Fall                                                  New (Harvest) Moon

Just back from the Sierra Club.  A real dilemma for me resurfaced here.  I manage the legislative process for the Club, as I said, and in that role I organize the legislative priority setting process, its fine tuning and the work of the committee and the lobbyist while the legislature is in session.  This means I do not have to have a very deep knowledge of the particular issues since my role has a mostly administrative/managerial focus.  Thus, in a meeting like the one this morning with a legislator, where ideas get floated and possibilities discussed about a particular matter, in this case, broadly, energy issues, I simply don’t have the details and background necessary to contribute.

As Kate said, I like to participate and have intelligent things to say, but in this context, I didn’t feel like I had a anything to say.  This is disempowering for me.  The obvious solution, to learn more about each issue, runs into my other intellectual pursuits, like art history and Latin and liberal thought.  Dividing time so I have enough to do solid work in those three areas has not left me with enough left over intellectual energy to dig into the scientifically and often politically complicated waters of particular issues.  The fix here is not obvious to me and has me questioning my role.  We’ll see where this goes.