AncienTrails

Lughnasa                                                                  Eclipse Moon

I’ve not written about politics here for awhile. A welcome relief to both me and, I suspect, you, the reader. My political energies have become subdued, mostly as I decided to turn my focus to reimagining work, Jennie’s Dead, Ovid and Beth Evergreen. That feels right to me now, though the news pings me daily. What are you going to do about Charlottesville? What are you going to do about climate change? What are you going to do about Korea? What are you going to do about electing a new representative to the Colorado House of Representatives? Of course I know I can do nothing about them alone, the nature of politics is communal, so the choice is to remain isolated.

Beth Evergreen has absorbed my communal energy. Tara Saltzman, director of education for Beth Evergreen, wrote in a note about the bee-oriented hike up Mt. Pennsylvania, “Being Jewish is being in community.” I feel that. I’m part of the community there, doing my part, glad not to be a leader. They accept me, a peculiar offshoot of the Christian and UU ministry, a pagan.

Next Tuesday those worlds, the political and the Jewish communal, conflict because I volunteered to set up for the adult education events all year, Tuesdays with Morim. At the same time at Grow Your Own, a nearby wine bar cum music venue, Tammy Story, a candidate for the Colorado House is going to speak to the Conifer Alliance for Action. Her opponent, Tim Neville, doesn’t believe education should be public among other strange notions. I’m going to set up chairs and tables at the synagogue.

Trump is still there, of course. Over the course of the last couple of weeks he’s given aide and comfort to white supremacists and neo-nazis, pardoned a sheriff who broke the law and engaged in inhumane treatment of immigrants. He also made Hurricane Harvey a campaign event. He’s a child, maybe 8 or 9, going off instinct, refusing history and decency. He is the greatest test our democracy has faced in my lifetime, more dangerous to our national fabric than the war in Vietnam and the Cold War. He must be challenged, over and over again, until he final slinks away into the dark place from whence he came. I’m glad there are many engaged in doing just that. I’ll do my part here from time to time, but that’s the balance of my political work for now.