CONTUMELY

PART 1

Once upon a time, in a land far away called Democracy, its citizens believed they had the best possible political system ever devised.

Their land was at peace, largely through its own efforts at reason, compromise, discipline, and a thorough understanding of the way life should be lived. Some people were very poor, some were very rich, and many were in-between.

There was envy and admiration. There was hard work and laziness. Mostly, though, people understood the mechanics of their towns and cities, their farms and industries. What they especially treasured about their land was that it had no king. It had what was once called a legislature, in which men stood and talked out the problems and solutions of their nation.

“Ambition” at that time was lower-case. Families wanted their children to prosper and be fertile. Often for them to succeed at this, they had to make decisions about which they were uncertain. But they were also brave and determined. If sacrifices had to be made for the benefit of not just their own families but others’ too, they made them.

Over time, the renown of Democracy spread throughout the globe. It came to be seen as the best possible shelter, one to be emulated and in which many millions believed. People from other lands and other systems made every effort to travel to Democracy and to live by its rules.

The legislatures, whose members had been elected from the greater populace – millions of citizens used to and conversant with the land’s goals, habits, dreams and desires – followed a guideline called a Constitution. The legislators themselves followed their own rules.

Much of this seemed too good to be true.

Eventually, it was.

Other far-flung nations fought among themselves for a combination of sand and rock. With their new captives and workers, these ambitious states expanded and grew. Democracy began to think that it was being overtaken, that its place among the league of nations was being diminished. Although often it did not understand the combativeness of others, it certainly did not want to seem less than it knew it was.

One way of elevating itself was to make its blessings less available to people from other lands. So rather than extending its protections, friendships, and services to its clients and neighbors, it cut them off. Rather than maintaining its esteemed position in the board game of life, it began copying the goals and methods of people it might not have admired, but who were definitely growing stronger and more influential.

In time, it was seen that perhaps a king might, after all, be needed, someone wise and experienced. Most Democratians were otherwise occupied, and paid little attention to the drift of Democracy. Rather than standing fast for their commonweals, Democratians broke apart and separated into clans, families, blocs of citizens united by identical beliefs, needs, shortages, desires. To be rich became good; to be poor became shameful.

To be informed, to lead one’s life according to natural laws – facts –seemed a futile effort when
“facts” could be harvested from one’s imagination.

PART 2

To many, a king seemed obsolete, old-fashioned, and certainly not democratic. Yet many continued to dream – to read fairytales – and in strange ways to believe in them. Most Democratians, however, understood the heavy weight a king must carry. History had instructed them. Further, history said that to be king is not always a safe occupation.

But if one cannot read, or be read to, one doesn’t have natural caution or reason.

The people in Democracy had a habit of actually electing as leaders men who seemed wiser than most, braver, and certainly free of entangling alliances.

Eventually one little boy grew up tutored by teachers who were snared in seaweed. These fronds wrapped themselves around every obstacle most plants knew to shun, preferring sunlight rather than murky depths. Most reasonable Democratians were willing to harvest, dry, and even at least taste a bit of sea trash, although they were certain it was not an item for their daily diet. They preferred abstract meals of honor, dedication and intelligence – abstract but rewarding.

The boy who grew to be king did so at first without realizing royalty included duty, honesty, and vision. Democratians who wanted a leader to remove the weight they carried were happy enough to enshrine the man who could not read. Many misplaced their ordinary faith in good works and fairness to be relieved of similar responsibilities. Thus democracy began to fade.

The new king was very proud of his brain, convinced his vocabulary could overwhelm less involved souls. Oddly, every so often he would unearth a phrase or a word with which people were unfamiliar. It came to seem magic to many of them. The new king fertilized his kingdom’s fields and gardens with “contumely,” not sparing the most hard-working, honest citizens he could find, from the highest born to the lowest. Thus “contumely,” which meant a screed of invective against people and events with which he did not agree. The very word was medieval and virtually obsolete. So, it came to pass, was he.

He did not go without doing great damage to Democracy. He was angry, and seemed bent on destroying as much of the old Democracy as he could. Providentially, the old Democracy destroyed him instead. And while the populace was relieved to be out from under the king’s contumely, it was only too aware of the price it had to pay for its freedom. It knew that years would be required to re-establish the harmony of their nation. It knew that vast sums of money would have to be printed and distributed to begin to rebuild its institutions, its infrastructure, its alliances.

So it printed and borrowed, printed and borrowed, printed and borrowed.

Alas its currency came to be devalued. A process known as inflation took hold of the nation, and people had to pay thousands for an apple.

But remembering and then reusing systems of trade and cooperation, in time every day prices began to return to their pre-king levels. This process took many years, and made many people unhappy.

Miraculously, as Democracy remembered itself – and did its best to obliterate the memory of its late king – other distant nations tried to assist in its recovery. It seemed that they wanted to believe once again in the worth, wisdom, and strength of Democracy, out from under its daily thunderstorms of contumely. (Which incidentally were ultimately outlawed as uncivilized, unnecessary, unhealthy. And dishonest.)

It took Democracy many, many years to undo its one misjudgment. But eventually, fields turned green once more, air was breathable, water potable, friendships lasted, and alliances held firm.

The people of Democracy came to feel renewed pride and destiny. And contumely was heard no more in the land.

CONTUMELY

PART 1

Once upon a time, in a land far away called Democracy, its citizens believed they had the best possible political system ever devised.

There was envy and admiration. There was hard work and laziness. Mostly, though, people understood the mechanics of their towns and cities, their farms and industries. What they especially treasured about their land was that it had no king. It had what was once called a legislature, in which men (and some women) stood and talked out the problems and solutions of their nation.

Overtime, the renown of Democracy spread throughout the globe. It came to be seen as the best possible shelter, one to be emulated and in which many millions believed. People from other lands and other systems made every effort to travel to Democracy and to live by its rules.

Much of this seemed too good to be true.

Eventually, it was.

In time, it was seen that perhaps a king might, after all, be needed, someone wise and experienced. Most Democratians were otherwise occupied, and paid little attention to the drift of the Democracy. Rather than standing fast for their commonweals, Democratians broke apart and separated into clans, families, blocs of citizens united by identical beliefs, needs, shortages, desires. To be rich became good; to be poor became shameful.

To be informed, to lead one’s life according to natural laws – facts –seemed a futile effort when
“facts” could be harvested from one’s imagination.

PART 2 next week, 2/1/19.

TIME

Time is a wonderful thing. At eight o’clock p.m. we hear Trump must be impeached for directing Michael Cohen to tamper with pre-election polling. Evidence? Well, there may be some but we can’t be precise about it. At eight o’clock a.m., the next day, the all-bells ringing approach has been winnowed down to a “maybe” there is evidence of Trump playing where he shouldn’t. Pundits so certain of victory last night are now nowhere to be seen.

We are no closer to getting rid of this pernicious president than we were before.

He has been able to once again muddy the clear stream of American history and escape down-river on his raft. He leaves the rest of us on the riverbanks to watch the ship of state teeter at the edge of international falls. We’ve held our breaths for longer than we thought humanly possible. We’re exhausted.

But not to the point where we can allow him to “win” this asinine and childish tug of war by giving him what he wants. That’s called extortion, folks, and we don’t operate that way. And he knows it.

Meanwhile, we are told that the government was in the business of separating children from their parents in far greater numbers than at first reported. But guess what? No records were kept. This administration couldn’t find its own shoes under its bed. Let alone its underwear cast aside as it leapt between the sheets with all kinds of unsavory characters.

Oliagenous Mitch is in perpetual hiding. No reason for this but he won’t be tracked and identified as the most dithering power-hungry senator in domestic history. Apparently he feels he’s done his duty and wants the government to reopen without the benefit of his vaunted skills. He’s getting away with murder, literally. By refusing to take part in solving the nation’s problems, he is holding open the door for Death, disease and poverty. He has as much empathy as Trump himself. Our feeling: if one goes, they should both go. He’s oily, shaky, old, out-of-date, well past his sell-by limit. How can this ever-freshly shaven and always circumspect model earn the loyalty of his troops? With his retreat, his troops have nothing better to do than hang around and wait – while thousands are dispossessed of what they held most dear: their independence, for which they have worked so hard.

What should be heartening really is not. That Dear One’s numbers are down surprises no one except Dear One. And perhaps Kevin McCarthy. A Californian of no great ability or record. He’s as eloquent as the senator from Wyoming who always stands behind and to the right of Mitch in any group photo. We hear nothing from him until his vulpine face is pressed against a wall, and then, when he speaks, he is redundant immediately, repeating standard issue arguments that are unresponsive and unrealistic and simply unworthy of a man elected by other thinking human beings.

The State of the Union is divided, in turmoil, uncertain of its goals both here and abroad. Ms. Pelosi’s suggestion that delivery of this one nonessential speech be postponed makes perfect sense to us. What can the President say that isn’t a lie? That isn’t immediately recognized as such?

Far more troubling, but absolutely understandable, the public apparently has decided what matters most is reopening the government – a wallet-issue – rather than maintaining our integrity and freedom. It’s a tough call. Thousands are falling into poverty and dropping day by day from the middle class to the “lower” classes by virtue of not having money to spend on necessities. Food stamps and their users –not ordinarily a desired expedient – have become increasingly necessary. Children are left alone at home as their parents pound the pavements searching for additional jobs and income. Troops abroad look back at these shores and wonder what in hell they’re supposed to be doing. Shouldn’t they be at home trying to help their families?

Too many courageous Americans have decided that what matters most in life is getting the government to reopen. They don’t care about the shenanigans of Trump et cie. Ivanka, Mnushin, Barr, Whittaker, Pompeo are all names that eventually become meaningless in the face of The Wall. They’re perfectly content to give DJT his wall if only they can support their families.

That way lies totalitarianism.

That’s what the Donald and Vlad seem to want.

The public is saying in the short run, let them have it. We’ll catch up with them later.

Later will be too late.

I’m John Neufeld

NAIVE

We are confused.

$5.6 billion. $2.5 billion. $1.3 Billion.

800,000 teetering between being employed and being ”furloughed.”

The dependents and ancillary industries of those 800,000 people imperiled.

Dear One is sticking to his guns, ignoring his oath of office and the rule of law, behaving worse than the oft-mentioned five year old with his proverbial “me, always.”

It seems to us, naively perhaps, that DJT has treed himself.

How long do we think it will take his “base” to see him as we do?

Wouldn’t we think that he has already made himself look “foolish” by ignoring 75% of the nation who disapproves of a shutdown?

It’s not that he hasn’t got balls. What it is is that he hasn’t got brains.

To reopen government in a fashion that has already been approved by both the House and the Senate seems eminently reasonable. This is a plan DJT had at first promised to sign. Then he chickened, thanks to Rush and Ann and their entire crew, making Mitch “Oleaginous” McConnell himself admit frustration and doubt.

Put on a scale the six departments the House wants to reopen and balance them against one very shaky means of clearing the decks for fewer immigrants from the Latin South is infantile. More, it’s selfishly cruel. Typical of a man who is unable to see that forest.

Now, DJT’s base is a huge part of those 800,000 men and women (their families, friends, industries) embargoed from making a living. How much longer before they understand this, too, and get off the bus?

Doesn’t the Donald look puny against what the House offered?

Would you tie your future to man who doesn’t see, notice, believe, favor, or care minimally about you? Or, indeed, anyone but his family and oligarchs the world over?

Dear One has stationed himself at the end of a very thin branch. Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that even in a mild breeze the branch is in danger of snapping.

The new House of Representatives has made an audacious and propitious re-entry into government, offering nothing less than what the president said he favored a few weeks ago. What the Senate approved.

True, we know the Donald is changeable. But totally stupid?

A few far-sighted Republicans – in both the House and the Senate – have taken this opportunity to break and run. That is to say, if they don’t break, they won’t be able to run in 2020. Of course, they could have done this at any time, especially at times when the American public was expecting them to get upon their hind legs and speak. They stayed seated, loving their chairs more than their country. They won’t be forgotten, nor of course will the simple injustice of their being still on the federal payroll while their constituents are being removed.

Where once it was commonly thought that Americans had memories no stronger than their shoelaces, that is changing. People are sticking “pins in it” and storing away information and impressions upon which they will act in the future.

This may be heresy, but it seems to us we don’t need to wait for the full Mueller report. With the aid of the press, we have learned more than enough to know DJT is the worst of all possible electees – short perhaps of Marsha Blackburn. We don’t need to wait for more evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors.” From his very first lies, we had him. It is only now that his lies imperil international sanity, national prosperity (remember the stockmarket), and the very air we breathe that we can feel confident he deserves to be pastured somewhere, out of the country if at all possible.

Maybe we could offer him a choice. A cold-water flat in Paris with the rest of the impoverished White Russians, or the Governorship of Puerto Rico.

Welcome back, Nancy.

INTERVIEWING….

….to save our lives and our country.

Let’s face it. DJT has been allowed to be himself to the detriment of the US of A, NATO, to wavering but curious would-be allies, foreign trade groups, distant developers in civilizations about which we are too often uninformed. True enough, he has managed to confuse some of our friends and enemies but this addlement is not always to the good. What can we say of his relationships (!) with our Armed Forces. our educational hierarchy, our industrialists, inventors, chemists and physicians? With our neighbors north and south? Within singular families, now at odds and ready to fight – someone?

Under the chant of “This Too Shall Pass,” we are forced to admit that it isn’t passing. It’s getting worse. Our way of life is in jeopardy because one untutored, uninquisitive, unqualified egomaniac has frightened the nation into going along to get along, into ducking, hiding, hoping not to be noticed. If we all just stay quiet and quiescent, we’ll be safe.

Well, that isn’t working, either. Without understanding his motivation for destroying America, we cannot combat him.

But we must! There’s a lot we can ignore. Putin and Xie and Maduros and Duterte as a quartet are far from stupid enough to welcome DJT into their midst. It’s our stupidity that has allowed Dear One to alienate the world and his own countrymen.

What exercises us this morning is the possibility that the US of A has reached a point where we are not going to be able to depend on our friends and neighbors to help protect their families and ours at the same time. In too many cities and towns across America we don’t know our neighbors, their children, their activities, even their names or the number of people in their families.

The news cycle feeds us disaster after disaster, life-saving and rescuing, breathless recountings of how a class or an elderly couple, an entire school was saved by the selfless and immediate response of firemen, naturalists. farmers, construction workers.

The “victims” of these horrific events as recounted by the media are always the interviewed.

Hold it! We want to hear from the rescuers: the farmers, firemen, teachers, naturalists. We want those microphones to be waved beneath the noses of those people who actually helped people we love and respect.

They all have something in common the rest of us don’t have, and haven’t even begun thinking about acquiring. They are the true color-blind men and women of good will, able and eager to save others regardless of what is happening in their own lives. They are the heroes who lift the stranded from rooftops, grab hold of bodies sluicing downriver, who dig for indeterminate hours to uncover the still breathing, It is this sort of dedication and heedless bravery that we are going to need as Dear One goes about wrecking not just the planet, but his own nation.

Dear One is a rare phenomenon. He is a man who doesn’t care. About anything – except perhaps income. He is incapable of stopping to think what residual effect his decisions have on millions of hard-working, devout, troubled Americans….not to mention the billions around a world DJT doesn’t know or care about, either. And they – we – are stuck hoping against hope that Congress will stretch and wake – Rip Van Winkle style – to stop our descent into authoritarianism. We want Congress to fight. We want SOMEONE to fight back.

If we convince ourselves that “business as usual” will protect us – that if we just continue to ignore so much of what DJT proposes – he will roll right over us as he does already. Rolling back life-saving rules for the environment and the air we breathe, ceding to industrialists every unhealthy regulation because they fund his campaigns, withdrawing from international agreements designed to stabilize relationships between nations.

In effect our heads are in the sand, and subliminally we depend on unspecified actors and actions that, in our fantasies, will somehow end the long nightmare of unrestricted Trumpism.

We need to learn, and learn fast, how to be human in the best possible sense. Put another way we need to learn the mental skills of responders, the physical strengths that allow them to combat Nature’s rage. We need to study the mindsets of people who will not flee but rather stand and resist the most awful transactions between DJT and his cabal. We need to learn how to emulate the men and women who – almost without thought – leap into action to save others of all kinds in mid-tsunami.

These responders are our leaders in crises. We need to enlist with them and learn what they seem to understand intrinsically. They may be our only hopes.

ZERO TO SIXTY

The results of the recent midterm Congressional election gave many Americans hope that political life in the United States might slowly return to something approaching normal. With the victory of the Democrats in gathering House seats, people believed that our reliable system of “checks and balances” once more existed, and that we need not be nervous looking at the future.

There was even a period of quietude immediately after the voting ending, largely because so many races were disputed. The landscape was unclear, and until these races were settled, few wanted to start pontificating, threatening impeachment, glowing with step-by-step plans to begin to make our nation once again an entity that mattered to the entire world.

False hope.

To some, there was still the gigantic question of how much damage Dear One could do having had his power cut significantly.

Some voters continued to tremble. The basic landscape had not changed overmuch. There was still a better than even chance that Mr. Irresistible could continue to wreck, deride, call out, Tweet and attack our wondrous institutions for his own (largely unknown) purposes.

This caution turned out to be demonstrably valid.

In this week’s “negotiating” session in the Oval Office about the possibility of The Wall’s being financed by the end of the year, and, in Dear One’s mind, our “national security” newly re-established, characters on hand for the one-act playlet included, naturally Himself, Mr. Pence (alive or dead?), former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate minority Leader Schumer, and as many members of the White House press corps as could be squeezed in as witnesses to history being made. (This last apparently was the idea of Dear One: “See how wonderful, reasonable, and sensible I am.”

What ensued was a period of false bonhomie, with all participants (but Pence) speaking reasonably with one another. Tension was mounting. Dear One – after all his time in the chair –had yet to learn how to speak respectfully to and about women.

Attempting to remind us all that Ms. Pelosi was still in some danger of not reassuming her role as Speaker in January, Dear One took the opportunity to speak to her in gentle tones of sorrow and understanding. It would be difficult for her to negotiate since her own future hung so perilously in the balance.

The red flag had been waved.

Combatting Dear One’s sympathy with the reminder than he did not have the votes in the House to push his efforts to fund his wall, she was off.

In no more than perhaps fifteen seconds, the Donald’s complexion changed from Mar-a-Lago tan to Dickensian fuschia. He and Mr. Schumer exchanged a few “facts.” Attitudes changed from one of false good nature to rabid sabre rattling. Confident and angry, our matador had to execute several passes with his cape before saying, in effect, “The bull is dead and I killed it and I’m glad!”

Rather than a carcass of a slaughtered animal being dragged by mules from the arena (a-hah! Maybe Pence’s role), the beast staggered to his feet, blood dripping on the sand. To the nation’s shock, the bull was still alive and swaying drunkenly. But — “If we can’t get what I want, I’d be happy to close down the government in the name of national security.” (It was 48 hours later when we learned that a 7 year old child had died of dehydration and fever after being separated from her father and imprisoned in government custody for 8 eight hours, having walked across a desert in the hope of finding asylum and security in a new country.)

All this occurred so quickly – Dear One stomping on his pedal and speeding from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye – that commentators hardly had time to mention the financial toll a government closure would bring. According the office of Budget & Management, closing the government for however short a time cost taxpayers more than one billion dollars. Not to mention the sudden impoverishment of men and women being “furloughed” at Christmastime.

The complete disregard for others less fortunate than he provided another moment of horror and concern about the damage Dear One didn’t care whether he caused as long as he got what he wanted.

Nothing since has softened or changed in his attitude towards the nation over which he is supposedly protector.

And while we didn’t need a reminder of what precisely this gorgon was capable, we got it.

Here are some terms currently being used by the press to describe the talents and skills of Our Leader: thuggish, uneducated, inexperienced, frighteningly ineffective, gangsterish, unqualified, dangerous, imperious, out-of-control.

It is becoming increasingly clear via the work of Robert Mueller and the southern district of New York’s attorneys that the American people were had. Naturally his “base” is clutching his knees with such desperation. No one wants to be painted a fool.

EVANGELICALS

Questions: What’s wrong with this picture?

Remember the Reverend Donn Moomaw?

Ever seen Dear One enter a church on a Sunday to worship?

We’re told that the Donald’s base consists of hard-nosed believers, people who would never desert their leader, would stand by him no matter what. That Dear One is upheld and adored by evangelical Christians who have rules, goddamnit.

Oh?

Donn Moomaw – although he’s fallen on harder times of late – was the pastor of the Bel Air Presbyterian Church where Nancy and Ron worshipped regularly. It made no difference whether or not the Reagans believed. What mattered was the ocular evidence that they were likely to bend a knee every seven days and remember that they were slated to return to dust. (We have difficulty believing that the Donald himself agrees with this forecast.)

Moomaw was young, muscular, bright, clearly doing a job that pleased the Reagans.

Who, we ask, does the same thing for the Trumps?

If we are to be tread upon by zealots, shouldn’t the object of their worship – apart from Himself – be visibly in tandem with their beliefs, preferences, rules?

But the Trumps present a confusing religious picture. Donald, we assume, is a Presbyterian, not that it matters. His wife is probably middle-European Catholic. His daughter and some of his grandchildren are now Jewish. None of this really impinges on our consciousness. One of the remarkable things about Donald’s administration is that it is constructed of so many different kinds of people.

But…but…appearing at ceremonial services for dead leaders, or commemoration of important victories (or defeats) doesn’t, to us, speak of genuine belief in a Higher Power.

We don’t see Dear One in concert with his base going in or out of a church of any kind on any given Sunday. He’s not a man to quote scripture. Or to contemplate heaven while strolling a beautiful golf course. A retreat for soul-searching would drive him crazy. He neither asks for blessings nor bestows them. He doesn’t frequent revivals. And although we read that religion can be a money-making proposition, clearly it’s too small a pot for him to plunder.

Why, therefore, are the upper Midwest, Bible belt, desert landscape, rust “belt” soldered to his side? True enough, millions have been willing to cut the Donald a lot of slack. But why? How do they benefit except perhaps psychologically. Donald showing his ignorance makes them feel better? Feel more ”normal”?

And if economically they continue to take it in the neck, despite his promises – if their kids suffer the same troubled existence they do – if their anger at how life is organized is still white hot, to what do we attribute their adoration of their prophet? Are they really willing to put the rest of us to the sword and then follow Donald’s caravan into the desert?

This is not idle speculation. If, as we believe, the truth will out, what happens when that same truth hits his encampments? When venality and corruption and reflexive lying are finally absorbed by the crowd as daily tools of their idol, where can they turn? What are they left feeling? How can they – no matter how much time it takes – be re-enlisted into what we have long thought was American (and certainly Christian): respect and love for our neighbors and friends, cooperation with healthy and national goals, friendship, hard work, planning for the future, broadening the roadways so that more and more individuals can find feeding a family, sheltering a family, improving that family’s lives worthy and imperative goals. Charity, inclusion, reason, moral structures. Sharing, teaching, praying.

Which brings to mind another missing piece of a puzzle. We read that Quakers pray silently, which is wondrous. But Donald’s base is not seen as a cohesive congregation beseeching the Power that Is for grace, understanding, pity or favor. Shouldn’t we? Or are they, too, shadows of intent rather than the real thing?

We hope others will allow our perplexity and seek to answer some of the questions we cannot.

NW CT WRITERS CLASS

Award-winning author and teacher, John Neufeld (“Lisa, Bright and Dark”, the Salisbury novel “April Fool,” “Edgar Allan,” “Gaps in Stone Wall,” an Edgar nominee, including the legendary give-and-take seminars on the Man-Booker award-winners) – will hold a seventh Salisbury CT Writers’ Class, “Your Way.”

The six classes will begin on Thursday, January 10th, at 11 a.m., in the upper parish hall, at St. John’s Church, 12 Main St., Salisbury. Each meeting will last only an hour and a half.

The emphasis in the winter session will be on details which make the writer’s work specific and unique to him/her.

Students will write and also have to read aloud from their work before the class. Others are free to comment (as nicely as possible) on style, content, and

effectiveness. In addition to helping writers improve their work, these classes are meant to be fun.

Earlier workshops unearthed a poet (published thereafter) and a comic novelist (also published later),

and a short story writer. Ideally the class will range widely: fiction, nonfiction, biography,

autobiography, memoirs.

The fee for the six sessions is $100, and attendance is limited.

For more information, enrollment, or questions, please call 860-397-5343, on which there also is an

answering machine.

CREATED EQUAL

We sense that a large portion of the American public is stuffed with Trumpism. Overfed.

The Mueller investigation, no matter how exciting for aficionados of presidential history and emotionalism, has force-fed us whole new menus of personalities, courtroom lore, jurisdictionalism, Congressional laggards, and hourly suppositions that eventually seem to us as though we’ve been handed a giant ball of tightly wound rubber bands and told to extract from it one particular orange thread.

We’ve met and learned to like, trust/distrust journalists of all stripes. We even look at bylines in newspapers and magazines now and decide on the name involved whether the article is worth reading. We’re confused and confounded, and impatient enough to begin to rank BREAKING NEWS stories in importance, those we should heed, those we can afford to ignore.

What this indicates is that we want it all to stop…not before a conclusion of some sort is reached but just kept from us long enough for us to worry about other, equally important events and stories.

We need time to reflect on the children imprisoned in Texas by the government – not for crimes, but for wanting more of life than they’ve heretofore had. We need time to absorb the horrific famines, the thousands of deaths about which we read in Yemen, under the automatic excellence of weaponry bought by Saudi Arabia from our own shores.

We need time to worry about the homeless, about people whose Social Security is wildly insufficient in terms of a single source of income; the elderly, the impaired, the suddenly hospitalized. We need time to worry over and to organize better care, speed, treatment, and sympathy for veterans. We need time to unravel the political appointments decimating the safety of children who work, our clean air, our global warmth. We need time and concentration to battle water shortages, adulterated drugs, epidemics that seem to appear from nowhere in countries that have never before experienced them.

We need time to reorganize industry, international compacts, trade, income disparity; time to rebuild the infrastructure – not of roads (that too, though, of course) but of hospitals, drugs, laboratory tests. Farmers and factory workers need constant encouragement. How do we uphold the Voting Rights Act? What can we do to improve the lives of Native Americans?

We all need time, energy, and dedication to recall and reinvent what was once the wonder of civilization – American public education.

We need time and perhaps even seclusion to weigh public morality as well as public mortality. Putting it more succinctly, the differences between good and bad, right and wrong. And the time, if necessary, even to debate those terms. We need to begin planning for and financing the return of the United States to its citizens, to undo the fire-from-the-hip Trumpisms that embarrass us abroad, and make us uncertain at home.

Time and attention and opportunities are finite.

We now have a leader who doesn’t lead but insists that only he be written about, watched, kowtowed to. Who believes only in his own powers of supposition – since he doesn’t read and hasn’t served, what else has he?

Dear One intrudes into every American’s life. To the point of mania. The recent midterm election results came in as expected, but far from strong enough to taser our leader. He rolls on, day by day, consuming the air and the time we all need to be able to perform meaningfully daily in our family’s lives, our colleagues’ concerns, our world’s struggles.

As the saying goes, to the press we’d like to scream, “Cut us some slack!”

Of course, they cannot and be responsible and effective. In fact, today the press may be the only part of our nation’s machinery that works as intended. (Along with GM.)

Every “man jack” of us takes his/her first breath the same way, all around the world. Donald’s life began no differently. What happens next is variable and determinative. Nature or Nurture.

Imagine a graph in the newspaper. Along the left edge are events: first kiss, first job, first accident, first illness. Running from a single starting point in our lower left-hand corner, across the bottom of the graph: age is one thread, color may be another, country of residence a third. All of the threads that climb from our starting point travel upward. Some stop dramatically.

But they start equally.

Which is a fact about which even Dear One should not be able to lie.

He also should be tutored: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…”

Perhaps what we also need is a vacation from the Donald. When Congress breaks for the holidays – from all its punishing work – maybe the current “leader of the free world” could go underground, as well, and cease his noisy, illogical, dangerous caterwauling. If he did, the press could.

Then maybe, just maybe, the rest of us could concentrate on what the “holidays” are supposed to mean: Peace, Understanding, Progress, Sympathy.

Wouldn’t that be phenomenal?

THANKSGIVING 2018

Well, we’re still standing, albeit somewhat shakily – figuratively, literally.

We ARE thankful that Dear One hasn’t blown us all up. Yet. We’re grateful that he’s no worse than he was before, although from the past few weeks’ worth of tweets and interviews that’s a tough call to make. It’s clear that as time progresses, he feels less and less compunction about trying to be “presidential”, and more and more comfortable being himself – for which so many of his followers have lobbied long and hard.

It’s fair to say that he’s not trying to be something he isn’t (we are not going to go there, listing what he isn’t).

Despite the fear and trembling of a goodly portion of the nation, we believe most of us are scheduled to dine with family and friends (having said what may well be the most imploring sort of “Grace”). We’ll be warm and comparatively dry…although we can’t forget what the fires in California have wrought, or the homeless, or the numbers of would-be immigrants and their children cut loose from compassion. Or the thousands of armed service members abroad on democracy’s defense.

We do, in fact, still have a future.

The next few weeks are not going to be a lot of fun in Washington, so let’s concentrate on getting the ski slopes open. On finally finding (after how many years?) that fabled shortcut to Grandmother’s house. On presenting gifts to our children that do not turn them each into savage warriors looking for, and willing to fight for, new territory and munitions. On the newly discovered ability of the same kids to actually want to read. On the accidental playing of real old-fashioned Christmas carols rather than hiphop.

And rather than depressing ourselves with an ever-growing list of close friends and family members who have recently died, making the number of warm, cheerful evenings at fireside with a tumbler of something smooth sharing memories increasingly constricted, we promise ourselves and our loved ones to reach out, to go to that damned party, and to be surprised at finding witty, knowledgeable, and honest people more than happy to make new friends, too.

We can admit finally that the dogs down the block, while boisterous and pesky, brighten our days. Or that accompanying a friend to a homeless shelter to help feed (and, bringing clothes, keep warm) people we don’t know can be elevating and – even perhaps –worth doing again. Or that singing “Silent Night” really isn’t a pain.

We might even enjoy watching, for the who knows how many hundredth times, “Mr. Deeds Goes to Washington,” or “Little Women.” Not to mention Lou Gehrig’s decline.

We can help old friends move from their homes into assisted living centers and promise, no really! to visit often.

We can be patient and loving with friends whose strokes have waylaid them.

We can listen and be genuinely interested to hear about grandchildren, or vacations, or accidental reunions. Remembering, we can watch without coveting a twenty year old streak across a busy street to safety. We can send a small check towards California, or volunteer to help teach an ESL class. We could learn CPR…again.

These next five weeks could be a time of renewal or, as pundits like to tell us, teaching opportunities.

We can remember what we started wanting all those years ago without beating ourselves over the head and ears for not quite getting there.

And if we’re very very lucky, we can use this piece for Christmas, 2018, too.