Lughnasa College Moon
How different we are from Europe. Scotland has a population of 5.3 million, Ireland about 4.6 million, England 53 million. California alone has 38.3 million people. Texas 26.5. New York, 19.6 with New York City 8.3 million. Of course, we’re all tiny compared to the behemoths of India and China, but I’m interested right now in Scotland’s vote, underway right now, for its own independence as a nation.
It’s as if Minnesota were a dependency of Caltex and wanted to break away, put up its own borders and start issuing passports. My point here, heightened by our upcoming move to Colorado, is that we move between states often equivalent in size to many of the storied nations of Europe: Netherlands-16M, Greece 10.6M, Sweden 9.5M, Denmark-5.6M. Iceland-324,000.
Think of the history of Greece. Greece! The wine-dark sea. Homer. Zeus. the 300. Or, the Netherlands, home of Spinoza, holding back the sea, pot-friendly, deeply anti-semitic. Or, Denmark, Hans Christian Andersen, Copenhagen. Places redolent with backstory, filled with the architecture and the palmprints of genius.
Minnesota and Colorado sit next to each other on the population chart: Minnesota at 5.4M and Colorado at 5.2M. We could be moving from Denmark 5.6M to Norway 5M.
Imagine crossing borders, having to register as a resident alien or the equivalent, learn a different language, be aware of a different deep history. And in that imaginary case only moving 375 miles. While we will go 966 miles, almost 3 times as far to arrive in another “nation”, where the natives speak our language, share our currency and most of our habits and customs. We are a big country and our relative unity is a wonder. It might even be a miracle, albeit a very human one and no less miraculous for that. Too, we’ll have remained roughly within the center of the nation, with hundred of miles to go to an ocean from either place.
We’re so young to be so strong. And yet the world looks to us, perhaps less so now, but still…é
