Monthly Archives: November 2012

Politics

That Mid-Point On Election Day

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Samhain                                                           Fallowturn Moon

Molar, already root canaled, now planed and scaled.  This tooth has had a lot of attention, more than any other.  I hope it appreciates it all.

Our votes have been cast and the lines, across the nation, seem to be long.  It’s now the midpoint of election day, votes still being made, yet polling place closing is much closer now than their opening.  Then the counting and the projecting and the analyzing and the harrumphing and might of beens and could have dones.  Joys and sorrows.

Election time brings my fondest memories of my dad.  Watching the Eisenhower/Stevenson race until the wee hours on our little black and white television.  Going out as a poll watcher to run numbers back to the Times-Tribune.  Dissecting the races, results.  Politics were, in the beginning, a bond.  In the end it was politics that drove us apart.  Vietnam.  Remember Vietnam?

My first election as a voter was 1968.  Never missed an election since, many of them as active participant in party caucuses, conventions, campaigns.  Lot of time on the policy side, too, working Minneapolis City Council and the Minnesota State Legislature, even occasional forays out to DC.  Maybe politics have been my second vocation, running parallel to everything else.

This one has felt more like more molar, in bad need of planing, scaling.  Give me a political Cavitron with which I can trim out excess verbiage, mendacity and cowardice.

 

Politics

Multiple Choice Test

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Samhain                                                       Fallowturn Moon

Filled in the ovals with black ink.  No. No. Amendments.  Yes. Obama, Klobuchar.  With faint disdain.  No.  Bachman.  Yes. Graves.  The rest, less feeling.  House of Representatives.  Council person.  County Commissioner.  Less feeling because the latter two have no candidates I like and on the first my guy has no chance.

Good news, though.  Lines were steady even at 10 in the morning.  The church parking lot was full.  Good turnout usually mean good things for Democrats, so I’m heartened.

Walt Whitman’s poem published below was about an election in 1884, 128 years ago.  That’s a long stretch for a democracy, peaceful transitions of power.  Remarkable, really, given world history.  Even when we consider moving to Canada or Monaco (depending on your feared winner) we do so from political repugnance, not out of fear of political reprisals or partisan violence.

I feel optimistic about this election in that I think candidates I prefer will, largely, prevail.  I fell less optimistic about this evenly divided country in the near term future.  Our current intractable differences make for vilification, not compromise, and we need movement on so many issues, among them entitlement reform, climate change and controlling the costs of healthcare.

Poetry, Politics

It’s Here. It’s Here. Stop the Political Ads Day Is Finally Here! Rejoice.

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Samhain                                                           Fallowturn Moon

The 538 poll column gives Obama a 91.6% chance of winning the electoral college and 50.6% of the popular vote.  As the Wiccans say, “Blessed be.”  and “So mote it be.”

(source)

Here’s Walt Whitman.  We know he would have voted no on the marriage amendment:

Election Day, November, 1884

If I should need to name, O Western World, your

powerfulest scene and show,
‘Twould not be you, Niagara–nor you, ye limitless

prairies–nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite–nor Yellowstone, with all its

spasmic geyser-loops ascending to the skies,

appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon’s white cones–nor Huron’s belt of mighty

lakes–nor Mississippi’s stream:
–This seething hemisphere’s humanity, as now,

I’d name–the still small voice vibrating–America’s

choosing day,
(The heart of it not in the chosen–the act itself the

main, the quadriennial choosing,)
The stretch of North and South arous’d–sea-board

and inland–Texas to Maine–the Prairie States–

Vermont, Virginia, California,
The final ballot-shower from East to West–the

paradox and conflict,
The countless snow-flakes falling–(a swordless

conflict,
Yet more than all Rome’s wars of old, or modern

Napoleon’s:) the peaceful choice of all,
Or good or ill humanity–welcoming the darker

odds, the dross:
–Foams and ferments the wine? it serves to

purify–while the heart pants, life glows:
These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships,
Swell’d Washington’s, Jefferson’s, Lincoln’s sails.
Art and Culture, Asia, Politics, World History

My Vote’s With Barack, But My Heart’s With Qin Shi Huang Di

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Samhain                                                                    Fallowturn Moon

As Mitt and Barack go into the ring for real tomorrow, my attention remains focused on an earlier political figure, Qin Shi Huang Di, and the Qin state.  Of course, I’ll break out of my ancient Chinese reverie to head down to the polling place tomorrow.  Can’t miss that.  Haven’t done since I was old enough to vote.  Which was, BTW, 21 for me.

I’ll be surprised if Obama loses, not sure I’ll be happy if he wins.  There are, of course, those Supreme Court justices and the execution of the Health Care act.  Still, he’s not made my lefty heart flutter and if Gus Hall were around I’d vote Communist again.

Meanwhile I’ve defined a tour route using the Bo Bell, the gold and iron dagger, the early tomb figures (small), the Hu vessel, the kneeling archer, a nod to all the various acts of standardization, the chariot horse and the various pits, the General and the water birds.  My focus remains the rise of the Qin, including the reforms of Shang Yeng and the broader and deeper reforms of Qin Shi Huang Di.  This is a wonderful moment to help people grasp a bit of Chinese history, and not just any history, but history that shaped and shapes the Chinese state.

The story, too, can be told using wonderful, beautiful objects.  A great honor.

Politics, US History

Why November and a surprise about voting and the constitution

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Samhain                                                              Fallowturn Moon

Never reflected on the fact that our elections come very near the beginning of Samhain; we regenerated our political life when the temperate climates head toward barrenness.  I don’t know this, but I imagine there is a direct correlation; that is, I imagine we hold elections after the final harvest.

Let me look.  Nothing on that, but wikipedia notes that Tuesday avoids the Sabbath, the traditional market days and made voting easier for farmers who would have to drive into the county seat to vote, a journey of a day or more.  See more below from wikianswers:

“Tuesday was chosen as, in 1845, the United States was a predominantly agrarian society. Most people traveled by horse and buggy. Farmers needed a day to get to the county seat, a day to vote, and a day to get back, without interfering with the Sabbath. So that left Tuesday and Wednesday and, as Wednesday was market day, Tuesday was chosen.[7]

… An election date in November was seen as useful because the harvest would have been completed (important in an agrarian society) and the winter storms would not yet have begun in earnest (a plus in the days before paved roads and snowplows).”

This puts elections, and by default government, behind the Sabbath, the market day and the growing season in terms of communal values.  Since the Celts began their new year with Samhain [and I do, too], it also places electoral choice at the beginning of a new year.

For most of our life as a nation, government was, in fact, something done during the fallow season.  That’s why many (most?) of our legislatures meet in the winter months, e.g. Minnesota runs from January to some date in May.  In our original constitution determination of voting eligibility was left to the states, the result: the only persons eligible to vote were white men with property* which, in general, meant farmers, so the work of government had to adjust to the rhythm’s of their lives. Continue reading Why November and a surprise about voting and the constitution →

Garden, Great Wheel

Summer’s End

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Samhain                                                       Fallowturn Moon

All the leeks have left the earth.  I pulled them out, chopped off the roots and the upper green leaves, stripped off the outer layers of soil cover and put them in the bucket that held the pro-sweet syrup I fed the bees in September.  The carrots, too, have left the earth.  Fat, long, orange, soil clinging to the delicate roots sent out for more nutrients, they come up with the leaves intact.  Soup ingredients and ingredients for leek au gratin that I plan to make tomorrow.

After this final harvest, summer’s end at last for produce, I took my Gransfors-Bruks felling axe over to the elm tree, a small one.  It had begun to impinge on the gardens sunlight and Kate wanted it gone.  Warming up to my aerobics for the non-resistance days, I began to chop.

This took 20-25 minutes and saw me chopping, resting, breathing hard, chopping again, resting again.  At one point it seemed the tree would remain upright with only a small layer of wood holding it up.  Then, as trees do, it began to lean gracefully and fell slowly down, right where I had planned.  The ax work is intense.

Dogs, Family, Health, Latin

Friday

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Samhain                                                             Fallowturn Moon

Boy, my Latin was not working for me today.  Like I had elephants tugging to keep my thoughts from surfacing.  I failed to go back over it, to check my work.  Over confident, I guess. Anyhow, felt slow, thick.  Not a good feeling.  It does, however, make me want to double down, get more consistent with my work.

Kate’s been gone yesterday and today at a supportive care cme (continuing medical education).  She’s prepping for what we’ll need, hopefully a couple of decades from now.  She wants to renew her medical license when it comes up in three years and she has to have some number, I think 75, of hours of continuing ed to qualify.  Keeps her head in the world of medicine though she’s very happy that her body is out of it.

Gertie continues to improve, bouncing with a three-legged, then a tender fourth legged, gate.  She’s decided to ignore the plastic cone on her head so she just barrels into doors, gates, people, furniture.  This means she’s feeling better and that’s good; it also means she’s cranking her nuisance quotient up a notch.  Not so good.

Art and Culture, Asia, Poetry, Woolly Mammoths

Woolly Art

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Samhain                                                       Fallowturn Moon

I’ve asked the Woollies for American cinquains in response to our tour of the Terra Cotta warriors.  Already have two responses and we’ve not gone to the museum yet.

From Bill Schmidt:

Wonder. . .

Why men of clay,

Buried many eons

Show us rustic, simple beauty.

Awesome.

From Mark Odegard:

 

Latin, Myth and Story
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Samhain                                                     Fallowturn Moon

Listened to a brief lecture on the Delian Hymn to Apollo, then checked my work for my time with Greg this morning.  I’m trying to learn transformational grammar to use as an aid to translating.  I don’t have it down.  Yet.