Beltane Waxing Planting Moon
Into the city for the last 2010 session meeting of the Sierra Club’s legislative committee. The meeting itself, face to face for the first time since January (we met over the phone every week until tonight), produced thoughtful evaluation of both the process and the content of our work. As Justin said, it was a year that exceeded expectations (low), but could not be counted a good year. In terms of two major defensive issues: the nuclear and coal moratoriums, we maintained the status quo, which was a more difficult task by far than it sounds.
After the meeting at the Sierra Club offices, we adjourned to the Blue Nile for an outdoor dinner and conversation that last until 9:45. We got to do the kind of casual conversation that is so necessary for team building, for trust, for understanding each other. I hope we will be able to keep the same team together next session.
Politics causes a sneer to come to many lips, but I have always seen it as an honorable and necessary method for mediating differences in a large community. As the art of the possible, politics always bears the suspicion of values besmirched, ideals sold out, but in fact it is a way, a peaceable way of getting the thing done that can get done. It involves not the selling out of values or ideals, but the real price both pay for a collision with the reality of the moment.
