Civilizations rise and fall. A goal of the current administration is to eliminate support for most individuals, particularly those who require food and other support, to lean in to the rich, and deny rights to anyone unable to pay for them. The rationale seems to be that if a person cannot be rich, they don’t deserve assistance.
Since childhood I have read editorials and op-ed pieces on both sides of the political spectrum. Like conservative David Brooks of The New York Times once did, I also read William F. Buckley. As a result, I read newspaper pieces that make me a little crazy sometimes.
This morning David Brooks posted “How Trump Will Fail”. I’m glad to read his admission that Trump’s “ego, which interestingly makes up 87 percent of his neural tissue; we burrow beneath the nucleus accumbens, the region of the brain responsible for cheating at golf; and then, deep down at the core of the limbic system, we find something strange — my 11th grade history textbook.”
I laughed. Well, of course I did! But then all too soon, Brooks couldn’t help but unwittingly slip into fiction. I appreciate cowboy mythology as much as the next person, but let’s not mistake it for history.
I’m glad Brooks once had a Junior year history text*, but he might want to have another read. He makes this claim: “It was a time when the national character was being forged not among the establishment circles in Boston, Philadelphia and Virginia but out on the frontier, by the wild ones, the uncouth ones.”
Continue readingDavid Brooks, as is typical, almost gets the point: “Poverty has been the norm through most of human history,” he wrote in The New York Times a few days ago. “
The question is not ‘Why is there poverty?’ but ‘Why is there wealth?’”
Temperatures rose well over 100° in Portland yesterday (105-107°) but we are at the coast, and I am reminded of why my mother’s childhood was spent at the beach in her great aunts’ home. Portland is hotter in summer and colder in winter, and now the heat is higher. Temperatures here are stabilized by proximity to ocean. During the past forty-four years we have gone entire winters without frost, enjoyed summers with temperatures that never rose over 70° (that has changed). There was no electricity or running water during my mother’s childhood at the shore in the 1920s and 1930s, and the house was surrounded by mature spruce. Now we are surrounded by rental home.
Last night we were fussing about a daytime high in the eighties and the internet being slow.
Times change.
Other weather has changed, but ordinary standards of behavior are changed. Bragging to someone about violation, bragging that we could commit an act of violence without altering voter loyalty, threatening violence—these are the acts of schoolyard bullies writ large. In my mother’s lifetime, such behavior on the part of a public person in America was unthinkable. In my own youth, even accusations of such behavior was enough to force resignation and shame.
Times change.
Today is the 70th anniversary of the end of the 1950-1953 Korean War, one of the first international conflicts of the Cold War era.
—CNN’s 5 Things
Right there: “Korean War.” It was studiously called a “police action” when I was a girl. No war was declared and we were corrected if we slipped and referred to it as a war.
Continue readingGary and I are working on our future. Eventually the upkeep and isolation of the Arch Cape house will be too much. Our sons do not seem attached to the coast—oh, they say they miss it, but they seldom come out to visit. Once a year, or twice. They lead busy lives. That means we’ll be on our own for day to day assistance with what we’ll need if we try to stay there forever. Shopping, repairs… No simple workaround in our unincorporated community and no fewer local political issues. In our 70s and in good health, we manage fine now. We did, after all get the new roof on and Gary spread compost. We drive to Costco once a month. I’d like to think we might become ninety-something-year-olds who manage on their own till death takes us. But as a compulsive planner, I’m not counting on that.
We are working up courage to let go.
I know, I know, some of us love that movie and some hate it. I’m not going to write about the film. The 20-year anniversary documentary is playing, but either way, you are safe to read on.
Truth, fact, history. Lies, fiction, invention. Racism. Yes, I went down a rabbit hole of investigation and research.
Thanksgiving, holiday memories, oystercatchers, Pilgrims, and my Thankful story about a small child. Sea lions, and giving thanks.
&PRIDE Press 