Fall Hunter Moon
The election is over. At least for Kate and me. We got our ballots in the mail on Tuesday. Yes, in the mail. We opened them and yesterday sat down together to vote. At our beetle kill pine kitchen table. The ballot spread out before us, front and back. The front had Hillary Clinton, Michael Bennet (Senate) and Jared Polis (House of Representatives) in a row, making it easy to vote for these Democrats.
There were several retain or not choices for judges. Don’t know if this happens elsewhere but here judges are appointed for two years then have to stand for a retention election. If retained, they serve eight more years. A state house race, county commissioner, surveyor, those sorts of offices sent us to the computer, checking on candidates and positions. We definitely voted against the Republican candidate for the state house who wanted to separate “School and State.”
On the back of the ballot were several matters up for public decision, most amending the constitution, a couple with only statutory weight. These are placed on the ballot if they get enough signatures in a pre-election petition process. This is referendum politics and I don’t like it. It sounds like direct democracy, but in fact it is too often a place where large organizations run stealth campaigns, hammering the process with lots of money.
On the other hand the matters that make it onto the ballot are often important, sometimes conservative, sometimes progressive. TABOR, a tax revenue limiting referendum passed in Colorado in 1992 is “…is the most restrictive limitation in the country…” (Bell Policy) Conservative. But in 2012 another referendum allowed for the legalization of marijuana for recreational use, expanding the 2000 referendum which allowed medical marijuana.
This year ColoradoCare is on the ballot, a proposal which, if passed, would establish a single-payer health system in the state, so is medical aid in dying, a $1.75 increase in the cigarette tax, and an obscure rule about taxing benefits of using Federal lands.
In effect the polling place became our kitchen table. It was better than a voting booth because we could discuss our votes, look up information on candidates or ballot issues. Today we’ll drop our ballots off at a ballot collection box at the Evergreen library.
Colorado is an odd mix of libertarian, nutjob conservatives, centrists like Governor Hickenlooper and Richard Lamb, and progressives. It shows in the referendums on the ballot, the ones already passed and the mail-in ballot. The trend, thanks to in-migration of millennials and others from blue states like Minnesota, seems to favor the progressive as does the potential for a large turn out the vote campaign among the state’s significant Latino population.
It’s an edgy place, this strange state where the Great Plains end, the Rocky Mountains rise. Though Cozad, Nebraska marks the 100th parallel and the line where average rainfall plummets below 20 inches year, the start of the arid west, it is the Rockies which mark the true border between the agriculturally dominated Midwest and Great Plains and the West.
We are both of the plains and the mountains, a place where Eastern ends and Western begins. The politics here represents that border transition, an uneasy joining of the two. The future, as seen from Shadow Mountain, should be interesting.
I’ve been working on the second chapter of Superior Wolf. It got plenty of critiques, valid ones, in my writing group, so I decided to rewrite it. I believe version 2.0 will be better.
Sexual aggression and its effects. #PussysGrabBack is a hashtag encouraging women to vote and to vote against the would be pussy grabber in chief. The Access Hollywood video tape with its lewd, rude, casually mentioned and approved sexual assault language has caused an outpouring of actual stories from women in all walks of life and of all ages.
The Greyhound was not then the dismal transportation method it has become today, but an affordable way of moving long distances. And I traveled long distances, going from Alexandria, Indiana, 60 miles east of Indianapolis, to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. All of my father’s side of the family lived in or near Oklahoma, so this was a way for me to get to know them. And never, on any of those trips, did anything untoward ever happen to me.
A Sunday, downtown was empty of workers and there were no tourists on the streets. I had stopped by a doorway to stand in the shade while I took snapshots of buildings. A man came back, noticed me squatting down changing the film in my camera. He said something, I don’t recall what and I replied because I was a courteous boy from the Midwest. He squatted down, pretending to be interested in my camera.
When I reached the intersection of Broadway and Central in Northeast Minneapolis, I noticed a Ford pickup, black with large tires that made it ride high. The driver gunned the engine, came up suddenly on cars in the lane beside me. Jerk, I thought. Then, he did it again. Very aggressive driving.
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Beth Evergreen’s sanctuary has multiple clear glass windows that offer views of Bergen Mountain and Elk Meadows. The view next to the Torah Ark had a mountain side filled with lodgepole and Ponderosa pine. Almost to the peak of the mountain though there was a small stand of aspen, golden still, in a perfect heart shape. All through the service I had a symbol, an accident of nature, created by my view, my perspective that synched up remarkably well with the overall theme of Yom Kippur, atonement. Also, up and to my right, at the roof of the sanctuary, a square window framed the tip of a Ponderosa pine. It looked like a painting by a member of the Kano school of Japanese art.
When Kate and I drove home from the kol nidre service at Beth Evergreen last night, the Hunter Moon lit up a sky covering labyrinth of white fluffy clouds. Occasionally, a few clouds would become very bright, then a hole would open, briefly, and the three quarter moon would not only backlight the cloud cover, but provide a luminous presence, too. It was a magical sky, a sort that seems particular to the onrushing fall. Aspens still blaze bright gold in some places, in others the leaves have turned brown and blown away leaving stands of naked branches as harbingers of the winter months.
I feel odd at Beth Evergreen. My physiognomy is out of place. The language of many of the prayers and songs is foreign to me. I don’t feel, and don’t expect to feel, part of the tribe. Yet, Kate feels, is, part of the tribe. Also, much of the content resonates with my own faith reimagining project.
Saw my doc yesterday about my knee. She gave me a referral to Dr. William Peace, an orthopedic surgeon. I called him and got an appointment for this Friday. Kate and I watched a video about knee replacement. It was helpful. Somewhat. The biggest new information I got was that the new knee lasts about 15 years. I figure I’m in a lighter use period of my life so I could get a full 15.
Yesterday included three separate trips into Evergreen. First, I took Kate in for the morning Rosh Hashanah service at Beth Evergreen. Then, I came back to answer questions, be available for the electrician and the painter. At noon I went back to pick up Kate and eat the after service lunch with her. All these trips included waits in two spots on Brook Forest Road for culvert repair. Stop. Slow. Stop. Slow.
There were kugels in aluminum pans, bagels with lox and cream cheese or chopped egg, fresh cut vegetables, fruit. Paper plates and plastic forks. Lots of eating and greeting. Some very short skirts. Some men carried small cloth pouches containing prayer shawls and yarmulkes. Kids ran around,
My fellow traveler shoes are beginning to get a lot of mileage on them at Congregation Beth Evergreen. The Rabbi there, Jamie Arnold, is a very sweet guy, empathetic, bright, learned, good singing voice. At the Mussar midday session yesterday we looked again at the first chapter of Mesillat Yesharim. There are many important ideas in it, two stand out for me right now.
The second idea is that we can be tempted, pulled away from delight and joy, by both prosperity and adversity. Recalling this simple, but far from obvious truth about the human condition helps us see that our material advantages are not the core focus of our lives. Our material success is incidental to the spiritual journey-unless it distracts us from it.