Fall Hunter Moon
Dogs are love on four legs
Monthly Archives: October 2016
strange territory
Fall Hunter Moon
This trip into Judaism, my journey as a fellow traveler, has begun to transfer into strange territory. Both the Reconstructionist movement and a newer one, the Renewal movement, have representation at Beth Evergreen. They are, I think, the result of rabbis and scholars beginning to ask a question similar to the one I’ve posed in my reimagining faith project. That is, how can the religious imagination, that poetic impulse in the human spirit, respond to contemporary life?
The answers in both Reconstruction and Renewal are still opaque to me, largely because of my ignorance of their fine-grained details. But I know this already, there is a strong contingent in both movements that lean pagan, that follow many of the Jewish practices back to their earth-centered roots. Sukkot is an excellent example since it is a harvest celebration as well as a commemoration of the Exodus. The sukkah, the booth built outside and used for informal gatherings, recapitulates the temporary shelters agricultural workers in ancient Israel would use while engaged in the all important task of ingathering crops.
Yesterday Kate and I went to the Sukkot sabbath, a day focused on children and religious education, utilizing the Sukkah as a place to gather the kids. Rabbie Jamie played his guitar and led them in song, parents and older adolescents participating, too.
There are, I now know, people at Beth Evergreen who combine Judaism and paganism. One woman calls herself a Jewitch. Another has a strong element of sun-earth-moon worship in her approach to the tradition. And, there is me. I’m there because of my love for Kate and a long time fascination with Judaism, really more the Jews I’ve known, and what I see now as an incurably religious poetic soul.
I am religious with a small r, no longer interested in dogma or institutions, but with an abiding appreciation for religious community and the quest of the religious self. In this sense I suppose Kate could have been a Hindu and I would have followed along, not as a believer, but as an appreciator, as one willing to use the deep metaphors to understand my own life.
A beloved community, one where love and affection dominate abstract thought, but do not eliminate it, is a place where I can flourish even without embracing a theological position. Beth Evergreen is, I believe, such a community. How I’ll end up attached to it, I don’t yet know, but it will come from knowing individuals, their dreams and their passions. My suspicion is that it will be the great work, creating a sustainable presence for humans on the earth, that opens the way.
Class
Fall Hunter Moon
(photo, Tim Evanson)Donald Trump is the gift that goes on giving for Democrats. Against almost any other candidate, and even against the Donald if he had learned to grow up, Hillary would be in deep, serious trouble. Acting as he has, with multiple comments and missteps that would have disqualified a more typical presidential candidate, Hillary has been unable to pull away in numbers proportional to his many insults and errors.
But. Just because he has done more than any candidate could be asked to to further the victory of his opponent, does not mean that his politics, his campaign and his base are unimportant. What may be seen historically as this campaign’s fundamental theme is a third-rail concept: class.
Bernie and the Donald both drew energy from the rage of the left behind. So does Hillary, but in a less obvious way. The left behind are the white men with no college whose fate in the current job market is abysmal. “Nearly one-quarter of white men with only a high school diploma aren’t working. Many of these men, age 25 to 64, aren’t just unemployed … they aren’t even looking for a job, according to federal data.” CNN
This is important. First, if recipients of white male privilege can take such a hammering in the blue collar work force, imagine if you’re black or Latino. Then, factor in gender. So what if you’re female with only a high school education? What if you’re female, lack a college degree and are black or Latino? Leaving large chunks of the population out of the work force is a recipe for revolution. Desperate people can be recruited to do desperate things.
Class matters. Yes, so does race and gender and sexual preference and disability. Of course. But factor in class to any of these other demographic categories and the results rise logarithmically. Work for those without higher education affects families, the psyche of individuals, whole communities, even states.
When I was young, in the post WWII economic boom, manufacturing offered many, many jobs with good salaries, benefits and apparent longevity to folks with a high school education, or even less. These jobs paid for houses, cars, college for children, vacations. They provide health care and disability coverage. They made my hometown of Alexandria, Indiana a vital and prosperous community. The transformation of work in the 60 years since then has stripped these jobs out of our cities and towns. The resulting pain has become political fodder for nativist populists like Trump, for a socialist candidate like Sanders and for groups traditionally supportive of Democratic candidates like Hillary Clinton.
When this sad and despicable campaign winds to its end, and when the “orange haired snatch grabber” (line from a Comedy Central sketch) has decided whether the US system of government is important to him, when inauguration days rolls round in January, 2017, these challenges will remain. The rage will still fester in working class towns in the rust belt, up and down the East Coast, in the heart of Dixie. There will still be whole categories of American citizens who will find work elusive and the life one can build only with work out of reach.
It’s not over. Not by a long shot.
Cogito Ergo Not
Fall Hunter Moon
Rene Descartes walks into an English pub, and the serving wench asks him if he would like a flagon of ale.
He says: “I think not!”
Poof! He disappears!!
Election Over
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.
From Way Out There
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Friend Tom Crane found this. And friend Bill Schmidt nailed it as, “Good music for Halloween.” A literal symphony of the Planets.
The Unexpected. Snow.
Fall Hunter Moon
Didn’t expect snow this morning, but there it was, white in the yard. The season is trying to push toward winter, but has a bad case of reticence.
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.
Kathleen Donahue. Died. I met Kathleen, really, on facebook, though she was from Alexandria, my hometown. She was seven years younger than me, meaning she was in 6th grade when I graduated from high school. She moved to California long ago, got involved in the music business writing lyrics, suffered through two violent attacks and had an iconoclastic personality.
About six months ago she posted that an unexpected finding during a visit to the doctor had uncovered stage 4 lung cancer. They gave her about six months to live. I’m surprised how much her death affected me. Social media has its rightful critics, but for the purpose of staying in touch with old friends and faraway family, for the opportunity to renew or begin acquaintances with people with whom there is some connection already, they offer a possibility unavailable when I was younger.
And with that opportunity comes the chance for grief.
Kate and I did the drive into Denver yesterday. A long way for nosepads for a pair of glasses and to have some Mac repair guys wave their hand over her Ipad. They made it all better. There are things you can’t accomplish in the mountains, these are two of them.
Jon’s in a much better place. If things remain as they are, he will get most of what he wants in the divorce’s final orders, due November 28th. It’s gratifying to see that his strategy of taking responsibility, being open to negotiation and trying to avoid stirring things up in this delicate pre-final orders stage is working.
Where’s the Beef? Evergreen.
Fall Hunter Moon
Big winds, gusts up to 40 mph, some as high as 60. Those golden leaves on the aspens? Mostly gone. Now their winter nakedness. The season has advanced, though the climate warmed air has remained unseasonable.
In to Evergreen last night for the second meeting of the Evergreen Writer’s Group. The comments on my submissions were very helpful. This is a group of fantasy writers for the most part, folks who understand the challenges and possibilities of the genre. They will make me a better writer.
Before the group I went to the Vienna Beef shop in downtown Evergreen for an Italian beef. The guy who owns the shop makes Italian beefs with that straight from State Street taste. Best I’ve ever had outside Chicago. He said the president of Vienna Beef has been in his place twice this year. “Not sure why he was in Evergreen, but he loved my place.”
I’m at about 48,000 words now on Superior Wolf. There will be some drastic changes to material I’ve already written, but that’s usual, at least for me. The story continues to unfurl, whether lodged in a Platonic ideal that I’m accessing via woo-woo, or simply contained already in the beating hearts of its characters. Creativity is weird.
Vienna Beef place (far right) in downtown Evergreen
Tikkun Olam
Fall Hunter Moon
This dismal fucking election. Sorry, but that’s how I feel. At its apparent resolution on November 8th, according to Nate Silver’s 538, as many as 44% of voters will have cast their ballot for Donald Trump. 44%. It should be zero. But it won’t be. And the vote rigging rhetoric of the Donald’s now desperately pitched end game has the potential to create chaos. 44%. It should be zero.
Unless a Clinton wave sweeps Democrats to control of the House and Senate, the actual political result, in terms of governmental non-function, will be for Congress to be as it has been for the last six years. That combined with a large swath of angry white voters who believe Hillary stole the election could make the next few years awful. Perhaps even dangerous.
“Ruth,” I said yesterday, over breakfast, “Presidential elections are not usually like this. This one is a real aberration.” This precocious ten-year old looked up at me and said, “So I’ve heard.”
I suppose it’s similar to coming to political consciousness during the Vietnam War, or, later, during the Watergate mess. Being young when the impeachment of Bill Clinton was the big news. Or, when 9/11 happened. These were big moments in our recent history, each one with a totalizing grip on the news when they occurred. A child of those years could be forgiven a cynical attitude toward public life, just as Ruth, if she develops one, could be.
Yet. And this is incredibly important, they could be forgiven, but not encouraged. It would be possible for a child of the 60’s like myself to shake my head, sit back in the recliner, take out the remote and disappear into the realm of others’ imagination. However, my recent immersion in matters Jewish has offered a different way of framing all this.
Here is a bit more from commentary about Rabbi Tarfon:
“How can we possibly achieve tikkun olam, a repaired world? To get there, we will have to overcome the enemies of life: poverty, hunger, oppression, discrimination, war and sickness.”
“Rabbi Tarfon teaches: Do not be arrogant; do not think that you alone can finish the job. Trust in your children and generations yet unborn to take up the task. Know that you are part of the living chain of people who have dreamed, worked for a better world…” voices and visions
This is a plea for humility, no matter the times into which you are thrown. The arc of history is long and we are only a small part of it, a moment in time, yet our moment is important to that arc and we do
Sexual Aggression.
Fall Hunter Moon
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.
I want to add a male perspective, not because it’s more profound, it isn’t; but, because its relative rarity can underscore the climate of fear this despicable breaching of personal boundaries produces.
When I was young, my parents not only allowed me to travel by myself, but actively encouraged it. I would go down to the Greyhound Bus Stop by Stein’s Tailor Shop, load my suitcase underneath and go up the stairs to my seat. On my lap would be a fruit basket from Cox’s Super Market. Wrapped in a colored cellophane would be apples, bananas, perhaps some grapes, food for the journey.
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.
It was different though when I boarded the train headed for Arlington, Texas. This was a really big adventure for me, my first time riding a train. When we reached St. Louis, I had a long layover so I put my bag in a locker (this was before the time of bombs in lockers), took my brownie camera and went out into the humid heat of a Missouri summer afternoon.
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.
Then his hand was in my crotch, kneeding my testicles. I stood up, bolted up more like it, said, “You shouldn’t do that,” collected my camera and clutching it to my chest ran back to the train station where I remained until the train came that would carry me onto Texas. He didn’t pursue me, gave me no resistance. But I was shaken in a way that at that age I could barely comprehend. I was maybe 11 or 12.
During college there were various situations in which gay friends came onto me in a sexual manner, but I never considered that assault. It was the exploratory process, learning how to be sexual in a time of drastically altered mores, the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
Just three weeks ago, in Minnesota, I had a very unsettling experience. I had driven for two days, leaving Conifer on a Wednesday, staying overnight in Lincoln, Nebraska, then on the road Thursday. It was about 4 pm and I was tired, my leg hurt and I was looking forward to getting to my hotel.
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.
The second time he did this brought him parallel to me. I looked up, wondering what the guy (I assumed it was a guy.) looked like. He turned his head toward me. Cupping his right hand, he moved it back and forth in front of his mouth while pressing his tongue against the side of his cheek. A rude gesture, especially in a very casual, momentary encounter. He nodded at me, took his right hand and gestured again, this time to himself, then to me and indicated that I should follow him. He was much bigger than I was and had a rough looking face.
I turned my head away, looked forward and turned left away from him. He was in a lane that had to go straight. The encounter ended. It was brief and reasonably safe. I was in my own car and would have had no difficulty losing him even if he had decided to pursue me. But it didn’t feel safe, not at all. It shook me. I felt frightened and, yes, violated.
Neither of these two instances, and they were 50+ years apart, resulted in any physical damage. Both of them resolved quickly. Yet, they both left me repulsed and feeling vulnerable. They both made me rethink my normal assessment of the world as a safe place to be.
I can only imagine how I would view the world if I experienced these encounters regularly, as seems to happen to women. (I say seems because I’m not a woman.) I would feel that my world required constant diligence, constant attention to dangerous surroundings. My sense of safety in the world would probably be compromised beyond repair. And this is in the usual, the day to day.
It does not include a time when a candidate for the Presidency openly brags about such aggression, about the privilege that celebrity brings, about being able to do whatever he wants. This is a validation of sexual aggression, a lived experience for many, many of us, most women, a granting of legitimacy to these acts from a person vying to become the nation’s leading political authority figure.
Adding this abomination to the gradual accretion of insults caused by cat calls, by presumptive hands or body checking, by date rape and rape culture, makes our common space seem fraught with peril, even on a normal day. This is not acceptable. Fear is not the norm we want for our daughters, granddaughters, wives and mothers, sisters.
It’s a problem only solvable by alliances between men and women. Let’s strengthen them over the coming weeks and months.