It isn't very long and here's a piece of it.

“At the same time the cities have had to receive a great influx of people unprepared for the urban life and unable to cope with it. A friend of mine, a psychologist who has frequently worked with the juvenile courts of a large Midwestern city, has told me that a major occupation of the police force there is to keep the “permanently unemployable” confined to their own part of town. Such circumstances be good for the future of democracy and freedom. One wonders what the authors of our constitution would have thought of that category “permanently unemployable.”

“When the “too many” of the country arrive in the city they are not called “too many.” They are called “unemployed” or “permanently unemployed. But what will happen when the economists ever perceive there are too many people in the cities? There appear to be two possibilities: either they will recognize their earlier diagnosis was a tragic error, or they will conclude that there are too many people in country and city both—and what future inhumanities will be justified by that  diagnosis?”

Now stop and think about what we’re seeing in the way minorities, especially African Americans are treated in some areas. And I’m not talking about the gray areas where somebody points a gun at a cop, is doing something that is a low level crime although it’s a big part of the problem. I’m talking about a kid checking the mail box in front of his own house, somebody jogging in a park, or a man who just happened to be an off duty NYPD cop coming out of a birthday party at an upscale night club.

He had a new car. He was wearing some relatively flashy jewelry, sweat pants and a T shirt. The details are a little hazy since he’s suing the city and his former department after being slammed into his own car and ending up on the ground in hand cuffs. And the list goes on..

Watch a few old WWII movies with scenes of cities occupied by say the German army. And compare those with how some of our fellow citizens are treated when they are perceived to be “out of place.” There’s an element of “show me your papers” in a lot of these incidents/

Of course there’s the mantra of “just do what you’re told.” That is not what this country was founded on. I least I didn’t believe it was until I read these comments and op ed pieces from retired cops. More fool me. I can’t help but wonder how THEY’D feel if they were stopped on the street for no reason that they could see or pulled over for the most minor of traffic violations? Probably howl like a scalded cat.

RUMINATIONS

I wil admit this entry is a little disjointed. It's edited from and earlier entry and seemed worth sharing again with some updates.

I’m not quite sure where I was going with this. Part of this was triggered by a story on the net about an attempt to rename a park in Memphis originally named for a confederate general. And basically it's seen as a Civil Rights issue. Comment after comment on the thread had the theme that nobody alive now was a slave or owned slaves so African Americans should “just get over it.” It's a few years later and statues are coming down. There's a push to rename military bases.the mayor of DC redecorated the street that leads to the White House. We haven't gotten over it. 

Aristotle taught that some nations were naturally meant to be slaves. Except for the Greeks of course. And that kind of depended on who was at war with whom and how PO'd they were about it. No. No Americans living now own slaves. And most of us don’t have ancestors that owned slaves. That we know of. And I’m not going to go into the why fors and where fors of why our ancestors thought slavery was the right way to do things.

But I’ll throw out some random thoughts. Society condemns the drug addict or the down and outer who steals our stuff so they can sell it and get money to buy drugs or whatever.  The stuff that we believe we need to survive. Our money. Our cars. Our electronics. Our jewelry. They steal them because they “need” it at the time.

Outside out houses and our cities it a great, big wonderful, divinely created world full of creatures that depend on that world for their food, their homes, their futures. And in the words of the seventies song “we plunder, we pillage, we tear and we tunnel. Trees lying toppled,they finger the sky. Building a land for machines and computers, in the name of progress the farms have to die,” And I might add the rivers, the meadows, the sea and the mountain tops.

We rip up the land. We spread our poisons, We literally take the tops off mountains and dump the waste at the bottom of the hill. Because we “need” the the coal.. And as the coal plants shut down in this country, the coal companies "need" the coal to sell to China and India.This country cleans up our skies while they pollute theirs.

We need the cheap crops, We need stuff to fill the bottomless pit in our souls. And no, we don’t own slaves. But slavery still exists.Too many of us do turn a blind eye to the sweat shop labor paid pennies or nothing an hour to build an Iphone that can cost hundreds. And we’ll line up for hours to buy the newest one to replace the one we bought last year. And it proves what? Damned if I know. 

I do believe that there is a worm at the heart of civilization and it goes back thousands of years. Somewhere, sometime, somebody decided that they had the right to take another human being; take them from their homes, their families, their place in Creation and force them to do their will. And claim divine sanction for it.

When the conquerors came to the New World they didn’t see people who mostly lived in harmony with their world they sawpotential Christian converts and potential slaves. And yes, there was war, and conquest and bloodshed on this side of the pond. The poison goes back further than the migration to the New World from the west.

But the native peoples in the "new world" made terrible slaves. They rebelled, they killed themselves and their families, they had no immunity to our diseses and died by the hundreds, thousands. Yes there was slavery in Africa. Tribes enslaved other tribes and sold them to the slavers from the Middle East and I suspect hundreds died getting there. but I haven't heard of Muslims searching the Koran for verses to prove that selling certain human beings was sanctioned by God.

And we are having to rewrite some history books. Turns out the brave English captains who faced the Armada were also slave traders. And Francis Drake didn't end up sailing around the world for the joy of exploration. It was a privateering voyage to hit the Spanish silver colonies on the west coast of South America. And a very profitable voyage it was.

But it was left to citizens of this country to try to justify their "peculiar institution" with Bible verses and spend decaded trying to prove that all Africans were good for was being slaves because they weren't fit for anything else.

I’m not sure where this is leading me, except that I suspect that African Americans aren’t the only ones who need to “get over it.”

DEATH OR LIFE

I used a shot of Sahalie Falls up the McKenzie Highway east of Springfield, Oregon. Still seaching for the Quakers part 2. I may just have to try rewriting that part.

And nearly three hundred years later Penn is echoed by another Quaker, Howard Brinton.

 "As I write this I am writing in a house which will soon be destroyed by a thru-way enabling automobiles and trucks to save a few minutes in going from one place to another. I hope they will make good use of the time they will save. Because in building this road a great deal of life will be destroyed. The living fields and woods will be shrouded in a dead shroud of concrete, destroying all life under it and much that is near it. This is only one example of how death is replacing life in the western world. When this cold, dead shroud of concrete is extended further, life will decrease and death will increase, and when it goes far enough life will cease. We are living in a world where death is gradually supplanting life. And the final end of this process is predictable."

This was taken from a series of pamphlets he wrote explaining Quaker beliefs. Beliefs that are dead opposite to the "machine" definition that has taken over how we view the world. And the opposite of life isn't death. After all, a seed has to die for the new plant to be born. In his view the opposite of life is the machine. And his view goes a long way to explain the God/dess awful mess we find ourselves in.